A month after speaking out on the proliferation of luxury housing and golfing estates in the province, Western Cape agriculture minister Cobus Dowry, seems to have done an about-face and approved the multi-billion rand Lagoon Bay Lifestyle development endorsed by former anti-apartheid cleric Allan Boesak.
South Africans may never get to hear what happened to the millions in misappropriated shares and stolen money redistributed by slain magnate Brett Kebble to a wide network of high-profile beneficiaries. Recently a senior civil court magistrate in Cape Town ordered that the Section 152 inquiry under the Insolvency Act be held in camera.
Girish Kotwal, suspended head of the University of Cape Town’s division of medical virology, says the ”persecution and character assassination” he has endured have made him understand how ”leaders under apartheid must have felt when they opposed government”.
Girish Kotwal, the University of Cape Town professor who allegedly tested an Aids potion on highly infectious viruses without following required procedures, is to face a university disciplinary hearing. The Mail & Guardian has learnt that Kotwal is to be charged with failing to follow procedures in researching human subjects.
A suspended University of Cape Town (UCT) professor, who was involved in researching an unregistered potion marketed as an “anti-HIV treatment”, was keeping highly infectious viruses in his laboratory without following correct biosafety procedures. Professor Girish Kotwal, head of UCT’s Institute of Infectious Diseases and Molecular Medicine, was suspended for six months.
The attractive three-storey flats, with their landscaped gardens and paved walkways, stand empty almost two months after completion. They stand in stark relief against thousands of tin and wood shanties. The strange contrast on view in Cape Town’s Joe Slovo settlement epitomises the controversy that has beset the N2 Gateway housing project.
Western Cape police officials have admitted they are losing the battle to maintain law and order on Cape Town’s increasingly anarchic highways because the city is so underpoliced. The city has significantly fewer police personnel than Johannesburg: There is one policeman for every 2 300 Capetonians.
After the SABC banned an Afrikaans loveLife advert in 2002 because it featured Pieter-Dirk Uys using the word <i>naai</i> (fuck), an unexpected visitor turned up in the West Coast town of Darling. Said Uys: "The window of the car rolled down — it was Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane on his way to a congregation on the West Coast."
A preliminary investigation by law firm Cheadle, Thompson and Haysom into the appointment of project managers on the N2 Gateway housing project in Cape Town has found no evidence of direct political interference or corruption.The investigation found that at worst there was a ”lack of clarity” about the roles of various panels and committees involved in the project.
”Robert who?” asks the woman behind the security counter at the entrance to the City of Cape Town’s offices. ”Macdonald. Mayor Zille’s spokesman.” The same happens outside the lifts on the sixth floor. Only the magic word ”Zille” finally elicits a nod and a wave towards her office.