South African Revenue Service commissioner Pravin Gordhan has been asked to consider becoming South Africa’s next police boss. If he were to agree and be appointed by President Thabo Mbeki, Gordhan could take over the reins from embattled police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi before the end of June.

For a massive ship that carries tons of ammunition and has its own cranes on board, the controversial Chinese ship carrying arms for Zimbabwe is about as easy to pin down as a cockroach in a dark, damp cellar. The An Yue Jiang is carrying three million rounds of ammunition for AK-47s, 1 500 rocket-propelled grenades and several thousand mortar rounds.

An intense political and commercial war has broken out over plans to sell a 99-year lease on Cape Town’s most valuable piece of state land. The row pits Western Cape premier Ebrahim Rasool and Public Works Minister Marius Fransman against party colleagues, the DA and their own provincial treasury.

The restructuring of the African National Congress’s (ANC) head office and consolidation of the new party leadership is slowly taking shape. This week the Mail & Guardian has established that former ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula is to be appointed head of campaigns.

This week a visibly angry African National Congress (ANC) secretary general Gwede Mantashe accused the Democratic Alliance, ”the recycled National Party”, of sharing with the Scorpions a common hatred for the ANC. He said the unit was full of apartheid security-branch operatives who still saw the ruling party as the enemy.

The Erasmus commission is to hear claims that the Western Cape leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA), Theuns Botha, used private investigators hired by the Cape Town council to undermine his rivals in the party. The allegation is that Botha piggybacked on a council-ordered probe to spy on the sex life of fellow DA leader Lennit Max.

Regular runs to Cape Town’s GrandWest casino to cash in table chips helped fund the R9-million floor-crossing campaign of controversial Cape Town councillor Badih Chaaban, the Mail & Guardian can reveal. Former spokesperson of Chaaban’s National People’s Party Juan Duval Uys made a sworn affidavit this week describing visits to the Goodwood casino.

The stalled judicial commission of inquiry into whether the City of Cape Town broke the law when it hired private detectives to investigate its political opponents will continue, Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool has told his advisers and Cape Town mayor Helen Zille.

Trevor Manuel has been parrying jabs from Terry Crawford-Browne for more than six years, and dishing out a few of his own, but now he wants the Cape High Court to play referee. "If you want to box, box above the belt, and all we say is, we want Queensbury rules," Manuel’s advocate, Brian Pincus, told Judge André le Grange.

DA mayor of Cape Town Helen Zille complained to Intelligence Minister Ronnie Kasrils on Thursday about the alleged illegal bugging of her private home. Zille told the Mail & Guardian she was confident of a link between the alleged surveillance and the probe instituted by Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool into claims that the DA illegally spied on city councillors.