A Pretoria magistrate has criticised the senior Scorpions officer in charge of the probe into massive fraud and corruption at the Mpumalanga Economic Empowerment Corporation for protecting his subordinate Cornwell Tshavhungwa who was convicted of fraud this week.

PetroSA is finally taking Imvume to court for defaulting on its Oilgate debt -– but the oil parastatal will let Imvume off the hook for millions of rands in interest owed. Previous attempts by PetroSA to recover the R18-million debt have been feeble. The parastatal justified its soft approach by saying that if Imvume were liquidated “there would be very little proceeds flowing into PetroSA”.

An international tug-of-war has erupted over a young lioness rescued from a Romanian zoo and sent to South Africa, only to disappear on a “canned” lion-hunting farm in the Free State. The feud over Frida, held captive at the infamous Camorhi Game Lodge in Bethlehem, is playing out against a furious row over government attempts to clamp down on canned hunting.

The beaches between Muizenberg and Gordons Bay are so treacherous that more than half of the total number of drownings in the Western Cape each year happen along this stretch of coastline. This summer, at least 14 people have been reported drowned in Cape Town, and hundreds more saved, with most near-drownings taking place on these beaches.

Johannesburg’s phenomenal growth rate is the reason why, from this week, you have to punch in an area code every time you make a call. Of the eight million fixed-line phone numbers available for allocation to Johannesburg residents, only 800 000 are still unallocated — not the most desirable of circumstances for the launch of Neotel, the second fixed-line operator.

President Thabo Mbeki this week came under fire when he said that, contrary to popular perceptions “crime was under control”. This week the South African Institute of Race Relations released statistics that showed Mbeki was right in some areas and wrong in others.

Turmoil is set to continue in the upper echelons of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) after two senior academics vowed this week to take legal action against the university. This follows the UKZN council’s announcement recently of a tribunal’s findings into allegations of sexual harassment against its two top officials, council chair Vincent Maphai and vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba.

Relationships between the African National Congress and the British government, a passionate marketing agent for BAE, go way back. So do political and military relations between South Africa and the United Kingdom, which maintained strong security links with the apartheid state.

As Zimbabwe’s disgruntled doctors and nurses continue their strike over low salaries and poor working conditions, concern is growing about how the prolonged stayaway is affecting HIV-positive patients.