A little-known South African firm that once had a shot at the oil sector big league has found itself embroiled in one of the United States’s most sensational corruption trials. Procura Financial Consultants, effectively dormant now, was a close corporation owned by five friends. It won, but then lost, preferential rights to some of West Africa’s most promising oil acreage, potentially worth billions.

Illegal farm evictions took centre stage at the South African Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) hearings this week in Johannesburg on labour conditions on the country’s farms. Yet some participants expressed immediate scepticism about whether the hearings would lead to any meaningful improvements for farm workers.

A group of Richtersvelders is trying to stop the Land Claims Court from making the settlement signed on April 22 with Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin an order of the court. After more than 10 years of legal battles fought against the government for restitution, as well as land and mineral rights, an agreement was signed between the community and Erwin, making the community a minority shareholder in present and future mining operations.

The ANC national executive committee decided in 2004 that the Merafong municipality be moved from Gauteng to North West. All subsequent public participation processes were, in effect, doomed from the start, court papers claim. These contentions were made in the Constitutional Court by Khutsong residents challenging President Thabo Mbeki to reverse the decision to incorporate the cross-border municipality of Merafong into North West.

The middle-class Avenues area on the northern peripheries of Harare’s city centre is a residential and commercial office zone with stark contradictions. One minute the sound of gunshots fills the morning air as police exchange fire with robbers; the next, church bells are tolling and harmonic voices are heard as women sing hymns in church and well-dressed middle-aged men and women walk to their offices.

General Pervez Musharraf’s strategy for survival has finally become clear, after months of political turmoil in Pakistan. He plans to quit as chief of the army staff, before taking the presidential oath — but only after he has been re-elected by the outgoing parliament.

The fierce morning heat was a memory. The afternoon haze had come and gone. It was the cool of dusk, with shadows stretching as the sun dipped below the Andes. And Hugo Chávez was still talking. The Venezuelan president had started at 11am, more than eight hours earlier — a new record.