MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

Ramaphosa denies closure for FNB Stadium deaths

Dear Johannesburg

In response to a Democratic Alliance (DA) Parliamentary question, the Minister of Sport and Recreation, Nathi Mthethwa, revealed that government has no appetite to get to the bottom of the tragic FNB Stadium stampede which claimed the lives of two people, on 29 July 2017. The Minister confirmed that there would not be any inquiry into the fatal stampede, stating that authorities must “exhaust all remedies, actions, etc. that stem from the findings and recommendations of the Ngoepe Commission of Inquiry” which investigated the Ellis Park soccer tragedy in 2001.

The Minister stated that the President has taken the view “[that] there is an unprecedented proliferation which has resulted in too many Commissions of Inquiry been established” and that “the Ngoepe Commission of Inquiry [had] already constituted rules that relate to incidences in sport at stadiums and elsewhere which should rather be utilized and built on instead of opting to build afresh”.

Clearly these “rules that relate to incidences in sport at stadiums” which the Ngoepe Commission instituted, were either not implemented or effective in preventing the FNB Stadium stampede.

The DA maintains that major crowd-control catastrophes at stadiums must each be interrogated to ensure that they do not happen again in future. Failure to this will only lead to further tragedies. The ANC government is essentially preventing life-saving lessons from being learned.

The Minister also revealed that a meeting of the former Ministers of Justice and Correctional Service, Sport and Recreation and the Police, as well as the former Acting National Director of Public Prosecutions had been convened to discuss several matters related to the FNB Stadium stampede and the Moses Mabhida incident. What is evident from the Minister’s reply, is that there has been no movement on the part of government to ensure that those who were responsible for these tragedies have been held to account and that the family and loved ones of the victims have closure and justice.

The DA is of the view that there are still too many questions surrounding the incident and that it is frankly unethical that a probe into how two innocent people died has seemingly been muffled.

The South African public deserves to know the truth and most important, the families of the victims deserve closure and justice.

Regards

Tsepo Mhlongo MP
DA Shadow Minister of Sports, Arts & Culture

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Top Star Drive-In: Destroyed by What Created it

However, the very thing that created the Top Star eventually destroyed it. Because the early miners had used crude methods, the Ferreira Dump—and dozens of others like it—still contained significant traces of gold. As the price of gold rose and new chemical extraction technologies (like the carbon-in-pulp process) made it profitable to “mine the waste,” the ground beneath the Top Star became more valuable than the cinema itself. In 2006, despite fierce opposition from heritage groups who argued that the dump and the drive-in were culturally significant landmarks, the projectors were turned off for the last time.

The reclamation of the dump was a staggering industrial feat. Starting in 2008, mining giant DRDGold used high-pressure water cannons to “monitor” the dump, turning 5 million tons of solid earth back into a liquid slurry. This slurry was then piped 40 kilometers across the province to a processing plant in Brakpan. By 2011, the “mountain” had completely vanished. The 50-meter-high plateau that had dominated the southern skyline for a century was reduced to a flat, dusty crater.

The disappearance of the Top Star is a poignant symbol of Johannesburg’s “extractive” nature. It is a city that consumes itself to stay alive; even its historical landmarks are subject to the fluctuating price of minerals on the London and New York stock exchanges. Today, if you drive along the M2, there is an empty space in the sky where the Top Star used to be. While the reclamation removed a source of toxic dust and “acid mine drainage,” it also erased a piece of the city’s collective memory. The land where the gold-flecked mountain once stood is now being rehabilitated for light industrial use, proving that in eGoli, even the horizon is for sale if there’s enough gold hidden inside it.