A forensic investigation into the disappearance of about R1-billion in Fidentia investors’ funds will begin in earnest as co-curators Dines Gihwala and George Papadakis delve into the company’s transactions. The two have been provisional curators since February 1.
Cosatu and the South African Communist Party’s strategy for getting ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma into the hot seat is to swell the ranks of the ANC. Once elected with the left’s support the allies believe that Zuma will be more amenable than President Thabo Mbeki to a radical programme of social change.
Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri has moved to remove South African Post Office CEO Khutso Mampeule, dubbed “Mr Clean” for his robust campaign against procurement sleaze. Mampeule’s cancellation of contracts at the parastatal, among them a controversial R100-million deal to revamp branches, earned him powerful enemies and soured relations with his board.
The most vital of the government’s growth initiative Asgisa’s aims is job creation as it has pledged to cut joblessness in half by 2014. The Mail & Guardian sought to find out from South Africa’s leading labour market economists if Asgisa is on track to live up to its pledge.
The state has launched an extraordinary bid for a secret trial of two South African residents accused of being part of an international network of nuclear technology smugglers. The move is portrayed as vital to prevent the dissemination of information that would allow rogue states to develop nuclear weapons, but the blackout seems as much designed to protect the dirty secrets of South Africa’s nuclear past as to stop future proliferation.
With less than nine months to go before the ANC national conference, which will choose a new leadership, adversaries Jacob Zuma and President Thabo Mbeki are using very different strategies in their attempts to win support. Last weekend was a case in point.
A United States military tribunal at Guantànamo formally convicted Australian David Hicks on Friday on a charge of providing material support for terrorism. The tribunal’s judge accepted Hicks’s guilty plea as part of an agreement that limits his sentence to seven years, in addition to the five years he has already been detained at the Guantànamo prison.
ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma’s lifelong confidant and political ally, KwaZulu-Natal Finance Minister Zweli Mkhize, has defended Zuma, saying the former deputy president was capable of leading South Africa and taking the ANC into its centenary. In a no-holds barred briefing with newspaper editors in Durban, Mkhize said Zuma remained a strong and capable contender for the position of ANC president.
Grey-shoe and red-tape salary structures in the public service are set to be dropped as government battles to fill vacancies. Gone are the days of rigid career progression and set-in-stone pay scales, says Lewis Rabkin, spokesperson for Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi.
The fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo last week has thrown South Africa into the midst of that country’s most serious crisis since the elections last year. Amid heavy fighting between government troops and those loyal to former vice-president and presidential rival Jean-Pierre Bemba, Bemba last week sought refuge in the South African compound.