The possibility of an early–season derby between South Africa’s biggest soccer club, Orlando Pirates, and rivals Kaizer Chiefs became a reality when the two teams were kept apart when the draw for the Telkom Charity Cup was made in Johannesburg on Monday.
”Steve who? Is he also Nigerian?” responded new Orlando Pirates coach Kosta Papic when asked about former child prodigy and now adult almost-superstar Steve ”Chippa” Lekoelea. Generally, it is no big deal when a foreign coach does not know the local players. But it is no small matter in this case.
This week’s arrest and court appearance of Samson Madonsela marks the climax of the police operation to purge football of corruption and match-fixing. The police allege Madonsela, a member of the South African Football Association’s referees’ technical committee, was the ”conduit” through which club officials reached referees.
Councillors in Mpumalanga’s second biggest municipality, Enhlanzeni District, must be especially relieved that the Municipality Finance Management Act only came into operation on Thursday and is not retrospective. Last week the M&G revealed that the municipality’s mayor Jeri Ngomane’s two wives won council tenders totalling almost R2-million while Ngomane was in charge.
Controversial Nelspruit mayor Jeri Ngomane seems to have been an unusually considerate companion — two of his ”wives” won tenders with his council totalling almost R2-million while he was in charge. Ngomane this week denied having any relationship with the two women.
Swazi prince and his ‘rainbow harem’
Black Consciousness icon Steve Biko put it best: ”Black man, you are on your own.” In an era that was less gender sensitive than our present one, Biko’s message was for black human beings rather just than the male species. But 27 years after his death and 10 years into the non-racial and non-sexist democracy he laid down his life for, his words ring a literal rather than a figurative truth.
”And is it a boy or a girl?” I asked this guy who would be my friend, as we got to know each other. Crestfallen, he replied: ”It’s a girl.” And then he explained the frown on his face. ”This is no world to bring up a girl. The boys are going to f%*k her before she knows anything about love or sex.”
Brenda Fassie has always done things differently. How many people can claim to have had front-page obituaries written about them while they are still alive? How many can draw the president, the former president and a clutch of Cabinet ministers to their hospital bedside, nogal in the period after an election victory, when cynical electioneering stunts are no longer necessary.
It is becoming increasingly expensive to be racist, as a Lephalale, Limpopo, man has discovered. The Equality Court has ordered Andrew van der Westhuizen to pay his colleague Elliot Senwamadi, at Nashua in Lephalale (formerly known as Ellisrus), R10 000 after Van der Westhuizen shared an e-mail ”recipe” with fellow staff members on how to ”create black people”.
The Freedom of Expression Institute’s (FXI) intended court challenge to provisions of the Electoral Act and the Regulation of Gatherings Act will turn on whether limitations imposed by the laws are deemed ”reasonable and justifiable in an open and democratic society”, legal experts say. But they express doubt about the likelihood of the challenge succeeding.