It is not that Terezinha da Silva does not like what she is doing. She would just prefer that it be given another name. ”I don’t like the phrase ‘fighting poverty’ or ‘alleviating’ it. I prefer ‘programme for development’, like they call it in countries like Botswana. Poverty is too wide a topic and it can mean different things to different people.”
The black-gold bold letters with telephone numbers announcing who to call if you need armed response to a crime look a bit out of place on a White City, Soweto, street. White City is traditionally one of the roughest Soweto townships and also its poorest.
The Democratic Alliance has contradicted its stated policy by giving an African National Congress-aligned municipal manager a R1,8-million golden handshake.
The mayoral committee decided to terminate Bruce Kannemeyer’s contract, and pay him out for the remainder of his term, at its first meeting after the March local elections.
South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) chief executive Dali Mpofu on Thursday announced an official inquiry into whether certain commentators had been banned from the airwaves. Speaking on SAfm, Mpofu pledged that ”if we find that they have been arbitrarily banned, we will come back to the public [to inform them]”.
Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula came to rare prominence two weeks ago when he controversially suggested persistent whingers about crime should leave the country. <i>Mail & Guardian</i> reporter Fikile Ntsikelelo Moya quizzed the largely invisible minister on his statement, and on crime and policing more generally.
National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi will not cooperate with KwaZulu-Natal Premier S’bu Ndebele’s commission into alleged police bias because he does not want to be drawn into a provincial ANC power play. Sources at South African Police Service headquarters suggested that Selebi saw the commission as part of a turf war between Ndebele and provincial minister of safety and liaison Bheki Cele.
Former Drum journalist Can Themba commented that there were names that did not lend themselves to the prefix ”mister”. Among them he included his own and that of Jesus Christ. This came to my mind when I learned that Patrick Pule ”Ace” Ntsoelengoe, one of South Africa’s greatest footballers, had been found dead in his car.
Academic and political commentator Sipho Seepe says he used to carry his kid brother, Jimmy, to kindergarten. This weekend, he will carry his coffin. Jimmy, <i>City Press</i>’s highly regarded political editor, died this week of a stroke at the relatively tender age of 41.
”When my son was in grade zero, he had a friend called Brendan. Typical of a South African parent born before 1990, I asked Ntsika if Brendan was a lekgoa [white person]. ‘What is a lekgoa?’ he asked. I did not answer, not because I believe children should be seen and not heard, but because I did not know how to respond to the question,” writes the Mail & Guardian‘s Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.
Jacob Zuma’s lawyers will do well to satisfy the judge that they were justified in not calling Zuma’s attorney, Michael Hulley, to the witness stand, when they deliver their closing arguments in the Zuma rape trial next week. In its closing submissions the prosecution asked Judge Willem van der Merwe to infer that Zuma’s defence case would have been damaged had Hulley taken the stand.