Here is a letter from a "Concerned Johannesburg citizen" to the Gauteng Premier David Makhuru, which might as well have been written to the president of South Africa, as this is the state of things throughout the country:
"I write on behalf of those living and working in Johannesburg who are killed, robbed, intimidated, and brutalised by criminals on a daily basis. Black, white, the aged, women, children, physically and mentally challenged, no one is spared.
Johannesburg is in a state of emergency due to the level of crime. Nowhere is safe and people are virtual prisoners in their homes. Arriving or leaving home is a nightmare. Our children travel to and from school in fear.
The rise in crime has an impact on all Gauteng citizens, and load-shedding makes it easier for criminals to escape.
We need an urgent solution to the crisis in Johannesburg and Gauteng.
We as Community Policing Forum members are unable to make a visible difference. Not even the police are able to curb the crime plague.
The police need the support of the SANDF to restore order. Public order has broken down, and state security is threatened.
We have become a failed province on the issue of crime, failing to protect our citizens.
Premier, we beg that the SANDF be deployed in Johannesburg before another family loses another father or mother or child to crime."
Here are few other issues in our newspapers that I have tweeted over the past seven days (The tweets listed below can be found at @toxinews):
- In Cape Town, Manenberg drug dealers have found a new way to get kids hooked on drugs - by sneaking narcotics into their hookah flavour.
- "SA doesn’t have surplus water and 28% of the country’s towns have inadequate water supply,"
- Over 300 people have been convicted over the past 18 months after being nabbed at the OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg for either smuggling drugs or trying to enter the country with fraudulent documents
- SA's water treatment works are in a critical state and only 41% of water samples collected by the CSIR were found to be of an acceptable quality.
- South Africans take note: Water shedding - Feel it, it is (almost) here. Engineers warn SA public to start preserving water - Under the ANC Regime water shedding is a reality
- SA Labour Minister reappointed a R1-million fraudster as her special advisor.
- The Deputy chief justice of the SA Constitutional Court says it is legal to expropriate land and that the willing buyer willing seller system is not constitutional.
- There are more than 2 000 headmen in KwaZulu-Natal and tax payers would need to fork about R171-million to cover their annual salaries for looking nice.
- a High Court judgment had effectively struck Communications Minister Faith Muthambi’s legal adviser, Daniel Mantsha, off the roll of attorneys in 2007 for his unprofessional behaviour, dishonesty and misappropriation of funds.
- Riot police had to fire rubber bullets and tear gas at CHILDREN protesting (like in 1976) in Port Elizabeth over the closure of 33 schools because of a shortage of teachers
- South Africa’s Hotels are empty, jobs are on the line, as onerous new visa regulations have wreaked havoc.
- Under the SA Communist Party-controlled ANC, South Africa is mow ranked among the top 8 ‘corruption hot spots’ in Africa.
- 'SA must better prepare for impending death of mining industry', says analyst - And it is already happening.
- SA’s steel industry is on the ropes | ArcelorMittal confirmed it may close its Vereeniging steel works
- Justice is finally on the way for 4-year-old Jasmin-Lee Pretorius, who was raped, then murdered, and then stuffed underneath a bed.
- An ANC Poo-flinger Western Cape executive declared war on the SA justice system urging the public to 'kill for justice'.
- Just as a matter of interest, "A third Shock Video Catches Planned Parenthood Vice President Selling Body Parts of Aborted Babies", but we do not see the same level of outcry about this as we have been seeing about Cecil the 13-year-old lion in Zimbabwe, the second poorest country on earth, ruled by a hoodlum who have had thousands of people murdered.
- Even the ever-so-positive Magnus Heystek is now warning about the crash of the SA Rand.
- SA farm attack victims voiced their anger in the past week, but this regime does not listen, because they do not care.
- ‘He pulled my vagina from his pocket’ A few minutes later, Phuti Malema returned them to his pocket and went to boil water, telling Mapula Malemone, 29, who is now wheelchair-bound, that he was going to kill her. - Moretele Magistrate’s Court
- A Mining jobs ‘bloodbath’ hits SA, due to falling commodity prices and increasing wage demands. Thousands will lose their jobs.
- Ousted Port Elizabeth mayor now the R1-million-a-year "additional special adviser" to the EC premier.
- Eskom aims to install an extra 6250MW of coal-based power after Medupi and Kusile and will import coal, because South Africa has run out of good quality coal supplies.
- A SA Police officer was stabbed to death on the N2 highway, while changing a tyre on his way to work. Cape Town crime is madness.
- It is 2015 and yet 12 people have been arrested after a KwaMashu man was beaten and burnt alive by a mob who accused him of witchcraft.
- Two kids 10 and 12, accused of raping a 7-year-old girl in Mitchell’s Plain to be criminally assessed.
- Four murders in six weeks have left Hout Bay residents reeling as a wave of crime continues.
- Telkom more than doubled executive directors’ pay as they plan to retrench thousands of employees
- 14 000 boxes of suspected stolen alcohol seized at a bottle store in Marabastad, Pretoria
- Hijacking Safety Tips are issued for driving on the N2 highway near Cape Town International Airport
- WARNING is issued: Upsurge in vehicle stoning on R300 near Cape Town - Drive on a full tank and not stop for any reason
- Student murdered while on his way to study at the University of Johannesburg’s Soweto campus
- Underberg farm, armed criminals assaulted and robbed owners and foreign guests
- Interim chairwoman of the state-owned oil company PetroSA has quit - Golden Handshake is coming
- 1 dead after shootout at Tembisa taxi rank in taxi war between rival associations
- Boy, 14, opens fire in Johannesburg street with an unlicensed / illegal firearm
- Job cuts in SA mining industry likely to continue as high-cost mines close over the next 3 years
- Metro Police officer shot dead during a armed robbery at the Junction Mall, south of Johannesburg
- Patching of potholes halted in Johannesburg due to yet another nationwide shortage of bitumen
- The SA Communist Party-led alliance wants to enforce army conscription in South Africa
- Couple kills two house robbers in southern Johannesburg - One shot dead and one fell from balcony
- Members of AfriForum and relatives of victims of farm attacks were 'pushed around and threatened' by SA Police in front of SA Police Minister Nathi Nhleko's office..
- 'Don't scream, don't hoot or I'll shoot', an armed hijacker warns driver ar the intersection of William Nicol Drive and Main Road
- Raging riots cripple the northern areas of Port Elizabeth
- Live ammunition was reportedly fired at rioters in Port Elizabeth’s Northern Areas
- Teenager stabbed multiple times while walking to his school in Middelburg
- South Africa's racist ANC Regime is offering incentives to keep whites out of jobs
- Six adults and four children held at gunpoint in a Richards Bay flat
- Granny fights off housebreakers with telephone book | Discovers use for Telkom directories
- Malema threatens Transnet and supermarket chains Shoprite and Pick n Pay over labour brokers
- ANC Regime's foreign policy creates poverty in SA with millions of Zimbabweans having fled to SA
- Husband kept busy while his 36-year-old wife was gang-raped by 4 men at Monotomosetlha village
- Affirmative Action and cadre deployment in hospitals can kill and SA health's system proves it
- 6000 miners are about to lose their jobs. Unions, Eskom partly to blame
- Six armed robbers shot and critically wounded a Centurion businessman on Saturday night. 33-year-old man was shot and killed during an armed robbery in Centurion, Pretoria
- Three prisoners tunnel out of KZN police station cell | No one noticed anything strange?
- Power and greed derail parastatals | Of the 300 state-owned enterprises, most are in leadership crisis
- Quantifying South African Rape & Murder Since the Fall of Apartheid (2014-2015) is worse than a horror
- SASSA employees allegedly deducting from grants unlawfully
- A company which failed to deliver textbooks is now in charge of tablets, laptops for schools
- 14 toilets at a school cost R4.7m to build and the super-expensive toilets do not work
- ANC Jacob Zuma personally called SAA chairwoman Myeni to torpedo multimillion-rand Emirates deal
- There is Sewage in Gauteng's drinking water | Sewage in goverment too
- S Africa’s macadamia industry in chaos, may see substantial losses as Chinese exports fall through
- Road traffic rules changed again to make it easier to catch e-toll and traffic fine defaulters
- SA state owned PetroSA set for record multi-billion rand loss - Check ANC cadres' bank accounts
- One on five SA teenagers try to commit suicide
- Activists film horrific slaughter of 250 whales by humans in Faroe Islands (GRAPHIC VIDEO) - While the world goes crazy over one lion and says NOTHING about this.
- Three East Rand teenage girls have gone missing, since July 14 in unrelated cases
- SAA chief strategy officer believed to have resigned over 'dysfunctional' board of technical directors
- Bloodshed will be seen if pay a strike was called at SA gold mines
- 76-year-old man stabbed to death in his Kelvin Estate home | flesh on one of his arms was ripped off
- Police launch manhunt: - 50-year-old Adam Balim was fatally shot at a parking lot in Sandton
- Sex assault shock at prestigious Reddam House private school for Cape Town’s wealthiest children
- Richards Bay Pensioner shot in wrestling match with robber
- Lonmin says 6 000 jobs at risk in planning to close or mothball several mine shafts
- SANDF has paid 597 soldiers more than R340-million to remain on special leave
- Report on corruption in asylum system must be tabled in Parliament - Democratic Alliance
- Floor of government building in Riverside caves in | journalist prohibited from taking photos
- Well-known economist Dawie Roodt was hacked with a panga at his home
- "Kumba Mine In Thabazimbi To Close Shortly"
- At least 29 Gauteng police officers fired over corruption in the past three months
- SA mechanics jobless, while ANC imports 100 Cuban mechanics to help with SANDF vehicles
- Allegations of vehicle maintenance corruption in the SA National Defence Force (SANDF)
- Knife-wielding gang of train-robbers hit commuters at Retreat station, Cape Town - SA is screwed
- Inside Prasa's dirty battles | "suggests pressure exerted to pay an ANC-aligned supplier"
- 645,098 whites have left South Africa since 1986, of which more than half (340,986) left since 2000
- Congress of South African Students (Cosas) blames government for its members looting Pretoria shops
- ANC Regime takes more than 1000 companies to SA Labour Court to force black job quotas
- Investors starting to snub SA over "bribery and corruption," warns lawyer
- ANC Pres Jacob Zuma’s family NGO scams revealed: No financial reports are just the tip of the iceberg
- Woman drugged and kidnapped at popular Presley’s nightclub in Boksburg
- ANC's Minister of Energy Joemat-Pettersson jetsets while PetroSA suffers R15 billion loss - DA
- Discovery Health wants a detailed and explicit photograph of your anus before paying your claim
- SA Police vehicle set alight in Burgersfort
- EFF Gauteng's 7-day ultimatum - threatens chaos in the Johannesburg CBD over its demands
- Assault claims against Edenvale police officers pile up
- ANC's Apartheid-style race-based laws damaging SA's employable future - Youth unemployment at 63%
- Allegations of corruption as dep chief of Tshwane metro police is building a R-multimillion mansion
- 76-year-old man shot and killed armed robber in the driveway of his home in Horizon, Roodepoort
- Australian TV Exposes Britain’s Westminster Paedophile Scandal | Britain’s ‘biggest ever scandal
- Economists should wake up and realise that South Africa's economy is not producing millionaires. The ANC is making tax-theft millionaires.
- Nkandla site visit an 'eye-opener' – Ad hoc committee Chairperson | Gross inflation of construction prices. (Too many tweets on this issue to list here.)
- Goat sh*t and a mattress - how Zuma's R135-million security village was furnished
- Under the SA Communist Party-controlled ANC, South Africa is sinking deeper into violence red zone
- Newly proposed medical aid rules on prescribed minimum benefits will make patients suffer
- Nightmarish details emerge in kidnapping saga of Impala Park resident Margaretha Compaan (29)
By November 2014 The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has executed nearly 1,500 people in Syria in the five months since it declared the establishment of a "caliphate" and when It Comes to Beheadings, ISIS Has Nothing Over Saudi Arabia
In the first four months of 2015, a record 393 rhinos were killed by poachers – up 18% on the same time last year.
Using this outdated estimate and 2012/13 rape statistics suggest that 444,384 rapes were committed in 2012/13.
The most recent study into reporting rates found that in South Africa’s Gauteng province, only one in 25 rapes (4%) had been reported to police.
"researchers estimated that approximately 100 million sharks are killed per year by humans. However, they add that this is a conservative estimate, and the true number could be as high as 273 million sharks killed annually by humans."
Since the International Whaling Commission moratorium on whaling went into effect in 1986, 30429 whales have been killed. Despite bans on commercial whaling and the trade in whale products, Japan, Norway and Iceland still kill 2000 whales between them each year and also continue trade in whale products.
According to a national homicide study by the SA Medical Research Council, a total of 1 018 child homicides were recorded across the country in 2009 alone, with 454 being fatal child abuse cases.
Personal Note
As a matter of interest, I am not particularly fond of trophy hunting and personally I have an ethical and moral issue with trophy hunting, BUT I also realise that had it NOT BEEN for trophy hunting and hunting in general, South Africa's wild life would not have been steadily increasing over the years, and it would also have declined to near extinction as in the rest of Africa.
One has to weigh the pros and the cons of everything in life and we have to be practical and not just emotional about issues such as Cecil the lion.
In the meantime, while the world is running wild with the lion issue, the very same people screaming and crying on TV and social media about this lion, never say a damn word about ISIS, because they are too damn scared to say anything. It is therefore easier for them to cry and scream about a lion at the end of his life, than taking issue with serious matters such as the crime, murder, rape, beheadings, fraud and corruption of terrorist regimes.
Lion Numbers in South Africa vs the Rest of Africa
In 1999, there were between 800 and 1,000 lions in cages in South Africa. In 2005 there were between 3,000 and 3,500 captive lions. According to credible organizations like Panthera, South Africa has between 2,700 and 3,200 “wild” and “managed” lions—split roughly 50/50. The wild lions live in two parks, Kruger National Park and Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. Managed lions inhabit private reserves such as Phinda and Tswalu and are managed in the name of keeping the gene pool diverse. The South African Predator Association (SAPA) keeps track of captive lions and captive breeding facilities, and based on interviews we’ve done with SAPA and also with the South African department of environmental affairs, some 7,000 lions now live in captivity.
Latest Lion Population Estimates in Africa
Throughout Africa many people and organizations are working to assess the numbers of lions in a variety of areas.
On this page we will bring you the latest news as we get it about the remaining lions in Africa.
February 2014: Surveys of lions Panthera leo in protected areas in Zimbabwe yield disturbing results: what is driving the population collapse?
Direct estimates of lion populations from surveys in Gonarezhou suggests a total population of 33 lions (95% CI 28–39). In Tuli, no lions responded physically or vocally to calling stations, and no lion tracks were observed on the roads during 4 days of searching.
January 2014: The Lion in West Africa Is Critically Endangered
"Results suggest that only 406 (273–605) lions remain in West Africa, representing <250 mature individuals."
Estimates for four areas containing lions in West Africa were given as:
16 (0 - 54) in Niokolo-Koba NP, Senegal
356 (246 - 466) in W-Arly-Pendjari Lion Conservation Unit, Benin / Burkina Faso / Niger
32 (23 - 63) in Kainji Lake National Park, Nigeria
2 in Yankari Game Reserve, Nigeria
October 2013: King of Beasts Losing Ground in Uganda's Paradise (read online article here)
"According to the results of a recent survey, African lions in Uganda have decreased by more than 30 percent over the past 10 years in some areas of the country, mostly the result of poisoning by local cattle herders, retaliations for livestock predation, and other human-related conflicts. The downward trend in lion numbers has conservationists concerned about the species' long-term chances in the country, often described as the "Pearl of Africa" for its natural wonders."
Estimates for five areas containing lions in Uganda given as:
144 +/-22 in Queen Elizabeth Protected Area
132 +/-24 in Murchison Falls Conservation Area
132 +/-77 in Kidepo Valley National Park
2-8 lions in Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve
up to 5 lions in Lake Mburo National Park
March 2013: A study of lions in northwest Tete Province of Mozambique suggests 185 lions (range 136 - 227) exist in the region, down from a previous estimate of 295 lions made in 2009 and Chardonnet et al., which suggested 507 lions.
Further reading:
Inside the Grim Lives of Africa's Captive Lions
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/07/150722-lions-canned-hunting-lion-bone-trade-south-africa-blood-lions-ian-michler/
Latest lion population estimates - ALERT | African Lion & Environmental Research Trust
http://lionalert.org/page/lion-population-latest-estimates
Child abuse and murder cases that shocked SA in 2014 | The Citizen
http://citizen.co.za/294007/child-abuse-murder-cases-shocked-sa-2014/
100 Million Sharks Killed Each Year : Discovery News
http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/100-million-sharks-killed-annually-130305.htm
How Many Sharks Do Humans Kill Per Hour? | IFLScience
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-many-sharks-do-humans-kill-hour
Will 74,400 women be raped this August in South Africa? | Africa Check
https://africacheck.org/reports/will-74400-women-be-raped-this-august-in-south-africa/
Whaling Information and Whale Hunting Facts - WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation
http://us.whales.org/wdc-in-action/whaling
South Africa Violence Against Women Rated Highest In The World
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/08/south-africa-violence-against-women_n_2837804.html
ISIS executes nearly 1,500 people in Syria in 5 months - Al Arabiya News
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2014/11/17/ISIS-executes-nearly-1-500-people-in-syria-in-5-months.html
When It Comes to Beheadings, ISIS Has Nothing Over Saudi Arabia
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/10/24/when-it-comes-beheadings-isis-has-nothing-over-saudi-arabia-277385.html