072109 Ruling On Muslim Marriages Expected

CA_NWS_E1_210709_p03 C M Y K

NEWS

TUESDAY JULY 21 2009

Ruling on Muslim marriages expected

Leah’s body found in sewer Family dreads having to identify little girl cut up by blades NIÉMAH DAVIDS Staff Reporter

POLICE have recovered the body of two-year-old Leah Arends, who had fallen into a drain while playing with her cousins in Pelican Park at the weekend. Police spokesman Inspector Ian Liebowitz confirmed last night that officials recovered Leah’s body in the drainage system at about 3pm yesterday. The search for Leah, from Grassy Park, started on Friday

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afternoon after she disappeared after jumping into a drain while playing. Late that day police moved the search to Zeekoevlei sewerage works in the hope that the little girl had been swept through the system. Remote-controlled cameras

were also put down manholes to check for any sign of Leah or her personal belongings. According to Liebowitz, rescue workers recovered Leah’s mutilated body in the drain system. “Parts of her body were rather badly churned up… as a result of the blades (which crushes solid items) in the system,” he said. Speaking to the Cape Argus last night, Leah’s grandmother Charmaine Arends said her family were trying to cope.

“We are holding up. Or we are trying to hold up. It is not easy; it’s very difficult,” she said. Arends said the family were dreading having to identify Leah’s body. They were expected to do so today. “We don’t know how we are going to deal with seeing her like that. It’s something we can’t really prepare for. No one can.” Arends said she and the rest of her family were tired after spending the past few days at

the Zeekoevlei sewerage works, where officials had hoped to find Leah’s body. “We’ve hardly slept since (she went missing).” Leah disappeared while playing with her cousins, threeyear-old Wade and six-year-old Jenino Scheepers. The only witness, young Wade, told his mother, Samantha Scheepers, that Leah had shifted the thin piece of metal covering the manhole and jumped into the drain. Apparently Leah thought it

was a swimming pool, Wade told his mother. On Saturday, several residents said they were angry about the time it had taken for the search to get under way, as “precious” hours were wasted on Friday. But Liebowitz said they had sourced cameras from a private company and these had arrived only on Saturday. Liebowitz said an autopsy would be conducted to determine the exact cause of death. [email protected]

RICHIE DUCHON Staff Reporter

FOUND: Leah Arends

Thefts at schools are on the rise ILSE FREDERICKS Education Writer

FURTHER reports of vandalism and theft at schools have flooded in since they reopened after the July holidays yesterday. The number of reports have swelled from 17 to 33 as teaching staff and pupils arrived at school, but it is still lower than the same time last year. By Friday, 17 vandalism cases had been reported, but after schools re-opened for the third term yesterday, more reports were received by the Western Cape Education Department. According to the Safe Schools Division, eight cases of damage to property and 25 theft cases were reported. The number of cases reported was lower than last year’s when 43 cases were reported over the same period. Education MEC Donald Grant said it seemed measures to safeguard schools during the holidays had worked. Grant, Community Safety MEC Lennit Max and Social Development MEC Ivan Meyer will be visiting two schools today. [email protected]

PICTURES: BRENTON GEACH

LOOK OUT: Shark spotter Patrick ‘Rasta’ Davids keeps watch while a shark swims close by.

Spotters get up close and personal with sharks

Local production industry growth is ‘thanks to SABC’

THANDANANI MHLANGA Staff Reporter

PEOPLE should focus on the positive work the SABC has done, particularly in growing the local production industry, the corporation has said. SABC spokesman Kaizer Kganyago said that a few years ago, there were about 20 “mostly white-owned” production houses. Now there were about 400. Kganyago said the SABC was working on reducing payments it owed to production houses month-by-month. Yesterday the Television Industry Emergency Coalition said the SABC was demanding fines of up to R100 000 from independent producers for alleged “lost assets” – items such as sets, props and wardrobes – tallied when a production was signed off. This was causing delays of months, even years, and was “clearly a ruse to alleviate the SABC’s cashflow crisis at the cost of the independent production sector,” the TVIEC said. – Sapa

BACK FROM THE DEEP: Shark spotters Patrick ‘Rasta’ Davids and Monwabisi Sikweyiya emerge from their first shark cage dive yesterday.

THE SEA is quiet and still and it is almost hard to believe that great whites inhabit these calm waters. On an unusually hot winter’s day in the peninsula, and even more so in Simon’s Town, a group of 10 shark spotters will get their first up-close encounter with the predator they’ve observed for so long. Their excitement is palpable as the cage descends into the water. At first, there are no sharks, but within minutes the boat to which the cage is attached is encircled by at least half a dozen. After about 40 minutes, shark spotters Monwabisi Sikweyiya and Patrick “Rasta” Davids are lifted out of the shark-diving cage. “It was that close! Did you see it?” shouted Sikweyiya. Davids responded: “Do you believe me now? There’s nothing to be afraid of ?”

The group was invited by African Shark Eco-Charters to get a close-up view of the sharks they keep a lookout for. “There are more dangerous two-legged sharks on land,” said Davids, a veteran of the shark spotting trade. Davids started out as a car guard at a Muizenerg beach until a 16-year-old teenager lost a leg to a great white. His livelihood was subsequently threatened as the beach saw fewer visitors. This led him to train as a shark spotter. “The local trek fishermen taught me how to look for weather conditions, wind patters, visibility in the water. I was the first shark spotter in Muizenberg.” That was seven years ago, and shark spotting has since grown to encompass this group of youngsters from all walks of life who were given the opportunity yesterday to encounter the great whites. Rob Lawrence, owner and host of African Shark Eco-

Charters, sponsored the group. “These guys do such a good job but only get to see the sharks from the mountains,” said Lawrence. Alison Kock, a shark researcher with the Save our Seas Foundation, said they were grateful to Lawrence for sponsoring the trip as the experience had lifted the shark spotters’ spirits. “Getting to see sharks in their natural environment, up closer than they ever have before, can teach them more in a few hours than years of studying sharks from books or films,” said Kock. Also in the shark spotter group are four women. Ethel Thsandu said that, as a shark spotter, she had learned how to connect with nature. “You get to learn about nature, how to become connected to nature,” she said. The other women said the best part of their job was meeting tourists from all over the world. [email protected]

Gender activist slams Malema for playing race card KARYN MAUGHAN

‘BASELESS’: Mbuyiselo Botha

GENDER activist Mbuyiselo Botha – whom Julius Malema branded as a puppet of white racists – has slammed the ANC Youth League president’s accusations as “pathetic”. Botha, who was left partly disabled after being shot in the head by police during the apartheid era, yesterday urged Malema to deal with the Equality Court complaint made against him by the Sonke Gender Justice NGO instead of playing “the over-used race card”.

“No one in this country is untouchable or above the law, and that includes you, Mr Malema,” he said. Botha, Sonke’s advocacy head, was responding to Malema’s claims that the hate speech complaint against him – which centres on his comments that President Jacob Zuma’s rape accuser enjoyed herself with him – was driven by “whites opposed to black rule”. Moments after he backed out of testifying in the Equality Court on the complaint brought against him by Sonke, and in apparent reference to

Botha, Malema told his supporters: “The black faces you see in front are not really black… they represent whites who are opposed to black rule.’ He added that if Sonke had been a “real African” organisation it would have resolved its issues without going to court. In an open letter to Malema, Botha yesterday described the accusations as “unwarranted, baseless and misinformed”. “We can only say (the comments) are pathetic… “For the record, everyone should be held accountable for his or her words… All of us

need to know that we can’t get away with statements that are misogynistic, demeaning and disrespectful in nature.” Botha said he had served as the secretary-general of the Sharpeville Civic Association, which spearheaded the 1980s rent boycotts, while Sonke director Reverend Bafana Khumalo was a former antiapartheid student leader, and Western Cape Sonke head Patrick Godana was “shot and imprisoned for standing up against apartheid”. “I wonder how it is possible that these blacks can be Uncle

Toms at the disposal of their ‘white masters’?” he said. ANCYL spokeswoman Magdalene Moonsamy said Botha’s response to Malema’s comments was aimed at “inciting the youth league president”. Describing Malema as being at the forefront of the fight for women’s rights, she stressed that he had not “tried to run away” from the complaint laid against him by Sonke. She said Malema’s “white puppet” remarks were “not intended to castigate race”. Malema will return to the Equality Court on August 31.

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A NEARLY 10-year process to pass a national law that would recognise Muslim marriages and account for their dissolution could soon be an important step closer to an ending. The Constitutional Court is expected to hand down a judgment tomorrow answering an important procedural question: whether or not it has the jurisdiction to compel the president, his ministers and Parliament to take action on passing a Muslim marriages bill. The Women’s Legal Centre Trust (WLCT), a non-profit organisation that provides legal assistance to women in the areas of housing, health, violence and religion, filed an application last November asking the Constitutional Court to force the executive and Parliament to take action on such a law within 18 months. Lawyers for the WLCT argued that the president and Parliament had violated the constitution by failing to enact laws that recognise “all Muslim marriages as valid marriages”. The application argued that the issue was of “such important political consequences as to require (the Constitutional) Court to intrude into the domain” of other branches of government. The Concourt could rule in favour of the WLCT and allow the group’s lawyers to argue their case; or it could force the organisation to re-file its motion in the High Court, which would amount to a time setback for supporters of codifying Muslim personal law in South African national law. A Muslim Marriages Bill was drafted by the South African Law Reform Commission and submitted in 2003 to then Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development Penuell Maduna. WLCT attorney Hoodah Abrahams-Fayker speculated that the bill had been stalled because of a minority in the Muslim community that opposes the bill. “There is some concern that the law would question the supremacy of sharia (law),” she said. Advocate Sheikh Faaik Gamieldien, who helped draft the Muslim Marriages Bill for the law commission, said it that it had gone through all the required public participation processes at the time, but said the bill was still sitting at the Justice Department.

Woman gets 3 years for false rape claim

‘PATHETIC’: Julius Malema

A WOMAN has been sentenced to three years in prison after she falsely accused a man of rape. The woman, 25, accused a 42year-old man of rape after she apparently had consensual sex with him in October last year. Police said the man spent eight months in custody after bail was denied. Magistrate Pierre Laurens told the woman she had caused the man shame through her false accusation. The Atteridgeville woman pleaded guilty to perjury. – Sapa