SUN CITY OPEN FOR DAY VISITORS

THE Sun City resort has reopened for day visitors looking to soak up the last rays of summer for midweek sales – Monday to Friday, starting from March 8.

This includes the Valley of Waves, the Maze of the Lost City and tube rides, among many others.

Capacity is restricted due to Covid-19 regulations, therefore a limited amount of tickets are available online. No tickets will be sold at the Sun City resort gate.

For tickets, visit www.ticketpros.co.za | Mercury Correspondent

HARD-PRESSED families could soon be saving on school uniforms following the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at stopping schools from forcing parents to buy from exclusive suppliers.

The Competition Commission, the Department of Basic Education (DBE) and four associations representing school governing bodies (SGBs) joined forces to strengthen regulations on the procurement of school uniforms and other learning-related goods and services.

The organisations this week signed the MoU, a culmination of years of investigations and advocacy, following complaints received from parents who were forced to buy school uniforms from exclusively selected suppliers.

Competition Commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele said it was important to note that it was not the commission’s intention to dictate school uniform design, but to ensure uniforms were not unaffordable for parents.

Bonakele said as such they called on the SGBs to be cognisant of costs when designing their uniform and other learning-related goods and service regimes.

“On the enforcement side, we found that the exclusive arrangements between schools and uniform suppliers were pervasive across the country and made uniforms unnecessarily expensive and increasingly unaffordable for many South Africans,” said Bonakele.

He said the commission found that several schools were overly prescriptive in their uniform choices, which limited the choices and bargaining power.

ONE of Kenya’s best-known government administrators, Mohamed Yusuf Haji, died recently at the age of 80, actively engaged in public service as a senator and chairperson of a constitution revision team.

Born in Garissa in 1940, Haji was a beneficiary of the pre-independence colonial initiative to identify young talent to fill the shoes of departing British colonial administrators. He joined the administrative service as a district officer in 1960.

In that year, Britain called the first Lancaster House Conference to determine Kenya’s future. It decreed that “natives” would rule. Officials then intensified recruitment of potential African administrators and bureaucrats.

Simeon Nyachae, another long serving administrator wrote in his autobiography that new recruits were trained to take over Kenya’s administration at independence.

Officers in the provincial administration were expected to be loyal to the state and had to do as ordered, without questions. Haji learned this lesson well, remaining loyal to the interests of the Kenyan government throughout his career in public service.

Haji, the most prominent provincial administrator from the Somali community, later became a politician in 1998. He remained a people’s representative until his death.

Veteran Nairobi journalist John Kamau wrote that Haji had two public images; the administrator who threw his weight around on one hand, and the humble peacemaker on the other.

As an administrator, Haji attracted negative attention. He once had a man imprisoned for not giving him a lift and was also known to enforce draconian rules.

As a provincial commissioner in Kenya’s Rift Valley province, Haji became synonymous with former president Daniel arap Moi’s 1980s excesses.

His handling of troubled Somalia during President Mwai Kibaki’s second administration (2007- 2013) made him a peacemaker.

As part of his regional peace efforts, while serving as minister of defence, Haji helped to establish Somalia’s transition federal government. He also supported the training of Somali security forces to fight terrorists.

Notably in 2011, Haji led a Kenyan delegation to meet with officials of Somalia’s transitional federal government. They discussed how to manage the Al-Shabaab menace. He and Somalia’s Minister of Defence Hussein Arab Isse signed an agreement to collaborate against the insurgent group. Kenyan troops were then deployed to fight the terror group.

Eventually, he was part of the team that made the ultimate decision to pursue the Al-Shabaab terrorists into Somalia, and witnessed Kenyan soldiers being “re-hatted” into the AU mission in Somalia.

From 2013, he served as the Senator for Garissa County in Northern Kenya, and in the final years of his life he was appointed the chairperson of Kenya’s building bridges initiative task force. Unfortunately, he did not live to see it fully implemented.

While in the provincial administration, he adjusted to the governing tradition of total obedience to political superiors. He did what was expected of him and he ended up being indicted for abusing human rights, mainly at the behest of his superiors.

And when he joined politics as a ruling party adherent, he quickly adjusted to the reality of multi-party politics. He refused to join Odinga’s 2002 rebellion within Kanu, won the Ijara seat under the Kanu umbrella, and remained loyal to party leader Uhuru Kenyatta, who went on to become Kenya’s fourth and current president.

Haji became a sober elder, paying attention to volatility in the region. His efforts to ensure stability in Somalia gave him the reputation of a peacemaker. And by the time of his death, he had witnessed four political transitions from colonialism to Uhuru Kenyatta. He, in many ways, embodied the colonial and post-colonial Kenyan experience.