Severe governance upheavals at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) have prompted the intervention of Minister of Education Naledi Pandor. But some members of the DUT council fear the minister could dilute or even halt a forensic audit into alleged financial irregularities, and possible fraud, involving more than R150-million.
Treatment of HIV/Aids, including the provision of anti-retroviral drugs, will now be available to inmates of Durban’s Westville Prison after a Durban High Court ruling by Judge Thumba Pillay. Fifteen HIV-positive prisoners had taken the prison and the departments of health and correctional services to court to force them to fulfil their constitutional and legal obligation to provide treatment.
A land reform project in Worcester is on the brink of collapse after nature and bureaucracy conspired against the 52-strong community. They say the Land Bank has been a major cause of their woes. "We’ve been able to keep other creditors at bay, but the bank is demanding its pound of flesh," said community member Niklaas Prins.
Always an unconditional supporter of the African National Congress, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has for the first time publicly mooted an independent future and a different political mate. In a path-breaking document released last week, the organised working class is presented with five visions of its political future.
Zimbabwe’s three major milling companies have switched off their milling plants because of a serious shortage of grain in the country, Zim Online reported on Friday. ”There is nothing at major millers. We have not been milling for two weeks now,” said an official at a Harare milling company.
The budget for Oliver Stone’s forthcoming movie about the September 11 attacks, starring Nicolas Cage, is -million. So it does not bode well that Paramount Pictures, the studio behind it, is worried that a 12-minute student art project, distributed free on the web, might be confused with the real thing.
The African National Congress has embarked on its most sweeping recovery plan since it took power in 1994, aimed at winning back the hearts and minds of members pushed to the brink of rebellion by the party’s leadership divisions. The party is on an all-out charm offensive to rejuvenate policy and ideological debate at the level of branches to break down the obsession about personalities that has gripped the party.
<i>Stille waters, diepe grond</i> (Still waters, deep ground), runs the Afrikaans saying, but perhaps not in this case. In a move likely to heighten the row over Western Cape farm evictions, a farm workers’ compound on businessperson Christo Wiese’s Stellenbosch wine estate, Lourensford, has been converted into a set for an Afrikaans TV comedy series about pensioners.
"I was invited to join the Native Club last week, so that should put paid to all those horrible rumours that the Native Club is racist, ie for black intellectuals only. I know that to many a blacks-only thing sounds terribly familiar, but in a democratic multiracial society, we have the right to decide," writes Gogo Evita Bezuidenhout.
Thank you for your application to join the newly formed intellectual <i>esprit de corps</i>, The Native Club. As expected there has been an overwhelming response to the formation of this provocative new cerebral delegation. In announcing The Native Club, our honourable President, Thabo Mbeki, said it should be an association of the very cream of African intellectuals.