At this week’s pre-publication conference with the reporters, I have to insist that we pursue a detailed response from the SAPS provincial command structures, as to the alleged discharging of a stun grenade into a crowded space.
I personally asked TK Mashaba to link me up with Limpopo SAPS provincial spokesperson, Colonel Moatshe Ngoepe.
I said to the good colonel that if indeed members of a police patrol lobbed a stun grenade into the particular venue, then there must have been genuine reasons why this was done.
Having worked at the coalface of political unrest as a reporter myself, I understand that a stun grenade is an explosive but non-lethal device.
But then ordinary people may overact to the discharge of a stun grenade, with the real risk to injure themselves and/or others.
TK Mashaba is making contact with Colonel Ngoepe as I write this.
Like South Africans across the spectrum, we welcome reports that Eskom did not anticipate incidents of load-shedding for the rest of the week.
Like any other newspaper – mainstream or community-based – we at The BEAT were also terribly affected by sporadic incidents of load-shedding in recent weeks.
In the same breath, we were one of the few lucky consumers in that we had the back up of a generator to continue compiling and producing newspapers.
The tragedy is that not everybody – especially the poorest of the poor – have such luxuries as a back-up generator.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison, so goes the old adage.
It has been my personal observation in the streets of the township in Bela-Bela, whereby against the backdrop of the power withdrawals, people pushing supermarket trolleys and the odd donkey
cart, were making a killing, selling firewood at funerals and other mass gatherings.
As far as Lizzy Bapela is concerned, the editor has no choice but to keep on breathing down her neck for her to pin down the various political parties’ candidates lists.
The BEAT’s specific focus is on politicians likely to depart from various towns across the Waterberg, headed for the National Assembly and the foamy shores of lovely Cape Town.
The proverbial clock is ticking ever closer to the May 8 elections, with the Limpopo province touted as one of the most fiercely-contested battlegrounds.
On the sports front, we have Mzamane Ringane and TK Mashaba keeping an eye on developments at the highest and lowest levels of the nation’s soccer, and of course other sporting codes.
— The BEAT
