Moving Forward

I expected today to be a bloody one. With about 5 hours sleep (just could not reach system shutdown last night, so many thoughts pouring through my head), I didn't expect patience to be one of my virtues today. When has it ever been? Actually, in some areas I think I am supremely patient. If you think of swimming: it's a sport that requires consistent concentration and resistance to the cold, fatigue, and mental boredom. It may be a mental alloy, a fusion of patience and endurance.

Although I've been tempted once again to quit my job at Brebner (in lieu of being given another two month contract tomorrow), I'm not sure I have the luxury to do that. To just up and go. Certainly not if it's my intention to buy a car. And definitely not if I have to pay it beyond my termination date.

Today we did filing in all classes. I expected it to be a nuclear disaster, since Mrs Martins always seems to swoop down and find a fault and then explode, but somehow 99% of the files were in order, with virtually zero files missing or problems. There were some students who reacted to the filing imperative (from Mrs Martens) by immediately blaming me that their files were lost, only to find them after a few minutes. The silence Mrs Martens was able to achieve in 3 of 5 classes was impressive, but achieved only after some equally impressive explosive bellows (that even had me cowering in a corner). 2 classes even she found unteachable, and abandoned them to me (adding: "Good luck. I don't know how you do it.")

In effect, she took over most of my 'maintenance of order' duties today, which I really needed. Another day like yesterday and I can't see how I would not have slid back into being sick (sopre throat and cough). Today I got a chance to rest my voice, and think up a few strategies.

In the last half hour though, I lost it with the grade 11's, throwing one school bag out a window, and frogmarching another out the door. What happens is when you catch them, they spend 5 minutes debating and vehemently arguing how innocent they are, which makes the chaos even worse. So I've made it clear - the pace at which people are going to be sent out, and arguments are going to be dismissed, is going to increase by a huge factor.
I must have done a Martinesque job, because the kids were fairly quiet at the end of the 3rd or 4th tirade, and I managed to excite myself to a state of angry quivering. The words of another teacher come back to me now (we spoke earlier in the morning, and she runs): "Don't let them steal your soul."

It seems like the ultimate (and logical) result of time in the classroom, is the teacher becoming angry. What else can happen if you have students continuously provoking each other, and the teacher's job - to communicate in order to create an environment of learning - is constantly being threatened by disorder, and hysterical and circuslike noise.

I managed to sleep for an hour after lunch, then studied Great Expectations. I've just written the test, from 6pm to 7pm, and I think I may have gotten a distinction for it. You know, I don't remember ever reading Great Expectations. Even now when I go through scraps of text I don't recognise it. But I do have small red marks in the book, and I remember, when I saw the movie, going: "That's not what happened."

Prof Raftery is a by-the-book lecturer that manages to really piss me off. If you ask her anything, she manages to be abrupt and curt and annoying, simply because her bookish and straightlined thoughts are supposed to be never interrupted. I think she's one of those academics that is wholly academic. Everything about her is, and so is her lifestyle. She's very overweight, and a feminist, and inflexible - and together this describes I think a very theoretical approach to everything, which she has engineered to be fairly conceited. Meaning, if it doesn't suit her, she'll dismiss it. Not very mature.

Notice how attacking I am? I get that from teaching. My emotional patience becomes threadbare, but not, I hope, my sense of social justice. (see email below).

I'm also - but bear in mind I'm quite sleep deprived as I write this - determined to exact an appropriate justice on some people I know. I've already found information (eg www.b-e-g.co.za) which points to some large scale corporate fraud going on.

For starters do a google search on: fraud south africa ivan penny ref and you get this;


THE FINAL REPORT OF T
OMMISSION OF INQUIRY
THE AFFAIRS OF
THE MASTERBOND GRO
AND INVESTOR PROTECT
IN SOUTH AFRICA

Re: page 25 (0f 283)


Business Day : 7 September 1999 : (Refcorp staggers under cash
problems)

"Controversial venture capital company REF Finance and Investment
Corporation (Refcorp) is staggering under major cash flow problems that
could lead to its liquidation.

Former employees who did not wish to be named have said they have not
been paid for more than two months and that this was just the tip of the
iceberg. The company is apparently also about R4m behind on
pay-as-you earn(PAYE) tax remittances to the Receiver of
Revenue.

Five directors have left the company over the past couple of months for a
variety of reasons which included the nonpayment of salaries.

One employee said the problem with Refcorp was not so much the listed
entity but the underlying, non-listed companies that were draining the
parent’s accounts, balance sheet.

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) is believed to be investigating
Refcorp and has already interrogated some former directors.

Refcorp was warned by the JSE last week for failing to submit annual financial
statements within six months of the financial year-end. Refcorp deputy
chairman Ivan Penny pleads that the group’s financial director had to go on
maternity leave three weeks sooner than expected and that results would be
released soon.

http://icms.iac.iafrica.com/pls/cms/iac.page?p_t1=1539&p_t2=0&p_t3=0&p_t4=0&p_dynamic
=YP&p_content_id=387980&p_site_id=83

David Romero, who headed Refcorp, a key investor in the laughably named Noble Minerals, is probably one of the worst managers of expectations. Minority shareholders lost their money within days of Noble's listing as the price sank to 1c from a R2/share maiden listing.

and: http://www.dispatch.co.za/2005/03/12/Easterncape/crook.html

Financial adviser says he is not a crook
By Eddie Botha Business Editor
EAST LONDON - Hannes Brink, the financial adviser who is blamed by more than 50 investors for their R10 million losses, says he is not a crook.
Instead Nimrod Financial & Tax Consultants CC's Brink has fingered as the culprits his former partner, David Romero, head of finance company REF Equity Finance, into which the funds were invested, and Ivan Penny, an REF director.

Earlier this week the Daily Dispatch reported that the National Prosecuting Authority in Pretoria had confirmed that an investigation into the financial scheme was almost complete.
Many investors, among them pensioners, have lost their life savings in the scheme, and subsequent to this week's report many more called the newspaper to say that they too had lost large amounts of money.

The Daily Dispatch first reported about the failed scheme in 2001 when Amalinda pensioners Carl and Rosemary Hill, who invested and lost R100000 - their life savings - approached the paper.

Yesterday Brink, who now lives in Nelspruit with his common-law wife and business partner Linden Kelly, denied any responsibility.

When contacted in Pretoria he first said that the target of the investigation was REF Equity Finance, the unlisted company in which he invested the funds.
Later, in a second telephone call to him, Brink said that he was not aware of a current police investigation into the failed investments.

He said, though, he had given investigators copies of all the documents - "but that was three years ago. I have not heard any word from them since then".

Brink said he had merely acted as an agent for the investment company.
"They (the investors) bought the shares (in REF) through me."

Brink said he would be willing to give evidence if required to do so, adding: "I have also lost between R600000 and R700000 with REF.

"The problem lies with the people who handled the portfolio, Romero and Penny," he said.
"I have done nothing wrong."

Brink added that he did not understand what the sudden fuss was about - over events that took place six years ago.

He said he had sold the Ntoni Game reserve, which he had owned in the Cradock district, to King William's Town businessman Eddie Goetsch, the owner of the Buildrite hardware group.
REF also bought a 50 percent stake in Ntoni.

At one stage when Romero wrote to Eddie Leach - a retired contractor who lost over R210000 in Brink's scheme- to explain the delays in dividend payouts, he used stationery with the stamps of Nimrod and Ntoni.

REF was suspended from the JSE Securities Exchange in 2003 for failing to produce financial statements.

According to a Business Day report in the final quarter of last year shareholders had been trying to contact the company since its suspension - but telephone calls and e-mails went answered.
The report also said that United States-based businessman Albert de Lint had written to Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin asking him to warn South African investors to steer clear of Romero, saying: "We must conclude that investors will soon face the reality that there won't be funds to pay them back."

http://www.suntimes.co.za/2000/09/10/business/companies/
comp17.htm

Furthermore, Gullan and Gullan allege that Noble's previous corporate adviser, REF Finance and Investment Corporation as represented by David Romero and Ivan Penny, was "unable to pay over approximately R6.25-million of shareholders' funds which they collected on behalf of the company".

The report says Romero and Penny, a director of Noble until February, signed an acknowledgement of debt to Noble in their personal capacities and as directors of Refcorp and other related companies.

The theme is about deceit, and I don't believe it's fair that innocence is punished, and deceit should go unrewarded. I don't intend to prosecute this case myself, but once I have all the evidence that seems necessary, I suppose the South African Revenue Service and maybe Corporate Fraud offices somewhere can take over.

What makes me think prosecuting this case is necessary? I think we ought to live as fully as we can. I also think those who prevent us from doing so, ought to feel the full brunt of life - it's big waves, its bad weather, its bitter winters. Wealth ought not to buy justice. Innocence or goodness ought to guarantee it. I know enough about the law to know that if you ardently pursue it, and if you know it as well as it can be known, the law can only stand with you against those who oppose you.

Meanwhile, it's 8:14 pm and I now have to cycle through the cold and dark to a warm room, and the bubbleblue light of the TV. The picture above represents to me a sort of Paradise Lost, but then, I suppose it depends on where you are. Sometimes though, it depends on who you are, and who you choose to be.

Latest News


The latest casualties brought the number of people killed in Lebanon to at least 643, while the Israeli death toll was 100.
The clashes followed one of the bloodiest days of the four-week conflict. At least three Israeli soldiers and 49 Lebanese died Monday — including 15 in a rocket attack in a Beirut suburb just hours after Arab League foreign ministers wrapped up a crisis meeting that threw their full diplomatic weight behind Lebanon.

It set the baseline demand for the Security Council: a full Israeli withdrawal or no peace deal is possible. The message was given in an emotional address by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and carried to the U.N. by Arab League envoys.

Saniora's government voted unanimously to send 15,000 troops to stand between Israel and Hezbollah should a cease-fire take hold and Israeli forces withdraw.

The move was an attempt to show that Lebanon has the will and ability to assert control over its south, where Hezbollah rules with near autonomy bolstered by channels of aid and weapons from Iran and Syria. Lebanon has avoided any attempt to implement a two-year-old U.N. resolution calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah, fearing it could touch off civil unrest.

The coming days should offer signs on whether a cease-fire plan has a chance.