The Western Cape Democratic Alliance has closed ranks amid behind-the-scenes tension over the Cape Town unicity’s appointment of a bank official dismissed for his role in the provincial political funding scandal.

Few of the promised heavy industrial projects stipulated as offsets under the controversial multibillion-rand arms deal have materialised; instead South Africa gains a condom factory, Scandinavian package tours, a mohair yarn project and a jewellery plant.

African National Congress MPs this week caved in to executive pressure over a clause in arms control legislation that would have given Parliament pre-emptive oversight of pending arms sales. However, MPs of the ANC remained adamant about other important oversight controls.

Parliament has scheduled a three-hour debate on the joint investigation team’s findings on the controversial arms procurement package, in which the opposition will resurrect complaints that the government is hiding the true cost of the deal.

The cash-strapped South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) and its investment arm, Sanco Investment Holdings (SIH), have become the stage for a bizarre series of corruption allegations and counterclaims of political manoeuvring.

The Western Cape Democratic Alliance is expected to finalise by Wednesday its report on whether Cape Town mayor Gerald Morkel and former finance MEC Leon Markovitz are implicated in the political funding scandal centring on German tax fugitive Jürgen Harksen.

The Democratic Alliance has petitioned President Thabo Mbeki to return the controversial Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill, known as the E-Commerce Bill, to Parliament for reconsideration.

As the United Democratic Movement’s lawyers filed papers at the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg to have the floor-crossing laws declared unconstitutional, UDM leader Bantu Holomisa in Cape Town called on government to withdraw the legislation.

When Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi promulgates regulations on the restructuring of the public sector this Friday, she will do so without the support of the two largest public service unions.

The Western Cape government continues to employ two of the apartheid-era National Intelligence Service (NIS) operatives — Irene Engelbrecht and Herman du Toit — handpicked by former provincial director general Niel Barnard, who set up and headed the NIS until 1992.