The downfall of Jim Miller, a British-born technology salesman, may be his frankness. When a partner objected to his large expense claims, he admitted to paying what amounted to kickbacks. Miller started working for a United States technology company in South Africa in 1974. When it divested he set up local operations to fill the gap.

An IT group close to the Inkatha Freedom Party has been implicated in a web of corruption spanning the outsourcing of a university’s IT functions and a controversial tender to monitor ”corner shop” gambling machines in KwaZulu-Natal.

AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) ”could arguably be in violation of the arms embargo” on the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo says a new United Nations report. The report alleges that the multinational provided housing for a rebel leader and paid the rebel group ”taxes”. The rebels, Front Nationaliste et Intégrationniste, control the area around the Kilomoto gold concessions being explored by AGA.

The 62 fraud charges against the mining magnate were thrown out of Johannesburg Regional Court on Wednesday by Magistrate Vivien Hawkins, who agreed with the defence that Kebble’s constitutional right to a speedy trial had been infringed by repeated postponements since his November 2002 arrest.

As latter-day Randlord Roger Kebble prepares finally to enter the dock in his much delayed fraud trial, allegations have emerged of a campaign, conducted by his family and associates, of financially inducing witnesses. Some evidence points to Willem Heath, the former judge who once headed the corruption-busting Special Investigating Unit, having played a less than proper role in the rough-and-tumble that followed Kebble’s arrest in November 2002.

In a study of five transitional democracies, South Africa has fared worst in providing citizens with access to information. And the Presidency was among a handful of institutions that failed to provide any information in response to requests filed under the country’s much-vaunted Promotion of Access to Information Act.

Gerhard Wisser, the German-South African who is a key suspect in an international nuclear technology smuggling network, was a supplier to apartheid’s nuclear weapons programme, the Mail & Guardian has been told. Wisser was arrested in Germany on August 25 on charges of ”aiding the attempted development of atomic weapons”, but released on bail.

South Africa is in advanced negotiations to get oil exploration rights from the government of Equatorial Guinea. The impending deal will expand the foothold of PetroSA, the South African state oil company, in the booming Gulf of Guinea. But it raises the question: Has the promise of oil lucre clouded the government’s judgement in helping a country with a dismal human rights record prosecute the mercenaries who wanted to topple President Teodoro Obiang Nguema?