At 3.30pm on Tuesday, President Thabo Mbeki did what he has been trying to for a long time. He began the process of firing deputy health minister Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge. Summoned to the Union Buildings on Tuesday afternoon in Pretoria, Madlala-Routledge was asked to resign.
The Special Browse “Mole” Report, dismissed by the presidency as the product of a campaign by discredited “information peddlers”, in fact draws on sources who have given state agencies crucial intelligence in the recent past. The report outlines evidence that the Angolan intelligence establishment planned covertly to support former deputy president Jacob Zuma in his presidency bid.
The highly regarded head of the government’s Aids unit, Nomonde Xundu, resigned but withdrew her notice pending negotiations with the health department’s director-general Thami Mseleku. Four sources within government and civil society confirmed independently that Xundu was on her way out.
Cape Judge President John Hlophe may have violated South Africa’s anti-corruption laws by taking payments from financial services firm Oasis. Two senior advocates and four other legal professionals told the Mail & Guardian that Hlophe may be vulnerable to prosecution under the Prevention and Combating of Corrupt Activities Act.
You wouldn’t know it if you visited Barry Aaron’s Sandton law offices, but South African courts have been setting some fine precedents on how press freedom functions within the carefully poised architecture of the Bill of Rights. Nevertheless, Aaron’s clients pay to keep him in the tawdry pastiche of Nelson Mandela Square, writes Nic Dawes.
National police commissioner Jackie Selebi and his top managers leased a luxury executive jet at police expense to attend an Interpol Africa regional conference in the resort town of Arusha, near Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania last week. A source close to the aircraft charter company said the South African Police Service delegation made use of a Gulfstream 3 executive jet and revealed the bill for the trip was about R500 000.
National Intelligence Agency files come in Manila folders that get softer with handling. There is space on the front to list the people authorised to open them, and a detailed routing form to record their passage through the agency. ”GEHEIM–SECRET”, they say in smudged red capitals, while red corners warn of dangerous contents even when they are racked in the archive.
If Mbulelo Goniwe wants to get his parliamentary salary back, it will not be enough to sue the legislature; he is going to have to take the ANC to court, too. “Members of the National Assembly are members of the National Assembly at the instance of their respective political parties [and] they serve at the pleasure of their parties. The speaker [of the National Assembly] has got nothing to do with it,” Judge James Yekiso told Ntsiki Sandi, Goniwe’s counsel.
Cape Judge President John Hlophe misled the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) and the public over money he took from an asset management firm, new evidence indicates. The Mail & Guardian has obtained discovery documents that the Oasis financial services group was required to file in its aborted defamation suit against Judge Siraj Desai.
Mail & Guardian cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro – better known as Zapiro – is this year’s winner of the Cartoonist’s Rights Network International’s (CRNI) Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award. The gong is handed out to a cartoonist who chooses to ”express truth to power”, despite being ”threatened by terrorists, government officials or affiliated goon squads”.