Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini sat glowering in a corner of the KwaZulu-Natal provincial legislature in Pietermaritzburg this week as his R39,3-million royal household budget for the next financial year was debated by members of provincial parliament.
This week a visibly angry African National Congress (ANC) secretary general Gwede Mantashe accused the Democratic Alliance, ”the recycled National Party”, of sharing with the Scorpions a common hatred for the ANC. He said the unit was full of apartheid security-branch operatives who still saw the ruling party as the enemy.
The restructuring of the African National Congress’s (ANC) head office and consolidation of the new party leadership is slowly taking shape. This week the Mail & Guardian has established that former ANC Youth League president Fikile Mbalula is to be appointed head of campaigns.
Imagine if Thabo Mbeki were as brave and as articulate as Barack Obama. Imagine if he were able to say about Robert Mugabe, as Obama did about his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, that while he disagreed with him, he would not renounce him: ”As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.”
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The draft Expropriation Bill will undermine property rights and could scare off foreign investors, the Freedom Front Plus (FF+) said on Thursday. The proposed Bill, tabled on Wednesday, also goes against United Nations guidelines on eliminating racial discrimination, said party leader Pieter Mulder in a statement.
President Thabo Mbeki must be relieved of his duties as mediator in the current impasse in Zimbabwe, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said in Johannesburg on Thursday. ”We want to thank President Mbeki for all of his efforts, but President Mbeki needs to be relieved of his duties,” he told reporters.
Former United States president Jimmy Carter met Gaza-based leaders of Islamist Hamas in Cairo on Thursday, defying US and Israeli criticism that saw him barred from visiting the Palestinian territory. Nobel Peace Prize-winner Carter is considered to be the architect of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty.
Opposition to a shipment of arms being offloaded in Durban and transported to Zimbabwe increased on Thursday when South Africa’s largest transport workers’ union announced that its members would not unload the ship. A government spokesperson said the country could not stop the shipment from getting to its destination.