The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will ask the government to withdraw its ambassador from Israel in solidarity with the people of Palestine, its president, Willie Madisha, said on Wednesday. He was speaking after Cosatu held a meeting with Palestinian activist Leila Khaled in Johannesburg.
African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma’s family reacted with shock on Tuesday to reports that his first wife’s name has been used in a 419 scam e-mail. Nephew Michael Zuma, in Nkandla, said: ”What? She doesn’t even have a computer. She has a phone, but she can’t even send SMSs.”
The editor of the Mail & Guardian newspaper, Ferial Haffajee, was elected chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum (Sanef) at its annual general meeting in East London on Monday. Thabo Leshilo, editor of the Sowetan newspaper, was elected deputy chairperson.
The South African Medical Association has called for an investigation into the release — by the director general of health — of a consignment of anti-Aids food supplements from the Dr Rath Health Foundation. The <i>Mail & Guardian</i> reported on Friday that the consignment allegedly contained a scheduled substance.
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Jacob Zuma, South Africa’s former deputy president, took aim at the media on Monday, suing publishers, editors, reporters, a cartoonist and newspapers for their coverage and comment of his rape trial. The defamation claims run into hundreds of millions of rands, much of it directed at reporters and editors of Independent Newspapers.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) defended its withdrawal of an "unauthorised" documentary on President Thabo Mbeki in a full-page newspaper advertisement on Saturday. "At no stage was any pressure, political or otherwise, exerted on our editorial or legal staff," read the public broadcaster’s advert.
According to the National Youth Victimisation Study 2005, 4,3-million youngsters were assaulted, robbed or sexually assaulted — or fell victim to other crimes such as housebreaking, theft or car hijacking — in the year since September 2004.
”If South Africa wants to send me back to Zimbabwe it would be a death sentence,” former Zimbabwean opposition MP Roy Bennett told the Mail & Guardian Online in Johannesburg on Tuesday. Bennett fled to South Africa in March after being implicated in an arms find in Mutare, eastern Zimbabwe.
The African National Congress on Monday defended President Thabo Mbeki’s leadership style. ”Statements about tendencies towards dictatorship and the centralisation of powers within the ANC and government presidencies … are not borne out by reality,” ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe told a press briefing in Johannesburg.
This week the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> reveals National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi’s links to shadowy figures associated with slain businessman Brett Kebble. Our investigation, which began before Kebble’s death, has revealed a web of relationships connecting Selebi to Clinton Nassif, a Kebble security operative, and Glenn Agliotti, who worked with Kebble on a series of hush-hush projects.