‘Maybe it was the stress of the land claim, but the cancer spread like wildfire and when he died his brother just wanted to get out of farming. He went to start a business in Ballito and now I manage his [100ha] farm. That’s four farms I run now.” So says Preggie Naicker, a sugar-cane farmer in Doringkop, outside KwaDukuza on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast.
What was meant to be a R9,5-million splurge by the eThekwini municipality to seduce football’s big-wigs during the Fifa World Cup Preliminary draw in November last year is turning into a fiasco riddled with own goals. The Mail & Guardian has learned that the head of the eThekwini metropolitan council’s strategic projects unit, overturned the appointment of service providers for the two Fifa-sanctioned functions hosted and paid for by the city.
Ike’s Books and Collectables still has stalwart supporters among bibliophiles, writes Niren Tolsi.
Perhaps eThekwini Municipal mayor Obed Mlaba had winged it into the nearby Nando’s franchise on Durban’s West Street to douse an out-of-control grill. Or perhaps the “emergency” was to quell a rumbling paunch made increasingly sizeable by official dinners.
With a R17-million mansion and a fleet of top-end sports cars and sports utility vehicles in the driveway, all under the watchful eye of armed guards, Durban Metro Police officer S’bu Mpisane is living a life straight out of a hip-hop music video. But there are more questions than answers about his lavish lifestyle.
Jacob Zuma has a new defender, perhaps even more embarrassing than the army of praise-singers the ANC has been struggling to bring under control. Zuma’s polygamy “is part of African culture”, writes Dr Moss Mashamaite in his self-published apologia, The Moving Finger Writes – Jacob Zuma.
With the arms freighter An Yue Jiang reportedly returning to China, the Zimbabwean military is being forced to review how it ships arms to the country. The South African Press Association reported that the ship had set off home. It had run up against a High Court interdict in South Africa and the threat of trade union ”blacking” action at ports throughout the region.
The beautiful game played a vital role in raising morale on Robben Island. Now a new film looks at sport and struggle, writes Niren Tolsi.
Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini sat glowering in a corner of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature in Pietermaritzburg this week as his R39,3-million royal household budget for the next financial year was debated by members of provincial parliament.
Durban businessman Sifiso Zulu has, over the past two weeks, become the city’s Scarlet Pimpernel. But, unlike the Pimpernel, rumours circulating in the city suggest that Zulu may need the intervention of friendly political aristocrats, rather than the other way around.