This weekend’s final list meeting in Cape Town’s largest township, Khayelitsha, will test provincial African National Congress leaders’ claim that tensions in the party are caused by a ”small number” of disgruntled members who lost out during the nomination process. Khayelitsha has been at the centre of the upheavals.

The Cape Town council has started transferring deeds to the first group of 24 land claimants almost two years after they returned to District Six. But the city’s move has come too late for one of the District Six elders who signed the agreement for the return of the land before President Thabo Mbeki at the emotional ”Homecoming” ceremony in November 2000.

Three weeks ago the Cape Town city council removed 30 families who had squatted on District Six land for several years. Their ID numbers have been forwarded to the provincial Land Claims Commission office to verify if any of them are claimants. If not, the council has promised, they will be ”accommodated in the housing programme that is being provided by the city”.

The impoverished Richtersveld community, seeking to finalise restitution for land currently held by state diamond mining company Alexkor, has turned to the courts to compel the government to provide them with legal aid. This comes as the state has allocated an additional R17-million for its own legal costs.

Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool’s bid to change the racial balance of his department could be scuppered if a dispute over 10 posts is not resolved by next Friday. A date hasn’t been set for arbitration between the provincial administration and trade unions, the Public Servants Association and Hospersa.

A total of 867 children were reported missing last year, more than two-thirds in Gauteng and the Western Cape, police say. But child-rights groups estimate the overall number could be as high as 1  700 a year. Not all disappearances are reported to the authorities, for a variety of reasons.

Race is rearing its ugly head in the rural Western Cape town of Vredendal, an African National Congress stronghold. There is a backlog of 8  000 houses in the Matzikama municipality and 500 families still use night soil buckets. But, rather than erupting in street protests, beefs about basic services have sparked recriminations between coloureds and Africans.

Khayelitsha has again logged the most murders in the county, but Western Cape safety and security authorities say the rate is the lowest in 10 years. ”The situation has changed,” maintained Western Cape community safety MEC Leonard Ramatlakane on Thursday.

Three councillors, a former MP and a Democratic Alliance office worker are set to improve their political fortunes if the DA’s court action against five defectors in Parliament is successful. On Monday the DA will ask the Cape High Court to declare unlawful and invalid the defection of four of its senior black MPs to the African National Congress.