Police and the Ncala family are looking for Anna Lamola, a 34-year-old Diepsloot woman, who has been missing since August 2020, leaving two young children with her husband.
In an interview, Lamola’s husband James Ncala said he is now struggling to get birth certificates for his children because their mother is nowhere to be found.
“I have been looking for Anna for a while now,” Ncala said. “Now I don’t know what to do because she left me with two children. One child is two years old and the other one is four years old. I have to find her so that we can fix some documents for the children.”
Ncala said he believes that his wife is alive somewhere in the country. “When she went missing we tried calling her but her phone could not go through,” Ncala said.
“We reported her missing, but we never got any clue about her whereabouts. Honestly, I do not know what caused her to disappear because we had been good together. The only time we got separated was in 2018 when I was involved in a car accident and decided to go home in Free State to heal.”
From left to right Momes Place Lion Park manager Mosa Bofelo, DJ obza and event organiver DJ Heavywise
Amapiano Musical Artist DJ Obza put up a splendid one- hour performance and left his fans in awe at Momes Place Lion Park on 27 April during a Freedom Day celebration.
When DJ Obza mounted the stage, his name resonated throughout the whole place, with his fans uncontrollably shouting “Obza! We wanna party!”. He never disappointed the crowd as he dished out good tunes from his repertoire to the audience who were very appreciative of every minute he spent on the decks. He performed his famous tracks “Mang’Dakiwe”, Idlozi Lami, Todii and many more.
It was a good feeling to see a wonderful welcome from the crowd, DJ Obza said in an interview with the Chronicle. “I really appreciate the response from the crowd. I enjoyed every moment of it,” he said.
Female duo MATRINAGIMBI and TROXY curtain-raised the free-entrance event, which attracted scores of people from Cosmo City, Kyasands,Diepsloot and Malatjie.
It is always a good thing to see people enjoying, said Momes Place Lion Park manager Mosa Bofelo.
“We know people love Dj Obza,” she said “So we had to bring him in the township and let people see him performing. We are planning to bring a lot of celebrities in the community so that we can promote our place.”
Bofelo said she was happy that the event went well.
“Forward we go and together we can,” said Community Policing Forum (CPF) sector 4 chairperson Joe Dube during a sector meeting held at Multipurpose on 22 April.
Community leaders from different Cosmo City extensions attended the meeting alongside CPF members, South African Police Services (SAPS), Johannesburg Metro Police Department and Ward 100 Councillor Mapula Mosito.
“We want to occupy the streets and deal with the criminals,” Dube said.
“In the previous weeks, we had reports of several house break-ins,” he said. “The most disturbing thing is that when they break in, they shoot. So unity among us is the only way that will help us fight against them.”
CPF is doing their best to make sure that they patrol in different extensions at night, Dube said.
“Ever since we started patrolling at night,” he reported, “cases of house-breaking have decreased. There is no one roaming around between 23:00 hrs and 04:00 hrs in the morning. It is only us. We have three cars that we are using to patrol. We work in conjunction with the police, and at night we use at least six SAPS bakkies from Cosmo City police station.”
Overpopulation and backrooms are the main sources of criminal activities in Cosmo City, Dube said.
Cosmo City’s Bolekwa Mboniswa is one of The University of the Witwatersrand students who have received Huawei South Africa bursaries.
Huawei South Africa handed over bursaries to a select group of postgraduate ICT students from The University of the Witwatersrand, as part of its efforts to bolster and support technology skills growth in South Africa.
Mboniswa, an Information Systems Honours student, said that the bursary will be a major help in achieving her long term goal of being a beacon of hope in the community.
“I was the only person to be admitted into Wits during my matric year and the second in the entire history of the high school I went to, so I felt a lot of pressure to succeed,” Mboniswa said.
“My first year was hard since I was staying at home, but I received NSFAS funding in my second year, which eventually led to me graduating in record time with a few distinctions,” she said.
“Unfortunately, I was met with failure at Wits when I enrolled for mining engineering and I lost my scholarship,” she said.
Rather than giving up, she took it as a sign that she was in the wrong field and enrolled in Information Systems instead. For now, Mboniswa is focusing on finishing her Honours Degree.
Now that she is pursuing postgraduate studies, she said her goal to be a beacon of hope to the “little township boys and girls” is now achievable.
The Wits bursaries are part of a wider programme which will see Huawei supporting 48 students from 5 Universities -- UKZN, UP, Wits, UCT, and UWC -- with bursaries worth R7-million this year. The programme also recognises that there is a shortage of skilled ICT professionals in South Africa and that corporates have a role to play in boosting those numbers.
“South Africa has no shortage of young, talented people capable of being groomed into world-class technology professionals,” says Daniel Jiang, Human Resources Development, Huawei. “Too often, however, they simply aren’t given the necessary opportunities. At Huawei, we recognise that corporates can make important contributions in reversing that situation.”
Lerato Hlagala
For third-year student Lerato Hlagala from Polokwane, the bursary is a chance to fulfill a long-term ambition to get into the technology space.
“My goal is to become a professional software developer,” she says. “I would love to be part of a software organisation where I could share the knowledge and talents that I have learned. I want to be part of a place where I would gain more skills and grow as an individual.”
Huawei is a leading global provider of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure and smart devices. With integrated solutions across four key domains – telecom networks, IT, smart devices, and cloud services – we are committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world.
