A mystery hangs over the sudden departure of the Director General of Water Affairs and Forestry, Jabu Sindane, from his office this week. Employees at the department were shocked when they arrived in their office on Monday, to be met with a message stating that Sindane had resigned on Friday.

The town with the highest known rates of foetal alcohol syndrome in the world is De Aar, which is roughly in the centre of South Africa in the country’s largest and most sparsely populated province. New research has confirmed that at least 12 out of every 100 children in the Northern Cape town have been damaged by alcohol while in their mother’s womb.

The Water Research Commission has published a controversial report showing that one of Tshwane’s main water sources is heavily polluted with toxic chemicals, but it has apparently been ”doctored” on the orders of a Tshwane metro official. The commission is a scientific body that reports to the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry.

When South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) boss Dali Mpofu led the public broadcaster to quit the South African National Editors’ Forum last week in protest against the ”profit-driven” media’s treatment of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, he neglected to mention a commercial interest that might have clouded his own judgement.

Jimmy Manyi, chairperson of the Commission for Employment Equity and president of the Black Management Forum (BMF), hit headlines this week after he proposed to Parliament that white women should be struck off a list of groups recognised by the employment-equity legislation as previously disadvantaged.

What’s in the top-secret report that former spy boss Billy Masetlha finally got his hands on this week? The National Intelligence Agency will not say what is in the report. Through the state prosecutor, the agency opposed Masetlha’s request for access to the document to support his defence against a fraud charge.

The surprise resolution of the case of Gerhard Wisser — the South African resident implicated in a secret ring of nuclear technology smugglers — has paved the way for further international trials of people involved in the so-called ”Khan network”. The trial of Wisser and his co-accused, Dieter Geiges, was expected to last up to three years.

A week into the floor-crossing period, the African National Congress’s power goes unchallenged. In the defection period that is killing off smaller opposition parties such as the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the United Independent Front, a low-intensity war is raging in Cape Town.

Things have gone distinctly pear-shaped in South Africa’s two most prized mediation subjects — the Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi. Governments put in place in both these countries as a result of South African-brokered peace processes last week saw a repeat of bodies in the streets and floods of refugees.