President Thabo Mbeki has promised support for church relief efforts for people displaced under Zimbabwe’s so-called urban clean-up campaign. He made the undertaking during a meeting with representatives of the South African Council of Churches in Pretoria on Friday afternoon, church leaders said.
Twenty-one years after losing their sons to the anti-apartheid struggle, 10 families could finally be able to bury their remains, which are being recovered from unmarked graves north of Pretoria. National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi said the remains will be subjected to DNA and forensic testing.
Discussions on expanding the membership of the United Nations Security Council should not eclipse the need for pursuing more general UN reforms, deputy foreign minister Aziz Pahad said on Tuesday. Pahad was speaking after hosting his Mexican counterpart, Maria de Lourdes Aranda Bezaury, for bilateral political and economic discussions.
Public Protector Lawrence Mushwana is expected to report to Parliament on his probe into the so-called Oilgate affair before month-end, his office said on Friday. The investigation, into claims about the alleged misuse of public money involving state oil company PetroSA, should be concluded in the next two to three weeks, a spokesperson said.
Eight South Africans suspected of involvement in a planned coup d’état in Equatorial Guinea had their trial set down on Friday for next year in the Pretoria Regional Court. During a brief appearance in the morning, their trial date was set for January 16 to February 3.
The Zimbabwean government put the extent of displacement under its urban slum-clearance campaign at 130 000 families on Wednesday, saying it will not re-accommodate them all. Minister counsellor in the Zimbabwean embassy Pritchard Zhou told a seminar in Pretoria the operation has ”won praise countrywide”.
The National Prosecuting Authority will focus increasingly on crimes occasioned by greed rather than those arising out of poverty, National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli said on Tuesday. However, this does not mean that poor people committing crimes will not be prosecuted.
The country’s first female deputy president had a group of women in the palm of her hand as she elaborated on Tuesday on daily tribulations facing the fairer sex, at a conference on gender issues. There were murmurs of agreement and some giggles as Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka painted a picture of the day in the life of an average woman.
The African National Congress (ANC) has reaffirmed its character as a national liberation movement, it emerged on Saturday from the party’s national general council (NGC) meeting in Pretoria. ”As the ANC, we remain a national liberation movement,” deputy secretary-general Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele told reporters.
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Former deputy president Jacob Zuma could stand for the presidency of the African National Congress in 2007, and might be earning an unprecedented party salary before long, it emerged on Friday.