The mother of a schoolgirl, who was raped more than three years ago by a Gugulethu evangelical bishop, is still reeling from the trauma of the incident, and says the entire ordeal has left her having panic attacks.

She was speaking to News24 after yet another delay in the sentencing proceedings of Luvuyo Gerald Hendrik, who was known to the family at the time of the incident. She was 15-years-old at the time.

He is well-known in Gugulethu, and his case was postponed on Thursday because his attorney needed more time to prepare his arguments in mitigation of sentencing.The girl’s mother, who cannot be named to protect the identity of her daughter, told News24 the stress of having to attend court while worrying about her daughter has led to her having panic attacks.

“My child, she’s not living a normal life anymore. I get a panic attacks if she takes long at the shop. He did a lot of damage. I don’t trust anyone around her.”

Trauma

The mother said her daughter is still suffering with the trauma, which continues to take its toll.

“That rape that happened to my child, I take it as if it happened to me. I took her for counselling to build her self-esteem again… at first she didn’t want to go [out] anywhere. She just stayed in the house, but now I’m telling her that it was not her fault.

“I wish the [magistrate] can give this guy a harsh sentence, so that other people out there who are still doing this can see this is not child’s play; that when you rape somebody you pay the price.”

The mother said she wants closure.

The matter was postponed to 21 April, so Hendrik’s legal team could adequately prepare for argument in mitigation of sentence.

Hendrik, who drove the teen to and from school, was convicted in December 2019, more than three years after he was caught in the act by police.

The long-awaited and newly released report into wrongdoing at the Public Investment Corporation, which manages civil servant pensions, details a litany of transgressions by its former CEO Dan Matjila.

While other former PIC employees are also fingered, the report is scathing of Matjila’s “complete disregard” for transparency, and his consistent failure to take no individual accountability for material errors, mistakes or failures.

It also found that Matjila directly solicited donations for Cosatu and the ANC from individuals whose companies the PIC had invested in. The commission found large fee payments on deals to “privileged insiders”, often former employees of the PIC.

“The Commission found that there was both impropriety and ineffective governance in a number of investments. This was compounded by the dishonesty of and material non-disclosure by Dr Matjila, both during his evidence at the Commission and in decision-making processes regarding various transactions.”

This resulted in considerable losses, the commission found.

Under Matjila, the PIC made repeated investments with a small number of entities which presented a “repeat opportunity for enrichment of single individuals”.

It also found exorbitant fees paid to advisors, without detailed invoices as to costs incurred.

Here is some of the malfeasance that the report found:

AYO

The commission highlights Matjila’s “gross negligence” in the PIC’s R4.3 billion deal to buy a 29% stake in Iqbal Surve’s AYO Technology in 2017, at R43 a share. This was based on a valuation of AYO at R13 billion when in fact the company had total assets worth only R292 million.

READ | PIC investments in Survé’s Sekunjalo Group clearly flouted policy, report finds
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The reports found that INMSA was not repaying a loan to the PIC and that Matjila showed “complete disregard of the PIC’s investment processes” in signing an agreement that allowed the PIC to swap its debt and shares in Independent for a stake in another Survé company, Sagarmatha, in December 2017.

“The proposed Sagarmatha transaction, including the suspected share price manipulation and essentially attempting to use the PIC’s own investment to pay the debt INMSA owed to the PIC, demonstrates a lack of ethics, lack of compliance with laws and regulation, and a disregard for the best interests of the PIC and its clients.”

Steinhoff

The commission found possible irregularities in Matjila’s conduct as part of R9.4 billion deal involving the purchasing of shares in Steinhoff.

There was a suspicion of “collusion” between Lancaster’s chairperson and sole shareholder, Jayendra Naidoo, and Matjila, and there was ultimately no reason for the PIC to invest in Steinhoff PIC invested in bankrupt Nigerian oil firm

The PIC provided a financial guarantee to group that explored oil in Nigeria, despite it being technically insolvent and against the advice of the PIC’s own energy experts and internal team.

“The question has to be asked as to how appropriate it is for an asset manager of a pension fund to invest in oil exploration, which is a high-risk endeavour,” the commission said.

Money paid to minister’s friend

Following a request from the former Minister of Intelligence David Mahlobo, Matjila authorised a payment of R500 000 to Pretty Louw for work related to a CSI project. Matjila was introduced to Louw by Mahlobo.

Businessman Lawrence Mulaudzi – who was in a relationship with a PIC director and benefited from a number of PIC deals – testified that Matjila asked that he pay money to Louw.

“Dr Matjila’s repeated efforts to have Mr Mulaudzi provide financial assistance to Ms Pretty Louw reflects the abuse of his office and influence over investee companies,” the commission found.

Jabu Moleketi

Harith was a company established to manage two PIC funds “at significantly high fees”. The former Deputy Finance Minister and former chair of the PIC, Moleketi, was appointed chairman of Harith.

“Harith’s conduct was driven by financial reward to its employees and management, and not by returns to the GEPF [government employee pension fund].

“In essence, the PIC initiative, created in keeping with government vision and PIC funding was ‘privatised’ such that those PIC employees and office bearers originally appointed to establish the various Funds and companies reaped rich rewards.”

The Commission recommends that the GEPF and the PIC should jointly appoint an independent investigator into Haith, and examine Moleketi’s conduct.

Millions for Edcon advice

The PIC paid almost R33.7 million to two advisors in a deal to facilitate its investment in Edcon – Kleoss Capital and former PIC employee Koketso Mabe of Keletso M Squared.

“The terms of the above agreement significantly disadvantage the PIC, to put it mildly,” the commission found, and recommended that the PIC review all contracts signed with advisors over the past five years.

It also recommended that the Edcon transaction be reviewed, to see whether the advisers really earned the money.

IT contraventions

The commission found that Simphiwe Mayisela, the former PIC senior manager of information security, obtained access to emails and other information of the PIC illegally. Mayisela got hold of privileged information and pass such information on to third parties, “with severe consequences for the PIC”, the commission found.

Attempted bribe in SA Home Loans deal

The commission wants a full investigation into the role of Wellington Masekesa, executive assistant to Matjila, after allegations that he asked SAHL to ‘regularise’ ‘arranging fees’ of R95 million in a funding deal between the PIC and the company.

outh Africa has only ever dipped below Stage 4 of load shedding once, but there’s a chance things could get worse if Eskom don’t play their cards right on Thursday. A series of outages and maintenance work already has the company working against a ‘record amount of power’ missing from the grid.

Will load shedding go further than Stage 4?
Even in the depths of December’s Stage 6 power cuts, *only* 16 000MW was out of service. As of Wednesday and into this afternoon, the utility has been operating without 18 000MW of electricity. Indeed, the system’s volatility has allegedly sparked panic within Eskom’s walls too.

Business Insider claim that a senior Eskom executive has branded this situation as “one of the worst” they’ve ever seen. Given the factors at play, it’s fair comment. But the SOE’s spokesperson is doing his best to present an image of calmness and clarity. According to Sikonathi Mantshantsha, it’s all under control:Eskom battling to prevent “crisis within a crisis”
Of the 18 000MW off the grid, 6 000MW is due to planned repairs. Some units are down intentionally.
Demand is set to peak at some point this evening, to a point where Stage 4 cuts would leave the grid “2 000MW short”.
This means that a harsher stage of load shedding would be needed to combat the shortfall. But Mantshantsha claims another 2 000MW is set to be restored soon as more units come online.
However, Eskom are highly exposed here. Should another unit trip, or fail to return to service in time, we could be plunged into a deeper stage of load shedding.

Four more people have tested positive for the coronavirus in South Africa.

National health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize on Monday confirmed the additional cases, meaning seven people have now tested positive.

The cases are all linked to the 10 people who recently went on a skiing trip to Italy.

“There have been further numbers of people who were part of this trip who have found to be positive,” he said. “These individuals have come in as couples and we asked them to be in quarantine. At this point, four of them have now also tested positive.”

Another case is that of a 45-year-old man from the Pietermaritzburg region. Swab tests also came back positive, with the swabs taken after he showed symptoms of the virus.

The fourth new case was of a 38-year-old man, also from Pietermaritzburg.

On Thursday, Mkhize confirmed that SA’s first confirmed case of Covid-19 was a 38-year-old man from Hilton who, together with his wife and eight other people, had travelled to Italy. The group returned to SA on 1 March and he tested positive for coronavirus on March 5.

On Saturday, Mkhize confirmed that a 39-year-old Gauteng woman, who was part of the group of 10 who had travelled to Italy, had tested positive. On Sunday, he advised that SA’s third positive case – the wife of the Hilton man – was also positive. The couple’s children had tested negative.

Adam Castillejo is only the second person to be cured of HIV. Stock image.
Image: 123RF/Gamjai
A second patient has been cured of HIV after undergoing stem cell transplant treatment, doctors said on Tuesday, after finding no trace of infection 30 months after he stopped traditional treatment.

The so-called “London Patient”, a cancer sufferer originally from Venezuela, made headlines last year when researchers at the University of Cambridge reported they had found no trace of the AIDS-causing virus in his blood for 18 months.

Ravindra Gupta, lead author of the study published in The Lancet HIV, said the new test results were “even more remarkable” and likely demonstrated the patient was cured.

“We’ve tested a sizeable set of sites that HIV likes to hide in and they are all pretty much negative for an active virus,” Gupta told AFP.

The patient, who revealed his identity this week as Adam Castillejo, 40, was diagnosed with HIV in 2003 and had been on medication to keep the disease in check since 2012.

Later that year, he was diagnosed with advanced Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a deadly cancer.

In 2016 he underwent a bone marrow transplant to treat blood cancer, receiving stem cells from donors with a genetic mutation present in less than one percent of Europeans that prevents HIV from taking hold.

He becomes only the second person to be cured of HIV after American Timothy Brown, known as the “Berlin Patient”, recovered from HIV in 2011 following similar treatment.Ethical dilemma
Researchers cautioned that the breakthrough did not constitute a generalised cure for HIV, which leads to nearly one million deaths every year.

Castillejo’s treatment was a “last resort” as his blood cancer would likely have killed him without intervention, according to Gupta.

The Cambridge doctor said that there were “several other” patients who had undergone similar treatment but who were less far along in their remission.

“There will probably be more but they will take time,” he said.

Researchers are currently weighing up whether or not patients suffering from drug-resistant forms of HIV might be eligible for stem cell transplants in future, something Gupta said would require careful ethical consideration.

“You’d have to weigh up the fact that there’s a 10% mortality rate from doing a stem-cell transplant against what the risk of death would be if we did nothing,” he said.

Castillejo himself said that the experience had prompted him to come forward and identify himself in order to help spread awareness of HIV.

This is a unique position to be in, a unique and very humbling position,” he told The New York Times.

Sharon Lewin, an infectious disease expert at the University of Melbourne and member of the International AIDS Society, said Castillejo’s case was “exciting”.

“But we need to also place it in context – curing people of HIV via a bone marrow transplant is just not a viable option on any kind of scale,” she said.

“We need to constantly reiterate the importance of, prevention, early testing and treatment adherence as the pillars of the current global response to HIV/AIDS.”