Thousands demand justice for slain Tazne
THOUSANDS of people including children marched through the streets of Ravensmead, demanding justice for slain 8-year-old Tazne van Wyk who was found in a stormwater pipe in Worcester.
Hours before the march, which brought parts of the area to a standstill, the United Reformed Church of South Africa in Elsies River held a memorial service for Tazne at which mourners had a chance to express condolences to her family and friends.
Later, hundreds of children led by the drum majorette brigade that Tazne was a part of marched from Avonwood Spar to Tazne’s home where an open air memorial service was held.
Bikers revved their engines as residents called for justice for the child’s murder and no bail for her alleged killer, Moehydien Pangaker.
Tazne’s body was found in a stormwater pipe in Worcester near the N1 last Wednesday after 54-year-old Pangaker pointed out the location.
Pangaker was arrested the day before in Cradock.
On Friday, he appeared in a packed courtroom in the Goodwood Magistrate’s Court where his case was postponed to April 17.
It has since emerged that Pangaker had racked up convictions dating back to the 1980s for crimes including murder, abduction and culpable homicide.
During the open air memorial service, children were asked to sit in the middle of the crowd so that they could say goodbye to their beloved friend.
Juanita Pieters, the mother of slain 3-year-old Courtney Pieters, was also seen supporting Tazne’s mother, Carmen.
Elsies River councillor Beverley van Reenen said while South Africa had the best Constitution in the world yet, it continued to fail its people.
“The government failed us and failed this community, this is a united community and its sad that this happened.”
Mayor Dan Plato, who was part of the search for Tazne, said that the killings must come to an end.
“We can’t handle it anymore to have this rubbish in our community. We need to look at the men in our communities
because it’s the old men that have an appetite for young girls.”
He called for peace and asked the community to support Tazne’s family during this time. Police spokesperson Novela Potelwa said police were still working hard on the case.
The police have also appealed to the public to assist in locating missing 16-year-old Nabeelah Begg from Bonteheuwel, who went missing on Tuesday. The Modderdam High School pupil was last seen on her way to school wearing a white school shirt and grey pants.
Nabeelaah’s foster mother, Imaan Mohamed, said she realised that her daughter was missing when her siblings did not know where she was. “I went to her friends to ask if they had seen her and they said she was with another friend,” said Mohamed.
Nabeelah is understood to have disappeared with a 15-year-old friend who has not been reported missing.
“It’s a norm for the friend to do this, she disappears for months and then comes back as if nothing has happened, but this is the first time Nabeelah has done this.”
Nabeelah’s distraught biological mother, Zuraida Begg, urged anyone with information to come forward.
Anyone with information can anonymously contact investigating officers Natasha Louw on
084 533 3260, Joseph Swartbooi on 082 302 8437, Crime Stop on 08600 10111 or SMS Crime Line on 32211.
THERE are two ways to earn money. One is through work. The other is through rentiering – profiting off things already owned. The first could make you a millionaire. Only the second will make you a billionaire.
It is often pretended that billionaires earn their wealth, implicitly through some uncommon brilliance. Let it be clear: no matter how brilliant you are, no matter what you do, you will never be a billionaire off the strength of your own brilliance alone.
Billionaires are created when governments fail to look after their people.
A third of billionaires acquire their wealth through inheritance (many of their ancestors initially earned the wealth through conquest or similar historical injustices).
A third become billionaires by being gifted state monopolies or natural assets, a transfer of extreme wealth from the public to private hands. Of the remaining third, the vast majority gained their wealth through the creation and maintenance of monopolies (the patent pools of major pharmaceuticals and platforms like Facebook) or through the ownership and development of land or property.
At the minimum, the failure to distribute such extreme wealth creates scarcities and poverty. We have now reached a point, unparalleled in centuries, where 26 people own more wealth than the poorest 50% of the world’s population combined.
So, where we talk of scarcities, whether food or medicine, we are not talking about natural shortages of resources, but about shortages stemming directly from the way governments have chosen to distribute resources.
In this sense, it would be useful to consider inverting the standard questions about government spending. Instead of asking
“can we afford to have a minimum wage” or “can we afford to guarantee healthcare to all our citizens”, ask “can we afford to create billionaires” or “can we afford to not redistribute most of the billionaires’ wealth”?
One needn’t be a communist, or even believe that the top 1% should pay especially high taxes, to believe that the concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 0.0001% is criminal.
When billionaires like the Guptas officially dictate government policy in a country, it is called corruption or state capture. But when it happens invisibly, it is called ensuring our policies are investor friendly. We are not alone.
In the US, a country whose next election could well become a choice between two billionaires, where medical bills are now the biggest cause of bankruptcy and 14 million children live in poverty, Amazon ($11 billion [R165bn] profit before taxes in 2018) not only didn’t pay federal tax last year but received a $129m rebate.
In the Middle Ages, the church took bribes from monarchs, tithes from its flock, pardoner’s fees from barons, became the largest landowner in Europe, and then gave out alms to the poor.
A similar performance is at play with the charitable deeds of Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al, who miraculously pay a lower effective tax rate than those earning poverty wages, no matter which party is in power in the countries in which they are domiciled. This becomes a vicious cycle.
Where enough wealth becomes concentrated in few enough hands, state policy becomes decided by those who exist in the same power relationship to present-day rulers as did the medieval church to kings and queens.
One could, quite reasonably, suggest such thinking is conspiratorial. Billionaires are not telling governments what to do; governments are democratically elected and independent and make the best judgements in the circumstances they find themselves.
Such an argument is to focus on a distinction without a difference.
Let’s suppose that governments are independent of the influence of the inconceivably wealthy, and billionaires don’t control governments.
Let’s then ask the counterfactual. In the event that billionaires were able to ensure governments acted according to their interests, how would things be different to the way they are now?