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/ 12 September 2005
The National Development Agency (NDA) chief financial officer Pule Zwane has quit the organisation after the agency spent more than R1-million investigating him and paying him for sitting at home for two years. Zwane was suspended in October 2003 along with CEO Delani Mthembu for alleged corruption and mismanagement.
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/ 9 September 2005
When does political lobbying against an opponent become a political conspiracy? Put differently, if we accept that President Thabo Mbeki is opposed to Jacob Zuma succeeding him, is there evidence to suggest that he has improperly intervened to make sure Zuma is not the next president?
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/ 2 September 2005
The <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s Rapule Tabane put tough questions to the ANC’s head of the presidency, Smuts Ngonyama, about the crisis sparked by the axing of Jacob Zuma
Rallying behind former deputy president Jacob Zuma is a coalition of trade union, communist, youth and regional interests organised into the Friends of Jacob Zuma Trust. Borrowing the idea from the anti-apartheid struggle, the trust will raise funds from sympathetic business people and members. It plans a million-signature campaign as well as rallies and protests during Zuma’s October trial.
The <i>Mail & Guardian</i> this week reveals the key strategies of leading
tripartite alliance leaders for dealing with the trial of Jacob Zuma and the presidential succession. Senior leaders want to convince African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki and his deputy Zuma not to stand for election as party president and to find a compromise candidate to preserve unity in the ruling party.
If Independent Democrats deputy leader Themba Sono reverts to the Democratic Alliance, as suspected, the latest colour-change by this political chameleon should surprise no one. Sono is currently away in Australia on Gauteng legislature business and is expected back on Wednesday.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has announced the formation of a new extra-parliamentary movement with social groupings and civil society organisations to agitate for economic reforms favouring the poor. Fashioned after the United Democratic Front of old, the movement will be launched in Cape Town on August 22.
In Mandelaville, near Roodepoort, residents are literally in the dark as they wait for the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council to deliver on the promises of a better life it made when it relocated them from Diepkloof in 2001. Four years later, they still watch battery-operated TVs because there is no electricity.
Recently President Thabo Mbeki announced the appointment of a task force to push South Africa’s growth to 6%. He said he is considering importing skills, renewing focus on the labour market as a key constraint to achieving higher growth. However, it appears that the government has an inadequate grasp of exactly what skills it requires and where.
Everyone knows that kwaito music represents a popular township sound but, over the past few years, kwaito appears to have become a preserve of one township. Zola, widely regarded as the toughest neighbourhood in Soweto, has produced almost all of the current superstars of this genre.