North Koreans feasting on Long Pork

Caleb Mission, a South Korean based Christian organization, released a North Korean confidential 791 page document, ‘manual for workers in law enforcement,’ which was published in June, 2009. An inside source captured digital photos of each page, listing a total of 721 cases in detail along with punishment guidelines.

Notably, five cases related to cannibalism were also included in the manual. Stories about starving North Koreans eating human flesh have been considered rumors, but recent discoveries in the manual may prove otherwise, triggering more speculations about the food shortage crisis in North Korea.

One case involved a guard named Lee Man-sung, who killed his roommate with an axe when he was sleeping, ate part of the corpse and then sold the rest on the market describing it as lamb meat. (International Business Times)

DA will oppose land scheme

Two political parties and a cultural organisation on Sunday vowed to oppose attempts by the government to change the country's land ownership system.

"The Democratic Alliance will vehemently oppose any attempt by the ANC government to amend Section 25 of the Constitution, the provision that protects private property against expropriation," it said in a statement.

It was reacting to an article in the Afrikaans newspaper Rapport that the government was considering declaring agricultural land a "national asset" and institute a quit-rent land tenure system, in a Green Paper to be published shortly. In such a system, the farmer pays rent to the state, which owns the land.

The director-general of the rural development and land reform department, Thozi Gwanya, was quoted as saying problems with land reform showed the system of land ownership had to change.

He said one of the options suggested by his department was that all agricultural land be declared a national asset. The other option was to keep the current land ownership system, but cap the amount of land owned by an individual.

The Freedom Front Plus said declaring agricultural land a national asset would amount to nationalising it. Party leader Pieter Mulder said such a move would be unconstitutional, chase investors away and destroy food security.

If a so-called quit-rent land tenure system became government policy, it would create insecurity in rural areas, which would hamper rural development.

The DA's deputy shadow rural development minister, Annette Steyn, said declaring all agricultural land a nation asset effectively meant nationalising it.

"The president (Jacob Zuma) has just come back from overseas where he categorically moved to assure investors that nationalisation is not on the ANC's agenda."

Such a move would wreak havoc for the country's investment prospects, the agricultural sector and for improving land reform.

Gwanya denied that declaring land a national asset was the same as nationalisation.

The Afrikanerbond said it would consider reactivating the ad hoc group for the protection of property rights to oppose the department's proposals. When the Expropriation Bill was published in 2008, 17 organisations from civil society and political parties formed the group.

"The possibility that Section 25, as contained in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution, and which deals with property rights may be amended to accommodate this ill-considered proposal, is a stark reminder of the equally ill considered expropriation bill which was mooted in 2008 and was clearly unconstitutional," the organisation's Jan Bosman said in a statement.

According to Rapport, the aim of such a system was to ensure that farms that had already been redistributed, but not being used productively, be taken back and given to someone else.

Rural Development Minister Gugile Nkwinti, recently acknowledged that about 90 percent of the 5.9 million hectares of agricultural land in the state's hands were uncultivated and considered fallow. - Sapa

Major wastes R45million on farms for husband

The mayor of a crumbling municipality - which suffers frequent water shortages - spent R45-million of unbudgeted council funds on seven farms in a neighbouring province. (from the Sunday Times)

Her husband was then put in charge of them.

The Sunday Times has established that the farms, bought last year, have since fallen into disrepair and are failing, despite a further R10.5-million being spent to keep them going.

Zoleka Capa - an ANC national executive committee member and the mayor of the OR Tambo district municipality in the Eastern Cape - this week confirmed attending the auction of the farms near Kokstad, in neighbouring KwaZulu-Natal. She bought the farms despite the fact that the municipality had not budgeted for them.

OR Tambo district municipality runs towns including Port St Johns and Mthatha. It boasts roads peppered with potholes, and suffers critical water shortages, frequent electricity blackouts and poor service delivery.

A task team set up by Capa's own party to probe municipal governance in the region is now demanding to know why the farms were bought without prior council approval, and has drafted a letter calling on parliament's public accounts watchdog, Scopa, to intervene.

The farms - 2600ha of prime agricultural land used for livestock production and growing crops like maize, potatoes and fruit - were bought in April 2008. Capa trumped an offer of R16-million by the Department of Land Affairs in KwaZulu-Natal with a bid of R25-million. Another R20-million was ploughed into the deal to buy vehicles, tractors, livestock and equipment on the properties.

Capa's husband, Ndumiso, who heads the agriculture section of the municipality's development agency Ntinga, was put in charge of running the farms with the intention of turning them into a profitable commercial venture.

But the farms were in a state of disarray when the Sunday Times visited this week:

* An apple farming project, which used to have a turnover of more than R1-million, has collapsed;
* Farm workers' homes are dilapidated;
* There is no office equipment, fences are falling apart and machinery lies in a state of disrepair;
* Bags of harvested maize lie discarded in a shed and there is no sign of a once-thriving poultry operation.

Asked about the state of the properties, previous owner Steve Wells said: "All I did was do business with the highest bidder. How they take care of the land and the welfare of the people who used to work for me is their business."

Bruce Kannemeyer, the municipal manager of OR Tambo, said this week that the R45-million was not budgeted for and no procurement processes had been followed "as (the farms) were bought through an auction".

He said, however, that the R10.5-million the municipality had injected into the project since the purchase had been budgeted for.

Ndumiso Capa said the farms were in trouble because "we were made to believe that most of the farming equipment was in working condition, but it was not".

"We understand that local farmers who wanted to buy this land are angry OR Tambo bought it. Hard luck. We will do our best to inject as much infrastructure (as possible) to make this thing work," he said.

Yolisa Xaba, a resident of Fort Gale in Mthatha, said this week she was shocked the municipality bought the farms when money needed to be spent on the provision of basic services.

Xaba said water shortages in Mthatha were so frequent that "if you don't have a tank as a reserve, you will go to work and school for days without water".

Buyelwa Sonjica, minister of water and environmental affairs, visited the province in July and declared OR Tambo's water services a disaster. The municipality has had to truck thousands of litres of water to at least 16 areas in the district.

Gene change in cannibals shows human evolution in action

It's a snapshot of human evolution in progress. A genetic mutation protecting against kuru – a brain disease passed on by eating human brains – only emerged and spread in the last 200 years. (from New Scientist)

When members of the Fore people in Papua New Guinea died, others would eat the dead person's brain during funeral rituals as a mark of respect. Kuru passed on in this way killed at least 2500 Fore in the 20th century until the cause was identified in the late 1950s and the practice halted.

Identification of kuru and how it was spread helped researchers identify how BSE – mad cow disease – spread through the feeding of infected cattle brains to other animals, and how this eventually led to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), which has killed 166 people so far in the UK.

Zim Zim the cannibal...

Residents of Phoenix and Mt Moriah, north of Durban, have been terrified about rumours of a cannibal on the loose in the area. (from IOL)

However, Durban police spokesman Superintendant Muzi Mngomezulu said they had investigated the claims and had found no proof.

"There is no clarity. It appears these are rumours or superstitions of some sort because there are no people reported to be lost," he said.

He said the police would not disregard the matter, but would have to treat it with suspicion until someone came forward with new information that could give them some positive leads.

Another police spokesman, Captain Khephu Ndlovu, said there had been a story circulating in communities in the area about a cannibal named Zim Zim.

Fat cats raid agriculture of R100million for the high life

A R100-million taxpayer-financed empowerment fund meant for poor farmers has been used to bankroll the lavish lifestyles of politically connected fat cats - and no one seems interested in recovering the money. (from the Sunday Times)

Despite the fact that the limit for a grant per person is R430000, a Sunday Times investigation can reveal that:

• Dan Mofokeng, former Gauteng housing MEC and husband of ANC provincial legislature member Jacqueline Mofokeng, bought a Mercedes Benz CLS55 AMG for cash, and a R2-million luxury home in Six Fountains, near Pretoria, with money from the fund;
• Apart from this financing of his flashy lifestyle, Mofokeng is also the majority shareholder in a working farm project in Limpopo that received R6.5-million from the AgriBEE fund;
• Phil Mohlahlane, who was both head of the Agriculture Department section that approved AgriBEE project funding and acting CEO of the Land Bank when the disbursements were made, used money from the fund to pay cash for a R2.7-million home in Kyalami;
• The fund also paid for another R6.4-million farm in Limpopo, which was transferred to Mohlahlane's sister-in-law, Jessica Mojanaga;
• A Hazyview doctor received a R6-million grant to buy a 70% stake in a dairy farm that was worth only R660000, near Springs in Gauteng, and an employee of a consultancy that did work for the Land Bank received R3.5-million for a stake in an agricultural enterprise.

These people belong six feet under... prison will do for now... six feet under later....

and so it came to pass the people were hungry once more

'Govt bungling land reform'

Cape Town - The clumsy manner in which the government is currently attempting to push through land reform will cost it dearly, said Theo de Jager, deputy president of Agri SA and its spokesperson on land affairs.

Government was now guilty of the very injustice towards white landowners that was perpetrated against black people when they were dispossessed of their land without proper compensation, he said...

De Jager said the restitution process began to go awry from the start because activists incited people to institute claims that involved almost all the agricultural land in KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Limpopo and North West.

"The activists insinuated themselves into the public service and became senior officials, but never hung up their activist jackets to became administrators," said De Jager.

"This has led to corruption, nepotism and self-enrichment while the officials hiked the prices of land for personal gain while placing the blame squarely on the landowners."

The problem was exacerbated as the original deadline for land claims, March 2005, approached and little had been done to finalise the process.

This led to thousands of farms hurriedly being listed in the Government Gazette without the validity of the claims being investigated.

The department began paying out billions of rands and quickly ran out of money, while the local economies of towns like Utrecht, Levubu, Barberton, Malelane and Tzaneen, where large-scale land claims had been awarded, collapsed.

De Jager said government was now acknowledging that half of the farms that changed ownership owing to land reform were already no longer productive while the rest were following close on their heels.

The problem had been worsened because the Land Reform department has been unable to explain to the auditor-general where R1.15bn of its funds has gone.

Consequently there is no money left to proceed with land reform...

- Fin24