Three major publishers are taking the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education to court over its textbook selection procedures, less than two weeks before the start of the new school year. KwaZulu-Natal schools reopen on January 21.

‘Die wiel sal draai [The tide will turn].” The ominous words of Israelite Johan van Heerden echo through his simple house as he lights yet another Camel. Yolandi Groenewald spoke to two so-called Israelites to learn about Israel Vision, a sect that believes that non-whites are the ‘seed of Satan’.

Minister of Transport Dullah Omar has bowed to pressure from the taxi industry and delayed for four years the deadline by which taxi operators have to submit to new safety regulations. The pressure put on Omar represents a turnaround in the views of the taxi industry body, which had previously called for the programme of recaptitalisation and regulation to speed up.

The world knows them as the Boeremag, the rightwingers accused of wanting to assassinate Nelson Mandela and chase 30-million black people up the N1 to Zimbabwe. But they are also the husbands, sons, brothers and friends of people who believe in them and love them.

The University of Transkei (Unitra) is ”appalled” at Minister of Education Kader Asmal’s announcement this week that the name of the institution to be formed by its merger with Border Technikon and Eastern Cape Technikon will be the ”Eastern Cape University of Technology”.

Vista University will take Minister of Education Kader Asmal to court in an attempt to resolve disagreements over crucial details of merger plans, which have been in contention for two years. The court action threatens to delay the country’s largest tertiary merger.

South Africa cannot afford to stall land reform and the government is committed to meeting its 2015 deadline of redistributing a third of white-owned commercial agricultural land to black owners, said Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza at AgriSA’s annual congress in Bloemfontein two weeks ago.

Limpopo tomato giant ZZ2 will this week begin the process of reinstating hundreds of workers it fired in April after they went on strike. This comes after the company’s CEO, Tommy van Zyl, reached a settlement with the dismissed workers in Polokwane last Monday.

The Zimbabwean government is investigating illegal hunting by South Africans in the south of the country. A damning report on illegal hunting compiled by wildlife activists including the Zimbabwe Wildlife Task Force has been released. It named illegal South African hunters and their collaborators in government.

The minimum-wage law designed to protect farm workers has cost many of them their jobs and their living conditions have deteriorated, argued Blade Nzimande, general secretary of the South African Communist Party, in the party’s monthly Internet newsletter, Umsebenzi,.