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You are not GOD! Shivambu tells Mbete

 

Sibusiso Banda

Economic Freedom Fighter’s Chief Whip Floyd Shivambu has told Parliament Speaker Baleka Mbete that she is not “God!”

The comment came immediately after Mbete gave a stern warning to EFF MPs when she opened Tuesday's sitting by addressing the chaos that erupted almost two weeks ago when EFF MP's demanded that President Jacob Zuma pay back money for Nkandla. This led to cancellation of parliamentary proceedings for that day.

"As members will remember, the refusal of the members of the EFF to abide by the directions and rulings of the chair led to the early adjournment of proceedings and the question session was not completed."

"At the time, I opted for a lessor sanction which was to order the members to leave the House.

"I cannot but strongly condemn the disruption of the proceedings in the chamber," she said after confirming that she would not call on the House to suspend the EFF MPs from parliament.

Mbete said she will leave the matter to Parliament's powers and privileges committee to investigate further.

Despite being told they are off the hook for now, as soon as Mbete completed her statement, Shivambu rose to object, ignoring Mbete’s protestations that she had not intended to open the matter for debate.

“How is the committee going to investigate when you are making conclusive remarks in this house?” he asked.

Sports Committee wants FIFA to brief on match-fixing saga

Sibusiso Banda

Parliament’s Committee on Sports is looking at the prospects of requesting the international soccer body FIFA to come and brief them on the progress of their match fixing investigation in which South Africa was implicated. 

This follows Sports Minister Fikile Mbalula briefed the committee regarding the update on the investigation. The committee heard that government is still waiting too on FIFA to give then direction as to how far they are with regards to their investigation in to match fixing.

FIFA’s investigation trails back to two years ago when South Africa was implicated in a global match fixing scandal related to Bafana Bafana World Cup warm-up games. Mbalula stated that there was also no time frame indicating as to when the investigation will conclude.

 “I won’t lie before the committee and say I did get some brief from FIFA and say there are time frames. There are none. It’s an open-ended process.”

The minister told the committee that the matter is entirely on the global football organization’s hands and there is nothing that government can do to speed up the process as it would constitute to government interference.

A coldwar of hashtags brewing in South African politics

 Sibusiso Banda

Hashtag that!! That’s the new trend that has hit the South African political sphere. In light of the breaking stories this past week, the country’s top three political parties resorted to sharing their views with their followers on social media particularly on Twitter by creating a Game of Thrones via  spearheaded by hashtags message.

Just to bring you up to speed: Hashtags, words or phrases preceded by the # symbol, have been popularized on Twitter as a way for users to organize and search messages. For instance, people tweeting about the ruling party might add the hashtag #ANC to their message, and those searching for the lastests developments in parliament could simply search #ParlyChaos.

South Africa’s relations with Israel will remain

Sibusiso Banda

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has reiterated South Africa will not be considering suspending its diplomatic relations with Israel despite local pressure to do so

Ramaphosa, answering questions in the National Council of Provinces, told MPs "maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel allows our country to continue to engage with Israel on issues of mutual interest, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"The government of South Africa has communicated its unequivocal and strongest condemnation of Israeli against Palestinians in Gaza to the government of the state of Israel, and we have done this through a number of measures.” he said.

The Deputy President said the country will lose Top of Formits leverage to mediate in the Middle East if it heeds to calls to cut ties. He explained that the ties enabled President Jacob Zuma to deploy two special envoys, led by former minister Zola Skweyiya and deputy minister Aziz Pahad, to the Middle East for talks with both sides to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

ANC wants parliamentary debates back on TV

Sibusiso Banda

African National Congress is planning on approaching the SABC in reinstating live parliamentary debates broadcast in one of its channels in the afternoon.

ANC caucus resolved to request the public broadcaster show live broadcasts of debates in the National Assembly that were stopped years ago when the SABC started experiencing cash problems.

At the time, the Mail & Guardian had reported that the national treasury gave SABC a bailout in the form of a R1, 47-billion government guarantee, coupled with strict conditions, including turning around the SABC’s finances. A R1-billion draw-down was made immediately available to settle urgent outstanding financial obligations, but the remaining R473-million is still subject to the broadcaster presenting clear revenue targets and cost-cutting measures.

“The SABC must reinstate its live broadcasts of afternoon parliamentary sittings to ensure debates are followed by the majority of South Africans,” reads the resolution.

Minister Muthambi explains Hlaudi promotion

SibusisoBanda

Communications minister Faith Muthambi said there was no pressure in her decision to appoint SABC’s Hlaudi Motsoeneng to a permanent position.

The minister told journalists in Pretoria that upon making the decision to officially appoint Hlaudi as the Chief Operations Officer on a permanent basis, she considered various reports and recommendations that were sent to her.

Muthambi cited the recommendations and submission make by the SABC board, the Broadcasting Act, shareholder’s compact, Thuli Madonsela report, Hlaudi’s success track record to date and also a report of a law firm that was appointed by the public broadcaster to investigate the allegations made by the public protector.

“The appointment of the independent law firm by the SABC board to investigate all issues raised was the most responsible way to deal with the Public Protector report,”

The minister described the law firm as “credible” but did not disclose of its name.

Getting tested together is like the “I love you.”

The only real question you should ask before you have unprotected sex is: ‘when last did you get tested?” Actually, even if you are in a serious, committed, long term deal and one of you is on birth control that’s not enough. Not in this day and age.

You should both go for a full range of tests: from HIV to herpes to thrush or All OF IT!  You don’t really want to about your partner’s sexual past: how many girls your partner has bedded or just how kinky you girl was with her ex. Getting tested together is like the “I love you.”

There needs to be trust before these details are put on the table. And the best way to get there is by knowing that you’re both clean – and taking medication to get to the all clear. But there is a certain level of openness that is allowed. I mean you want to be able to tell your partner what you like in the bedroom without coming across as having a degree in promiscuity.

In the same breath you don’t want your past experience to make them feel insure about their level of experience. Still, the most important thing is staying safe and keeping your partner safe. Stick to that rule – the pleasure you get from each other will be on another, better level.

There is no law at present in South Africa forcing people to let you know they are HIV positive before they sleep with you. But a person that infects their sexual partner while knowing their HIV status could be charged with murder, attempted murder or assault under the South African law.

How much should your partner really know about your sexual partner? How do you protect the one love from the disease and still keep from losing them if you have an STI

This is why I wanted to know what my status was

Most people have heard and understand the cliché: Ignorance is bliss. We’ve all been there: where we felt better off for not knowing because the truth would be uncomfortable, painful – or just totes awks!

A bunch of people have used this excuse to justify not getting tested to themselves. I think they simply don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. There are scared to face the consequences of their behavior.

I think I am wired differently. 

I fear the unknown and the only way to conquer it is to find out. This is why I wanted to know what my status was. I TOOK THE INITIATIVE. My worst test was super scary. I went with my girlfriend to show that we could trust each other. I was afraid of what would happen if I turned out positive. Would she leave me? Would she think that I cheated on her and not consider that I’d gotten it from a previous sexual partner. If she stayed, what would it mean for our sex life? What if we wanted to have kids eventually?

With all those questions running through my head I can’t describe how I relieved I wad when our results both came out negative. Sure, sometimes what you don’t know won’t hurt you. But when it come s to HIV the opposite is true.  If you don’t know your status not only can you hurt your lover but yourself as well. If you don’t use protection, if you don’t change your lifestyle, if you don’t take your meds – chances are things won’t work out too well.

So I rate ignorance is not bliss because being sick isn’t blissful. So take the step in the right directions and get tested.

MANDELA: Tribute to a hero

MANDELA: ICON, HERO AND FLAWED HUMAN: Force of nature. Father of all nations. A messiah of our times.


Yet Nelson Mandela, described so often as a gift, an icon, a legend and even a saint, was flawed like any other human. Mandela was aware of his failings, and he struggled to be recognized as a man rather than a representative of an immaculate ideal.

He said many times that he was part of a collective that sought to eliminate the cruel system of white rule, even as understandably proud South Africans, some with commercial intent, craft more portraits, statues and commemorative knickknacks in his image and name more roads, buildings, schools and hospitals after him.

Known by his clan name, Mandela mixed humor, generosity and empathy in an irresistible potion that some called “Madiba magic.” But those who knew him well sometimes saw a cold, haughty side. His children lamented that he was not there for them, even after he left prison. His association with dictators like Moammar Gadhafi who had opposed apartheid suggested that Mandela made political compromises as a free man.

Mandela often sparred with F.W. de Klerk, the reformist white president and his partner in sharing a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating an end to apartheid. De Klerk said after Mandela’s death that the two became friends after they both retired.

Retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu praised Mandela for reconciling the races as South Africans emerged from apartheid and elected the former prisoner as their president in 1994 elections, defying grim predictions of racial war. However, unlike most other prominent figures who paid tribute, Tutu briefly noted Mandela’s weaknesses.

“He retained in his Cabinet underperforming, frankly incompetent ministers,” Tutu said of Mandela. “This tolerance of mediocrity arguably laid the seeds for greater levels of mediocrity and corruptibility that were to come.”

He said Mandela, who died Thursday at age 95, exhibited a “steadfast loyalty to his organization and to some of his colleagues who ultimately let him down.”

Tutu was referring to the African National Congress, the main liberation movement and current ruling party that is the front-runner ahead of national elections next year. It has lost some support because of corruption scandals and poor service delivery in a country still plagued by economic inequality, reflecting disillusionment that things have not turned out as well as many hoped when Mandela was at the helm.

The remarks highlight how Mandela’s record as an activist and prisoner before the end of apartheid, captured in his autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom,” is widely known and admired. His record as president is less scrutinized.

It is too much to expect that Mandela would set a new South Africa, traumatized by decades of a social system that denied the vote, equal education and other basic rights to the black majority, on a path to success in just one five-year presidential term. His retirement from politics was seen as a trademark gesture of modesty, a spurning of the cult of the individual. Many South Africans, though, regret he did not take the country further forward with his moral authority by serving another term.

Criticism comes, too, from South Africans who believe Mandela and his allies in the early 1990s were too eager to accommodate the white minority which still dominates the economy. When ANC leaders negotiated an end to apartheid, they did not insist on restructuring of the kind that happened in Zimbabwe after independence, fearing it could destabilize the country.

Mandela told business leaders in Cape Town shortly before the 1994 election that the country was struggling with high unemployment, low investment and growth rates and an income distribution system that was “terribly skewed” toward whites.

That imbalance is still in force, according to Julius Malema, the expelled head of the ANC’s youth league and now leader of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party. The upstart party seeks to harness the poor’s discontent, and Malema has said it is time to redistribute wealth.

“All evidence of the past 20 years reveal the simple reality that those who had to take forward the struggle for economic freedom did not do so,” the party said in a tribute to Mandela, in an indirect criticism of the revered leader.

Decades earlier, his decision to endorse violence as a last-ditch means of fighting apartheid was seized upon by the white overseers of race-based repression as evidence that he was a terrorist. The ANC’s armed wing was later involved in bombings that killed civilians.

Mandela has said he regretted his distance from his children, not just as a prisoner of apartheid but later, when politics and public duty claimed him. He was divorced twice, splitting with second wife Winnie Mandela in 1996.

Ahmed Kathrada, an activist who was imprisoned with Mandela, said his old friend was deeply worried while in jail at unwittingly projecting a saint-like image to the world.

Kathrada also quoted Mandela as saying: “I wanted to be like an ordinary human being with virtues and vices.”

My life in black and white

Sibusiso Banda

@AwesomeSBU

I was four years old when South Africa made a peaceful transition to a democratic state. To me back then it didn’t mean anything. But to my parents I’m sure it meant a lot. I’m guessing they had a vision and a plan for a better future because they had named me after the world’s most celebrated South African icon Nelson Mandela.

Like most of the leaders that I looked up to, even in the dire circumstances where everyone had a different view of what would have happened, he had persistent hope that everyone one day will enjoy the fruits of a violent free society. Believe me, the fact that my second name was inspired by Mandela does not make it easy for me to think or even begin of following his footsteps.

I understand that growing up in the Apartheid era my parents did not have it easy like we do today as the youth. I remember when I was young lying on the carpet one day while I was listening to my mother tell her apartheid ordeal. To be honest, while she was going on about having to run every time they saw police and how traumatized she one day had a gun pointed to her face, to me then, it didn’t mean anything. I was only interested in the so called “hippos” and power of holding a gun.

Why should you care about the SA's National Development Plan?

Sibusiso Banda

The national Development plan is a programme or a national blue pint of what kind of a country we want to live in by 2030 and what needs to be done over the years leading up to the year in order to achieve our visions.  

The plan is seen as a seen as a blueprint for the country’s social and economic development as it focuses on improving and creating a much better quality of life for through active citizenry, capable state and leadership.

The Positives

The plan came at the tight time when the country has been hit by a way of violent protest and negatives images of public funds looting and high levels unemployment amongst the youth. It hope on coming up with solutions that are consensus based.

The NDP plans on creating more jobs, improve education, fixing infrastructure, breaking apartheid planning legacy, using resources wisely, improving health care, making public services professional and consistently good, and lastly ending corruption and reunified nation. 

In his 2013 sona, President Jacob Zuma said the NDP which is ambitious target of creating 11-million jobs by 2030, will require teamwork to get the economy growing at a rate of more than 5% a year.

John Legend – “All of Me”

Benjamin Effiong

"When you truly love someone, every time when you listen to a song you immediately think of them and realize how lucky you are to be with them" -SIbusiso Banda

John Legend stars alongside his model wife Chrissy Teigen in this newly-unveiled music video for ”All of Me” – the third single taken from his fourth studio LP Love In The Future, released early last month.

We get a candid three-dimensional view of the relationship of the GOOD Music crooner and his other half in this moving black-and-white clip directed by Nabil Elderkin (Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Nas). Snippets from the visual include the couple fighting playfully at the breakfast table, walking along the pier, and various deeply intimate moments, as Legend performs the Dave Tozer-produced ballad on a piano. This is all wrapped up in the classiest manner by actual footage taken from their wedding day last month in Italy.

Check out the amazing visual for ”All of Me” below:

http://www.soulculture.co.uk

Man In China Has Nose Growing From His Forehead [PHOTOS]

A man in China has a nose growing from the left side of his forehead – that is not a misprint. What makes the story even stranger is the fact that the nose will be used in a transplant to replace his currently damaged nose.

Reuters reported on the 22-year-old man identified only as Xiaolian, who will be undergoing surgery to replace his original nose, which was damaged in a car accident last year. Because he didn't get medical attention on the nose, it became infected and therefore inoperable by surgeons.

Using an innovative procedure, doctors reconstructed his nose using skin tissue expander along with cartilage from his ribs, and has been growing from his forehead for the past nine months. 

Check out a video from the DailyMail featuring Xiaolian and his surgeon.

http://hiphopwired.com

Developing and improving SA teachers by Sibusiso Banda (@AwesomeSBU)

ANN7 News Channel – Worst channel: embarrassment for news: good for comedy

WE hope you were able to spot our mistakes in the text (introduction) LOL

Since its launch, South Africa's new biggest unprofessional 24- hour television news channel Africa News Network 7 (ANN7) has been marked enormous embarrassing technical errors include camera shack, confused untalented anchors, background noise, people walking in and out in the back ground while while the broadcast in live on screen and so much more.

With just three days in running, the launch news channel is already dabbed by social media as "Amateurs News Network' since the history of South African television. A minute hardly goes by without an error being made not just by the inexperience anchors but by also the camera persons or studio auto cue teleprompter or headline editor.

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian's baby is revealed

Uncertanity haunts Zimbabwe: What election could mean

Sibusiso Banda

@AwesomeSBU

After all the immense effort by South Africa and the Southern African Development Community of forming a unity government and bringing peace through democracy over the past five years, elections free from violence finally took place in Zimbabwe.

Robert Mugabe claimed 61% to 33% majority victory over MDC in what was perceived as heavily disputed July elections. Dispute there being few arrests, less intimidation, violence, and more freedom of speech, Morgan Tsvangirai has rejected the results announced by Zimbabwe Electoral Commission as a “huge farce” and alleged immense vote rigging, mainly through a voters roll which he says was grossly manipulated and most voters were turned away from the pools. He’s contesting the outcome.

Full TUTnews News Bulletin produced by Sibusiso Banda (@AwesomeSBU)

Full TUTnews News Bulletin produced by Sibusiso Banda (@AwesomeSBU)