The racial and sexist slurs allegedly uttered by Pretoria Judge Nkola Motata may return to haunt him even if the charges against him are dismissed. The Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court this week heard how Motata allegedly crashed into a wall in the residential area of Hurlingham in Johannesburg while under the influence of alcohol.

The ANC national executive committee decided in 2004 that the Merafong municipality be moved from Gauteng to North West. All subsequent public participation processes were, in effect, doomed from the start, court papers claim. These contentions were made in the Constitutional Court by Khutsong residents challenging President Thabo Mbeki to reverse the decision to incorporate the cross-border municipality of Merafong into North West.

The floor-crossing season has come and gone, with predictable changes to the party political landscape of South Africa. Twelve new opposition parties have come to light but only one, the African People’s Convention (APC), has national representatives. Although 280 politicians tried to use the floor-crossing window to deliver their voters to a different party for their own personal ends, only 250 succeeded.

Three suspended top officials are the first casualties in a clean-up by Home Affairs Director General Mavuso Msimang. In a ”broad swoop to turn things around”, the deputy director general of civic services, Joel Chavalala, and the chief financial officer, Pat Nkambule, were ordered last week to ”make way for the investigation to take its course”.

Embattled Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has once again tried to put a spanner in the works of the South African National Aids Council, but has failed to secure the support she was hoping for. The Mail & Guardian learnt that civil society supporters of Tshabalala-Msimang were lobbying for a new position to be created in order to counter the newly appointed deputy chairperson of the council, Mark Heywood.

Public protests around service delivery are being used as a tool to advance political aspirations, analysts and government officials claim. The Cabinet subcommittee for governance has been tasked with investigating the recent spate of violent service-delivery protests, while the Public Protector has also taken it upon himself to find the causes of the escalating violence.

Shyaka Kanuma Results of the first ever ethics survey conducted in South Africa indicate that there is a basic ethics infrastructure in place in the country’s organisations but it is too basic, and potentially ineffective. The SA Ethics in Practice 2001 survey carried out by KPMG, the Public Service Commission and Transparency SA shows that […]