Mounting trade union concerns about government food security measures boiled over this week in a broadside against the food price monitoring committee set up by Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza at the end of last year.

Government leaders have gone on the offensive against Zimbabwe’s Movement for Democratic Change, accusing it of being made up of ”crybabies” and warning it against becoming a ”fight-back opposition”

The African National Congress has taken aim at AngloGold CEO Bobby Godsell’s involvement as a ”facilitator” at a top-secret meeting of Inkatha Freedom Party and Democratic Alliance leaders last month, criticising it as ”surprising” and ”unwise”.

This year’s national conference of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is widely seen as the next “arena of struggle” between right and left in South Africa’s governing alliance. There was also likely to be “contestation” around the Growth and Development Summit in May.

Almost half the Eastern Cape government officials surveyed by a corruption monitor believe it is ”not wrong” or ”wrong but understandable” for them to accept gifts from citizens in return for services.

In a rare extended interview, Desmond Tutu speaks of his illness, race relations, SA’s ”allergy” to debate and the role of a post-apartheid opposition and the church. Drew Forrest interviewed the 71-year-old Nobel laureate at his office in Cape Town.

Questions were raised about the performance of embattled Wits University vice-chancellor Norma Reid Birley months before this week’s council decision to probe her conduct, well-placed university sources said on Thursday.

With 12 gangs of dockers working back-to-back 12-hour shifts, critical congestion in the Durban port looks set to be cleared by the mid-month deadline, port sources said this week. But government plans to concession Durban’s operations are heading for stormy waters.