Page 20 - Devon Koen News Today

Seven years after a murderous gang-related rampage left three people dead within a matter of hours, notorious gang kingpin Wendell Petersen and his cronies have been sentenced to life behind bars.

After a young woman took a pregnancy test which turned out negative, she allegedly snatched another woman’s baby and fooled her boyfriend into thinking it was theirs.

Koleka Putuma, the inaugural recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for poetry, has brought her poems to life at the Monument Gallery in Makhanda, where she uses different mediums to showcase her work.

A new partnership between the National Arts Festival and the department of correctional services saw various items, produced by inmates and parolees, on display and for sale at the Village Green for the first time.

In a boost to the economy and in a bid to create employment, the Social Employment Fund (SEF) has in just over a year created more than 50,000 temporary jobs with at least 2,000 Makhanda residents benefiting from the project.

As Makhanda started to fill up for the National Arts Festival from Thursday, visitors were welcomed by a city drowning in rubbish and sewage, streets filled with potholes and the very real prospect of water outages.

Though there was still no trace of a body, and Desiree Baartman’s whereabouts remained unknown, the police decided to charge her ex-husband, Johnny Baartman, with her murder.

Offered a rite of passage, a young Gqeberha child was lured by a man who used the isiXhosa tradition to sexually exploit him.

Two men arrested in connection with the kidnapping of Nelson Mandela Bay biokineticist Riana Pretorius have been denied bail.

“I wanted to tell an authentic South African tale in the epic scale of the adventure films of my childhood,” EC filmaker Jahmil Qubeka said.