Author: Sue Maclennan

Members of the House of Traditional Leaders spoke to Makana community leaders and officials at Noluthando Hall on Tuesday 28 May. Their mission was to check the state of readiness of the municipality ahead of the 5 June launch of the Eastern Cape Initiation Season. Makhanda was their last stop in their awareness tour of seven municipalities in the Sarah Baartman District. Makana has had a clean safety record when it comes to initiation schools in the area, and chairperson of the Local Initiation Forum, Councillor Rami Xonxa, wants to keep it that way. “I want to encourage parents to…

The Grahamstown Feeding Association received a welcome boost when a group of DSG and St Andrew’s pupils not only raised R2 500 for it, but also spent a morning helping out at the Knight Street facility. The organisation has provided a daily meal for Makhanda’s poorest of the poor for more than 20 years. Last year they provided 66 559 meals according to volunteer soup kitchen worker Kay Marx. But without a state subsidy and with the price of food going up, it’s a constant struggle to keep the operation going. “The dramatic rise in the price of food has made the…

Gift of the Givers has assured Ntsika Secondary School of funds to test the water produced by the borehole they sank there last month, as well as to run the filtration plant there until the end of the financial year. In addition, they are sending an engineer from Cape Town and a local electrician to ensure the filtration plant remains safe and effective. However, there was drama last Friday during what those involved have agreed to describe as a miscommunication. It seemed, for a few hours at least, that the organisation was about to turn off the electricity to the…

A student was punched in the face when she confronted an intruder in her Sunnyside home late Tuesday morning. In a separate incident this week, in upper Fitzroy Street, a student was threatened by an intruder when she challenged him. Police spokesperson Captain Mali Govender said the Tuesday 28 May incident occurred around 11.15am in the area of upper Hill Street. “The student awoke at the sound of the dog barking,” Govender said. She walked into the lounge and found a tall man in a dark jacket and jersey with dark blue long pants and a dark red beanie. “When…

Two months this year, water at certain sites in Makhanda (Grahamstown) was unsafe to drink. During January and March 2019 the levels of coliform and e.coli bacteria at some taps in Makhanda did not comply to the SANS 241 national drinking water standard. In some cases bacterial counts were 20 times over the safe limit. This alarming reprise of water quality failures was reported to councillors in the Community Safety and Social Services portfolio committee on 15 May. Grocott’s Mail has reported on similar treatment failures during November and December 2018, as well as May 2018. The municipality says the…

Ntsika Secondary School grabs first place for the month at the JSE Investment Challenge “Amazing” is how the four members of Team Optimistic Eagles felt after they walked away with the national prize for the April-May cycle at this year’s Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Investment Challenge, a first for this region. Ntsika won the monthly prize in the income portfolio category against more than 2 051 teams nationally working towards the coveted ultimate win. The competition takes the form of a simulator in which each team of four learners or students from the same school or institution are given an imaginary sum…

South African welterweight champion Mziwoxolo Ndwayana’s dramatic contest with Shaun Ness last month has been named Fight of the Year at Boxing SA’s annual awards at the Sandton Convention Centre on Friday night 17 May 2019. The Makhanda (Grahamstown) boxer, known as ‘The General’, went up against Ness for the vacant title in the Portuguese Hall in Johannesburg in September last year. Mziwoxolo won that fight by TKO in the 8th round to become SA Champion. His manager, Bulelani Ndwayana, was thrilled. “First of all we thank God for giving us this time, our management our gym. This is the…

Over the past few years PSG Wealth and Insure have hosted a Business Breakfast where they invite speakers from various investment houses to Makhanda (Grahamstown) to share their insights and thoughts on the economy and investment landscape. This year their guest presenters were Chrisley Botha, Investment Specialist from PSG Wealth and Duncan Artus, Portfolio Manager with Allan Gray. Botha spoke about the need to focus on what one can control when investing, such as one’s emotions, spending time in the market and investing in a diversified portfolio and not what one cannot control, such as inflation, market returns or the…

By SUE MACLENNAN and KATHRYN CLEARY The Department of Water and Sanitation will be paying three companies R10 million for work already carried out by Gift of the Givers. This claim by founder Dr Imtiaz Sooliman comes hot on the heels of their shock announcement earlier Wednesday 15 May that the humanitarian relief organisation would be leaving Makhanda (Grahamstown), along with the Jojo tanks, filtration systems and water tankers they brought in to relieve the municipality’s water crisis. Makana says it hopes to clear up any misunderstandings with Gift of the Givers and Dr Sooliman emphasises that there has been…

Three years after Fort England CEO Roger Walsh was forced out by unions, the battle continues. Sue Maclennan reports. While ousted Fort England CEO Roger Walsh awaited the outcome of an application for leave to appeal the February 2019 Labour Court ruling about his transfer from the hospital, the Department of Health threw a curve ball, saying he was dismissed. Now, in addition to fighting his transfer, Walsh’s lawyer Justin Powers has also filed papers in the Labour Court challenging his dismissal. What follows is a summary of Walsh’s legal battles with the Department of Health over the past three…