A desire to know the identity of the judge who was to hear ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma’s fraud and corruption case last year may have motivated his associates to launch an intricate surveillance operation of KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala, who was making the appointment.
The state has hit back at John Stratton’s attempt to prevent his extradition from Australia to stand trial alongside Glenn Agliotti for the murder of Brett Kebble. Last month Stratton launched an urgent application in the high court in Pretoria to prevent the National Prosecuting Authority from lodging an extradition application with Australian authorities.
“Another storm is brewing,” says Marcus Balintulo, the new vice-chancellor of Walter Sisulu University, with a stoic forbearance that three months at the crisis-ridden institution appear to have already tested. He is referring to the staff demand of a 10% salary hike this year, but the comment is an equally apt description of the turbulence he faces in trying to ensure the university’s overall survival.
Insult has been added to injury for the 24-year-old woman who survived a horrific gang rape in a cell at the Volksrust police station last month. First the prosecution of the police on duty that night was bungled by poor investigation, now she is being forced to pay a R50 fine for public drunkenness.
Arbitrators have dismissed a claim by the SA Post Office for the return of R31-million it believes it overpaid on a project to revamp branches, saying the parastatal had only itself to blame. The arbitration ruling accentuates the breakdown of corporate governance at the post office — an issue also tackled by Communications Minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri.
Senior members of the Italian Mafia have obtained an interest in Namibia’s nascent diamond-cutting industry, using front companies to buy an existing but unused diamond-cutting and polishing licence, an 18-month-long investigation has revealed. Company documents show that the Italian criminal syndicate appears to have been aided and abetted in obtaining their licences by Sam Nujoma’s youngest son.
In June 2005, two days before the ANC’s National General Council (NGC), ANC deputy secretary Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele insisted to a sceptical media: “The NGC will not discuss the Zuma issue.” The matter was not on the agenda. It is now a fact of history that the NGC became the ultimate platform for ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said recently that the global tuberculosis epidemic may be leveling off, but this optimism is undermined by the reality of incomplete detection of the disease, high levels of mortality and poor information about the extent of drug resistant forms of the disease.
There is an ANC branch in Randburg named after the late Bram Fischer. Recently it held a gala dinner to celebrate being named the best performing ANC branch of the year. The branch takes its work seriously. It has an impressive recruitment programme in an area of Johannesburg not generally regarded as an ANC stronghold.
I nuzzled her downy cheek, sniffed her hair and held her close. I felt choked with anger. I wanted to howl. But instead, I smiled; I wanted my 22-month-old daughter to remember me that way. Then I stoically handed her over to my steely-eyed mother-in-law who delivered her to the adoption agency, writes Pat Devereaux.