Fochville – praag.org

Another shooting on Fochville farm

Drinking home brew at the shebeen on the farm

A man was shot dead on Tuesday, and another wounded on the Fochville land belonging to a farmer who allegedly shot and killed two men in the presence of police two days ago, according to a report.

The latest shooting took place close to the area where the first occurred.

Lt-Col Hennie Maass, commander of the Fochville police station, said the violence on the farmer’s land could be attributed to illegal miners fighting over land.

Maass said last week, 22 people had been arrested and deported.

“They fight back and forth and there’s a lot of violence and crime, but it is not reported,” he said.

The farmer on whose land the violence took place was arrested on Monday after he allegedly shot and killed two tenants and wounded a third in the presence of police.

He allegedly opened fire after people began stoning him and his workers.

The previous weekend, in an unrelated incident, a man was found murdered on the land, and on the Sunday, there were protests on his property.

Maass said about 2 000 people, mostly miners, were tenants on his land. – Sapa

White farmer in Fochville arrested for shooting two black ‘tenants’

A Fochville farmer was arrested on Monday after he allegedly shot and killed two tenants and wounded a third in the presence of police, Beeld reported.

Armed with a shotgun, he opened fire on the men after they allegedly began stoning him and his workers.

According to the commander of the Fochville police station, Lt-Col Hennie Maass, the farmer will face two murder charges and one of attempted murder.

“Accompanied by a group of his workers, he went to speak to a man who allegedly caused some damage at one of his pubs over the weekend,” said Maass.

“One of his employees assaulted the man with a stick and [the farmer] then fired five shots. The men he shot were tenants on the farm.”

Police who were on the scene with him and his workers had been summoned at his request, Maass said.

The previous weekend, in an unrelated incident, a man was found murdered on the land, and on the Sunday, there were protests on his property.

Maass said about 2000 people, mostly miners, were tenants on his land. – Sapa

Unrest in Fochville continues

Gauteng police are monitoring violent service delivery protests in Fochville, near Carletonville night and day.

Residents in the area have launched protests over a housing backlog. On the second day of protests, police said 35 people were arrested and two people injured, including a police station commander.

“We are monitoring a service delivery protest which erupted yesterday in the early hours of the morning. The protesters went into schools and let the children out in order to mobilise and the children were stoning vehicles as well as the police officers,who had come to quell the situation,” Gauteng police spokeswoman Katlego Mogale said.

“It continued throughout the night where several spaza shops were looted.”

Dozens of foreign shop-owners had to flee the area as community members went on the rampage, blockading roads, stoning cars and looting shops.

Police were kept on their toes as residents also set alight cars and threw petrol bombs at officers.

Rubber bullets were fired and a police water cannon used to extinguish fires.

The violence escalated later and that is when we called the police and they fetched us from there. Another shop owner was beaten by the mob and he was injured. They chased him down the street and they hit him with a rock,” foreign shop-owner Musa Ibrahim said.

Residents also targeted local councillors’ houses, burning down several houses and a liquor store.

“Today early in the morning they burnt the houses of the council. It is about three houses of the councillors representing the ANC,” member of the provincial legislature Nompi Nhlapho said.

South Africa needs federalism

There are two recent events clearly demonstrating that the South African constitution does not work to govern a highly complex, multiethnic and even multinational society.

The first is the recent hullabaloo over the Afrikaner community of Kleinfontein, east of Pretoria, and the second is the consistent hostility towards Afrikaans-only schools displayed by the Gauteng education department.

What threat do the thousand Christian Afrikaners living peacefully in Kleinfontein pose to the City of Tshwane, which has a land area the size of Luxembourg and millions of inhabitants?

Kleinfontein is no different to any other gated community in the country, except that it is not built in a pseudo-Tuscan style, does not sport some nonsensical Mediterranean name and signs are not posted in English.

It resembles the German concept of a Sprachinsel, or ” language island”, meant to conserve the beleaguered Afrikaans language.

The people of Kleinfontein do not aspire to exoticism; they have simply dared to be themselves. They live together in a self-sufficient community, like thousands of other communities in rural parts of South Africa.

In fact, the president lives in just such a Zulu community at Nkandla, enjoying his own language and culture. Why is it acceptable to be Zulu or pseudo-Italian, but not Afrikaans?

While the ruling party, the African National Congress, wants dialogue with Kleinfontein, the English, assimilationist Democratic Alliance has displayed great hostility to the community in its own affirmation of democratic centralism.

Even the former Soviet Union did not practic e the same level of statist interference in education as the Gauteng education department under MEC Barbara Creecy does, bullying a school such as Fochville Hoërskool into accepting English children who are deliberately bussed in.

Fochville is the only Afrikaans high school in a vast area and Anglicising it by fiat constitutes a form of ethnic belligerence that boggles the mind.

The department’s ill-disguised language chauvinism is camouflaged by predictable accusations of racism levelled at the school, which already has happy black pupils enjoying quality education in Afrikaans.

We desperately need a federal or confederal system to end the abuse of power characterising this Leninist “democracy” at all levels.

Rivonia Primary case in Constitutional Court to determine fate of ‘Model C’ schools

The court case between the Gauteng education department and Rivonia Primary School over admission policies is crucial for access to education, Section27 said on Wednesday.

“The Constitutional Court’s decision in the case is a crucial one for the future of access to equal education in South Africa,” spokeswoman Nikki Stein said.

The Constitutional Court is scheduled to hear the case on Thursday. It involves the admission policy of a former model C school, Rivonia Primary, in Johannesburg.

According to Section27, the school refused to admit a Grade One pupil in 2011, saying it had no capacity.

The department intervened and instructed the school governing body (SGB) to override its policy and admit the pupil.

The dispute between the department and the school is around which of them has the final say in determining a school’s capacity.

The case would determine who had the final say about how many children were admitted to a school, in what language they would be taught, and who would be excluded from a school on the basis of an SGB’s admission and language policies, said Stein.

Also awaiting the outcome of the case were residents of Fochville, on the West Rand.

Stein said Section27 was representing 54 parents against the SGB of Hoerskool Fochville, a public school that adopted an Afrikaans language policy which excluded English-speaking pupils.

“Hundreds of learners from Fochville and nearby Kokosi township travel 25km to attend English medium schools,” she said.

Fochville SGB’s refusal to become a dual medium school is said to discriminate against pupils on the grounds of their race.

The Fochville case would be heard in the High Court in Johannesburg.

Section27 and Fochville residents are expected to picket outside the Constitutional Court on Thursday. – Sapa

White office workers threatened by strikers

Striking black mine workers at the Mponeng mine near Carletonville, west of Johannesburg, have issued death threats to white office workers at the mine. Yesterday they were told not to come to work today, unless they wanted to be killed.

White office staff were told to assemble at the Jacaranda garage in Fochville. An eyewitness and businesswoman in the town lives about 800 meters from the garage and she saw 200 white mine and office workers at the garage this morning.

Helicopters were circling from early this morning, with emergency vehicles coming and going.

Yesterday an unspecified number of people were hurt in the strikes, with several mine workers arrested.

According to the businesswoman, “Things are bad here in Fochville.”