[image: Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko]

Smokers, and many non-smokers, have been raging about the injustice of the tobacco sales ban for a while now.

Fair enough – the government only yesterday released its reasons, and many of them don’t exactly hold water.

What everybody shouldn’t lose sight of, smoker or otherwise, is how many South Africans are struggling to make ends meet, and how little value is being placed on human life by some who are entrusted with protecting us.

Case in point is the death of Collins Khosa, who died at the hands of SANDF officers back in April. We covered the eyewitness accounts at the time, but here’s a reminder via the Mail & Guardian:

Khosa’s family went to court saying that his death was caused by a brutal assault by members of the SANDF and the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD). In their court papers, the family said Khosa [below] was strangled, slammed against a cement wall and a steel gate and hit with the butt of the machine gun. Afterwards, he could not walk, began to vomit and lost speech, they said.

A few hours later his partner, Nomsa Montsha, could not wake him up.

The post mortem described the cause of death as a blunt force head injury.

After a great deal of public pressure was applied, an internal South African National Defence Force investigation commenced, and the findings of that investigation have now been made public.

The soldiers implicated have been exonerated, with the inquiry concluding that although “the cause of death is blunt force head injury”, it also finds that “the injuries on the body of Mr Khosa cannot be linked with the cause of death”.

The board of inquiry said Khosa had argued with two female soldiers, “repeatedly ignored their instructions”, and only complied when male soldiers arrived on the scene.

After relying solely on statements in the police docket and in the court papers, and without interviewing Khosa’s family members or his brother-in-law, Thabiso Muvhango, who was also involved in the altercation, the panel decided that “Mr Khosa was conscious and healthy when the security forces left”.

Yet he died hours later from blunt force injuries to the head.

There is still an ongoing police investigation into the matter, and a recent High Court judgement did find that the conduct of SANDF members implicated in Collins Khosa’s killing was in violation of human rights, but it is worrying that an internal SANDF investigation can see no wrong with what happened.

Next on the list of ‘things that should really piss you off’ is what’s happening with the special COVID-19 social relief of distress grant, which is an extra R350 a month, announced weeks back by our government.

As with anything linked to the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa), it’s a mess. This via a great New Frame investigation by Dennis Webster:

When economists at the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (Saldru) first modelled the potential impact of the new grant, it was suggested that up to 15 million people – but at least 10 million – could qualify to receive it. At the time of publishing, only nine recipients had been paid.

In the wake of this failure, the CEO of Sassa, Busisiwe Memela-Khambula, issued “an unreserved apology to those inconvenienced by the slower than expected process”…

The delays in verification, which are apparently caused by having to authenticate applicants’ information in various public and private databases, are mirrored by bottlenecks at Sassa’s points of delivery. The authentication process, Memela-Khambula said, had “saved the fiscus close to R14 million”.

Due to gross incompetence, and Sassa’s inability to complete even the most basics of tasks, money that will be needed by at least 10 million South Africans in dire need has only been given to NINE.

And worse, when talking about that gross failure, Sassa’s CEO proudly says she has saved the fiscus R14 million. Meanwhile, citizens suffer:

An initial flood of applications for the new grant crashed the agency’s WhatsApp application portal, and only a third of the ordinary foot traffic is currently allowed in Sassa offices. This has led to some beneficiaries sleeping in queues overnight to receive their grants. Many who have applied for the new grant remain in the dark about the status of their applications after a technical glitch in Sassa’s message service meant they did not receive any notifications…

The monetary value of the Covid-19 social relief of distress grant, which is below the food poverty line and therefore not enough to satisfy the nutritional requirements of an individual, has been criticised by some non-governmental bodies.

Nevertheless, a note prepared for the rights group Equal Education by two Saldru-affiliated researchers showed that the changes to the grants system could stave off a national collapse into hunger.

That R350 extra a month could be the difference between surviving or going hungry.

Read the rest of that report here.

Look, it’s possible to be angry about many things at any one time, and I dislike the tobacco sales ban as much as the next person.

In amongst that, though, let’s also remain angry, and ramp up the pressure, on matters like SANDF members brutally attacking citizens, or Sassa failing to deliver even the most basic of relief grants to those most in need.

[sources:mg&newframe]