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/ 20 September 2007
The Congress of South African Trade Unions has thrown its considerable weight behind Jacob Zuma as its preferred candidate for the ANC presidency, in defiance of objections by ANC chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota. At its central committee meeting on Thursday the federation also endorsed ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe for the ANC deputy presidency.
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/ 14 September 2007
Cosatu’s push to break President Thabo Mbeki’s hold over the African National Congress (ANC) is set to move up several gears next week, as it lists its preferred candidates for the ANC leadership and firms up a radical election pact with the ruling party.
The economic rescue package for Zimbabwe, touted at the Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit in Lusaka last week, is a non-starter, economists and political commentators argued this week. They said that at least -billion would be needed to restore Zimbabwe’s collapsing infrastructure and revive commercial agriculture, the mainstay of the formal economy.
Jacques Kallis should take his omission from South Africa’s Twenty20 squad as a compliment, rather than flying into a huff, resigning as vice-captain and threatening to quit all forms of the international game. The fact that Justin Kemp — a technical and temperamental pygmy by comparison — has been selected ahead of him merely drives home the point.
The government is dusting off a 2002 plan to deal with a feared mass influx of Zimbabweans into South Africa, amid a growing official recognition that economic migration is snowballing towards crisis. Last week Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad told a media conference in Pretoria that the Zimbabwean influx was "a serious problem" and that it was "vital for South Africa to act".
The trade and industry department has unveiled its new industrial policy at last — it is the most ambitious state-driven job-creation initiative since the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The policy centrally involves the targeting of selected industrial sectors for state support, including financing.
”He looked at the picture on the wall and asked if I knew the artist, Joe Maseko. I said I didn’t. He then said he had broken Joe’s legs once and he was here to do the same to me.” SABC company secretary Ramani Naidoo levels this accusation against the corporation’s legal head, Mafika Sihlali, in a letter annexed to the SABC’s internal audit report.
Sasol is a strategic enterprise; it produces much of the 40% of our fuel that comes from domestic production. And it’s being wooed internationally. In 10 years we could find it has largely moved offshore and that South Africa’s strategic aims no longer top its agenda, says SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin .
Sharon Farr’s documentary <i>Bram Fischer’s Story</i> is an absorbing and often poignant account of a remarkable life, writes Drew Forrest.
Why does Ronald Suresh Roberts keep scrabbling long-buried controversies to the surface? Recently, he recycled President Thabo Mbeki’s 2002 Briefing Notes by arguing that the Congress of South African Trade Unions is the counter-revolutionary stooge of the right. His new book, Fit to Govern, peels back the ”stiff dishonoured shroud” of Barney Pityana’s 2000 media racism inquiry.