Author: The Free Stater

The Free State Department of Agriculture and Rural Development says three new cases of foot-and-mouth Disease (FMD) have been reported in the province. In a notice to farmers, Agriculture MEC Thembeni Nxangisa confirmed three cases and said his department was working with the affected farmers to ensure the disease is contained. “There is one case in Marquard and two cases in Viljoenskroon,” he said. “All farms have been placed under quarantine after chief state veterinarians were notified about possible signs of foot-and-mouth disease. “On these farms, the animals showed typical signs of FMD and samples were collected in order for…

Ngwathe Local Municipality in the northern Free State has paid R1.1-million to Eskom so it can repair damages to the power line in the area caused by overloading. Eskom provincial spokesperson Stefanie Jansen van Rensburg said in a statement the payment was made on Monday morning and work to restore supplies to Parys and Vredefort has started. “Repairs to the Eskom equipment will now commence,” said Van Rensburg. “Based on the assessments of the damage, supply to Ngwathe should be restored by midnight tonight,” she added. The spokesperson however said the initial repairs were focusing on the hot connections and…

Electricity tariffs in Mangaung have gone up by 7.47 percent. In a statement released on Thursday night, local power distributor Centlec said the increase was due to come into effect at midnight on July 1 following approval by the National Electricity Regulator of South Africa. The increase will cover the period July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2023. “A guideline increase of 7.47 percent on electricity tariffs for Centlec was therefore approved with effect from the 1st of July 2022 for the 2022/23 financial year,” read part of the brief statement. It said a more detailed outline of the increases…

I want to be very brief in this article so that those interested may have more time to think about my discussion point. We have previously discussed shortcomings with the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act (STSMA), which are many. I want to focus on just two of them today. The STSMA was signed into law and became effective on October 7, 2016. Ideally, the STSMA was introduced in order to provide for the establishment of bodies corporate to manage and regulate sections and common property in sectional title schemes. Its main purpose is to apply rules applicable to such schemes…

Police have arrested five students from the Central University of Technology (CUT) for public violence after they embarked on an unsanctioned protest against the institution’s decision to have the mid-year exams conducted in person at its two campuses in Bloemfontein and Welkom starting this Thursday. The exams are set to run until July 20. The fracas follows an announcement by CUT acting vice-chancellor and principal Professor Alfred Ngowi on Wednesday in which he stated the exams would take place physically at the two campuses as scheduled. Ngowi said a detailed discussion about online exams at the Welkom campus concluded that…

Bloemfontein-born farmer Tumelo Pedi, 30, probably took his spirit of resilience from the gym and applied it to his new found love – cattle farming – and he has no regrets. The Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) says the young prolific farmer only started with two cows and he applied for land for four years before he was eventually offered a 942-hectare farm near Reddersburg, south of the Free State capital in 2019. Another stint as a taxi driver could have turned him streetwise and not fear taking risks. “I lived close to a Brandkop Commonage…

Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula says he has appointed a forensic investigator to look into allegations of fraud and corruption in the construction of the R2-billion Mangaung Integrated Public Transport Network that has since ground to a halt. Work on the public transport network project kicked off in 2019, but came to an abrupt end hardly a year later when the main contractor moved off site citing budgetary issues and other complications with the municipality. Mbalula, who was on a fact-finding mission in Mangaung, said the investigation will not interfere with the project which he wants completed by October. “They will…

A 36-year-old man from Winburg in the Free State who fell victim to his own victim after an 11-year-old girl he raped in 2017 clobbered him with a stone, rendering him powerless, will spend the next 18 years in jail for the offence. Sefako Benedict Kula met his match in the child – that he initially dragged to a quiet place to rape her – after she picked up a stone and hit him on the head while he raped her, leaving him dizzy from the hard knock. This allowed the girl to run home and report the matter. In…

The ANC Free State’s Interim Provincial Committee (IPC) says it is concerned with the conduct of the party’s suspended secretary-general, Ace Magashule, after he attended an event organised by the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) at the weekend. On Saturday, the EFF held a rally at Walter Sisulu Square in Kliptown, Gauteng, to celebrate South Africa’s Freedom Charter. Magashule was part of the crowd and was seen mingling with several EFF leaders. IPC coordinator Paseka Nompondo said in a statement released on Monday evening that Magashule was out of line for attending a political event organised by another political party…

“We have been looted since the days of Bophuthatswana, and every five years a new mafia comes to loot us; we suffer from incompetence, corruption, and politics – it’s bad,” says a colleague about her lived experience in the Mahekeng municipality in the North-West. The latter, together with the Free State, share the spoils of not producing a single clean audit in the 2020/21 Auditor General (AG) report. The worst is the Free State, which has consistently failed to produce a clean audit over the past five years. Despite the fact that the AG is religiously pointing out these glaring anomalies,…