Eastern Cape Premier Nosimo Balindlela has appointed a commission of inquiry into the province’s financial affairs, including maladministration, fraud and corruption in all state departments and parastatals. The announcement follows the arrest of provincial housing minister Neo Moerane-Mamase and her husband, former agricultural minister Max Mamase.
A paper trail leading to the suspension of a senior government official in the Eastern Cape government bolstered evidence that "[Premier] Nosimo Balindlela is using the state against particular comrades under the pretext of fighting corruption," Irvin Jim, regional secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, said this week.
Property mogul Norman Benjamin and his accountant Emiliya Peneva, at the centre of a R16-million empowerment scandal in the Eastern Cape, were arrested this week following a Mail & Guardian exposé. The Joint Anti-Corruption Task Team took Benjamin and Peneva into custody in Cape Town on Monday. They appeared in the city’s magistrate court charged with fraud.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) is to forge links with left-wing social movements in a move to reverse its waning influence in the tripartite alliance and to revitalise South Africa’s left. At a recent conference, the federation adopted an unprecedented resolution to work with the country’s burgeoning social movements to rescue the "fragmentation and attrition" of the left.
An earth tremor injured six miners one day before the earthquake that hit DRDGold’s North West operations on Wednesday, trapping 42 mineworkers underground. The National Union of Mineworkers is incensed about the quake and is blaming the mine management, which, said the union, has a "terrible health and safety record".
The Competition Tribunal last week approved the merger between Afrox Healthcare (Ahealth) and Bidco. This will shift a quarter of the private hospital market share into the hands of an empowerment consortium. The Mail & Guardian investigates the debilitating impact of cartels on the cost of private hospital treatment.
Another head has rolled in the Eastern Cape agriculture department, in what is widely viewed as a government purge of ”the good guys” amid an investigation into the controversial Kangela empowerment land deal. The department’s chief financial officer, Vusi Menzelwa, was suspended on Tuesday on 13 charges, some relating to Kangela.
With almost half the Cabinet comprising women, the face and shape of power has changed in South Africa. Many of the women lead the clusters, the groupings of individual ministries through which policy implementation increasingly takes place. The country is a world leader in female public representation and last week’s briefings by the full Cabinet provided an opportunity to assess their performance.
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/ 25 February 2005
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/197779/special_rep_icon_template.gif" align=left>Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has allocated the largest tranche of the Budget to the provinces — but National Treasury is to exert a much firmer grip on how provincial and local governments spend their money. A key reform introduced in this year’s budget is a change in the way social grants are funded.
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/ 25 February 2005
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With almost half of South Africa categorised as poor, the national Budget must be looked at for its impact on poverty. To what extent does it extend an effective social welfare net and how much tax relief is targeted at working-class families as opposed to the wealthy?