The ANC has expelled its parliamentary chief whip, Mbulelo Goniwe, from the party and banned him from its activities for three years. Goniwe was accused of sexually harassing a 21-year-old administrative parliamentary assistant, who has now been named as Nomawele Njongo.

Democratic Alliance deputy leader Joe Seremane claims that he keeps in his car a list of senior blacks who would have formed the future leadership of the DA — all of whom have since left the party. DA leader Tony Leon has also said the party invested a lot in grooming black leadership, with few results. But why should they stay?

Political divisions in the SACP have exploded to the extent that a central committee member has described last weekend’s central committee meeting as a kangaroo court in which he was racially abused. The Mail & Guardian has obtained written correspondence between party leaders in which Gauteng provincial secretary Vishwas Satgar said he was ”politically murdered”.

Members of the South African Communist Party politburo have advised its secretariat to be less combative and to raise its differences with the alliance partners in a more ”strategic” manner. They raised concerns that the confrontational approach was plunging the party into ”unnecessary” conflicts with the ANC and its leadership.

Vacant: Sometimes impossible job with often impossible boss at under R1-million a year. This is an apt description of the post of director general (DG), the mandarins who sit atop national departments. The overriding theme of our first directors general report card is that it is a hard job to do. In the blushes of freedom, straight after 1994, these were coveted posts at the apex of a negotiated revolution.

The last ANC congress in Stellenbosch in 2002 signified a humiliating defeat for the leftists in the congress movement. None of the candidates they nominated for inclusion in the ANC’s national executive committee made the final list. The stage had been set a few months earlier when ANC president Thabo Mbeki called for the isolation and defeat of the “ultra leftists” in the movement.

The empty Kingsmead Cricket Stadium in Durban spoke volumes. A meeting to mark the centenary celebrations of Mahatma Gandhi’s pacifist movement had been successfully hijacked to embarrass President Thabo Mbeki. When the crowds heard that ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma was not going to address them, they booed and sang Zuma’s anthem, Umshini Wam, in the presence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

South Africa looks increasingly headed towards two centres of power, with Jacob Zuma assuming the ANC presidency, but releasing the country’s reins to a compromise candidate more acceptable to the general populace. Debate has already started in the ANC over a dual-power scenario.