/ 12 August 2001

Sunday papers: CT mayor’s new maths

DAVID LE PAGE, Johannesburg | Sunday

ACCORDING to Independent Online, Willem Heath has wound up a week of hearings into the Cape Town street renaming scandal, in which council members are alleged to have manipulated so-called public petitions in support of the proposal. The proposal was a favourite of Democratic Alliance mayor Pieter Marais, who offered some interesting testimony, including accounts of his own arithmetic, on Saturday. The results of the inquiry will be delayed until close to the end of August.

IOL also carries a florid account — “like a scene from a John Grisham court drama” — of how Marais still dreams of establishing a peace park at the corner of Wales and Adderley Streets, which he has failed to rename.

Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade has called the idea of Western reparations for slavery absurd and insulting. The United States has threatened to boycott the UN Conference on Racism to be held shortly in Durban, if the subject is left on the agenda.

Five men, including two relatives of murdered KwaZulu-Natal warlord Sifiso Nkabinde have been found guilty by the Pietermaritzburg High Court of the murder and attempted murder of 11 members of the Ndabezitha family in Richmond.

The Sunday Times reports that money has gone missing from the estate of cricketer Tertius Bosch, whose body was exhumed this week after suspicions that he was poisoned were raised. Police have opened a theft docket.

IOL adds that his widow Karen-Anne Bosch, and her former lover, lawyer Henry Selzer, have attempted to get a court order to prevent the family’s former nanny from making “delicate” disclosures.

There have already been suggestions that the autopsy of Bosch revealed signs of poisoning. – Daily Mail & Guardian