Zwelinzima Vavi does not seem to run out of hyperbole to illustrate what is wrong with the government’s economic policies. "It is like a doctor saying an operation has been successful when the patient is dead," he said to great laughter when addressing a youth rally in Mangaung in the Free State last Saturday.
ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma would not alter the broad parameters of South Africa’s economic policy, but believes the national treasury has usurped the people "as the driver of economic change" and that "participatory democracy" has foundered under President Thabo Mbeki.
Deaths in South Africa are rising, largely as a result of three illnesses linked to HIV and Aids, Statistics SA has disclosed. A Stats SA report, Mortality and Causes, released recently found that between 2004 and 2005 the number of recorded deaths increased by 3,3%. ”The first three leading underlying natural causes of death in 2005 were tuberculosis, influenza and pneumonia,” the report noted.
Stubborn, contradictory, a lame duck and surly. These are just some of the words used to describe Thabo Mbeki. But writer Ronald Suresh Roberts takes a different view. Roberts has mounted the first systematic defence of Mbeki’s controversial presidency in a persuasive analysis of the historical and global traditions behind many of Mbeki’s decisions.
Like the African National Congress’s (ANC) national general council two years ago, the party’s national policy conference in two weeks’ time looks set to be an explosive affair. In the run-up to the summit some ANC provinces and regions are making an early bid to eliminate President Thabo Mbeki from the leadership race.
South African Communist Party treasurer general Phillip Dexter has warned that a culture of ”revisionism, opportunism, ideological incoherence and factionalism” is consuming the party at the expense of its historical role as a leader of South Africa’s working class. In a hard-hitting paper Dexter writes: ”The party cannot claim to be the vanguard in the revolution when some in it are seen to compromise with and pander to tribalism.”
In the Free Republic of Aburiria, the fabled subject of Ngugi wa’Thiongo’s latest novel Wizard of the Crow, a nationwide queuing epidemic symbolic of a poverty-stricken nation whose basic needs are never met is fatally misinterpreted by The Ruler as a nefarious political conspiracy to usurp his power.
It is exactly six months before 5 600 delegates descend on Polokwane in Limpopo for the ANC’s 52nd national conference, when the election of South Africa’s future president lies in the hands of the 4 000 delegates with voting rights.
Delta Environmental Centre is at the forefront of shaping the environmental education and the attitudes of South Africa’s future generations to preserve our ecosystems and add practical weight to the catchphrase "sustainable development". Greening the Future judges awarded the environmental centre a merit award in the not-for-profit organisation category.
The latest spat between President Thabo Mbeki and Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi followed a meeting earlier this year in which Mbeki allegedly accused the labour federation leadership of behaving like “thugs and counter-revolutionaries”, according to Sdumo Dlamini, Cosatu’s vice-president.