Vicki Robinson
Guest Author
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/ 21 September 2007

North West ANC names its top six

The ANC leadership in the North West has, as expected, nominated President Thabo Mbeki to continue for another term as party president. Although the formal nomination process starts only in October, the provincial executive committee has released a list of its top six preferences to its regions and branches for discussion.

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/ 23 July 2007

The third way

Tokyo Sexwale’s star is on the rise. He has secured a foothold in at least four major provinces where senior party leaders have been lobbying for his election as ANC president. A “national coordinating committee”, led by Gauteng finance minister Paul Mashatile and national executive committee member Enoch Godongwana, has been meeting once a month since Sexwale announced in May that he would be available for nomination.

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/ 17 July 2007

Lessons of health and history

Told in the first person, Elias Masilela’s<b> Number 43 Trelawney Park KwaMagoga</b> (David Philip) puts a tragic, and in some ways nostalgic, human face to life in exile during the apartheid years. The book tells the story of 25 PAC and ANC members who passed through Number 43, Trelawney Park, writes Vicki Robinson.

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/ 13 July 2007

SACP goes back to the people

Emboldened by a resurgence of international communism and the ANC’s leftward shift, the South African Communist Party has proposed far-reaching constitutional amendments that it hopes will swing its position in the tripartite alliance from poor cousin to ruling coalition partner.

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/ 13 July 2007

Red Blade’s bourgeois life

SACP general secretary Blade Nzimande definitely does not lead the life of a ”horny-handed son of toil”. The Mail & Guardian understands that his salary is equivalent to that of deputy ministers, who earn between R700 000 and R800 000 a year. Nzimande lives in a large home in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Emmarentia and has been known to have up to four luxury vehicles in his garage.

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/ 8 July 2007

A bump on the road to Polokwane

Last week’s ANC policy conference brought to mind a traditional proclamation: The king is dead. Long live the king! However one interprets the minutiae of ANC pronouncements on the next leadership selection, three things can be said. First, Thabo Mbeki will not be South Africa’s president come 2009; second, the internecine war for the presidency of the ANC will continue right up to the last moment.

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/ 29 June 2007

ANC policy meet: Amandla ngawethu

Delegates at the African National Congress’s (ANC) policy conference this week seemed on course to ensure that President Thabo Mbeki’s legacy of centralising power in the Union Buildings would be eradicated through a series of policy changes set to return power to the ruling party’s mass base.