Icasa head sentenced for Land Bank fraud
THE chairman of the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, Manyaba Rubben Mohlaloga, has been sentenced to 20 years in jail for defrauding the Land Bank of R6 million in a case dating back to 2012.
Business Day reported that his lawyers successfully applied for leave to appeal in the specialised commercial crimes court in Pretoria.
Mohlaloga, who was then an ANC legislator and chairperson of parliament’s portfolio committee on agriculture, was found guilty of conspiring with then Land Bank chief executive Philemon Radichaba Mohlahlane and Dinga Rammy Nkhwashu of law firm Masepula Dinga Attorneys to transfer R6m into the law firm’s trust account in 2008.
The money was transferred from a BBBEE facility intended to help black South Africans participate in the agricultural sector. LEADING South African fine art auction house, Strauss & Co, is heading to KwaZulu-Natal in February, giving residents the opportunity to have the value of their art assessed in the current South African art market.
Taking place at the KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts (KZNSA) Gallery in Durban and the Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg, the valuations comes ahead of Strauss & Co’s upcoming April online auction and its much-anticipated Johannesburg live sale in May.
Those wishing to have their art valued can meet executive director Susie Goodman and senior art specialists Dr Alastair Meredith and Wilhelm van Rensburg on Thursday February 7.
No consultancy fee will be charged but a donation of R30 an artwork will be requested, to raise funds for the Kwa-Zulu Natal Society of Arts. Strauss & Co’s valuation days are highly enjoyable events, known for creating an atmosphere and experience akin to the popular BBC programme, Antiques Roadshow. There is a depth and breadth of twentieth century South African art that frequently comes to light on valuation days.
Last year’s November Live sale saw an oil on canvas by Robert Gwelo Goodman, Bay of Natal from the Berea, sell for R130 000, while François Krige’s Portrait of a Basuto Man sold for a hammer price of R95 000 and contemporary artist Deborah Bell’s large mixed media work, The Lovers, sold for R140 000.
All these works were first brought in to the KwaZulu-Natal valuation days. Strauss & Co’s valuation days are part of the auction house’s dynamic role in the South African art market, which includes an ongoing series of online auctions – an accessible way for new art buyers and those situated outside Johannesburg and Cape Town to learn about and bid on fine art.
Themed auctions have also put the spotlight on different areas of the art market with the most recent being the November 2019 auction’s session An Unsung History, which showed work by under-appreciated artists such as Noria Mabasa, Alfred Richard Martin and Bongani Peter Shange, who deserve much greater attention. Pietermaritzburg Valuation Day
Date: Tuesday, February 19
Time: 9am to 4.30pm
Venue: The Tatham Art Gallery, Chief Albert Luthuli Street (opposite City Hall), Pietermaritzburg, 3200.
For more information on having your art works valued, call Susie Goodman at Strauss & Co
on 011 728 8246, email jhb@straussart.co.za or see www.straussart.co.za.