Consternation, alarm mixed with quickly suppressed delight, has arisen in African National Congress ranks at the announcement that Minister of Environment, Tourism and Political Hypocrisy, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, is to enter the race for the presidency of South Africa.
The International Space Station (ISS) is missing and nobody is terribly sure where it has gone. In an extraordinary press conference at Cape Canaveral this week, Nasa admitted that the last communication from the two astronauts on board was more than 48 hours ago and was said to be: “Hey, what’s going on? You guys didn’t say you were sending a shuttle.”
Two of South Africa’s most intriguing murder/suicide cases lie closer to being resolved, due to information gathered from documents that have come into the hands of this publication in recent days. The names of these two high-profile South African patriots, Brett Kebble and Hansie Cronje, have never before been linked in any substantial way — until now.
Startling but positive recommendations from the special elimination of Discriminatory Terms and Phraseology Committee, appointed in April last year by President Thabo Mbeki, have been published and will be approved in Parliament during its next session. The recommendations are that the words “black” and “white”, where used in a negative manner, be expunged from official communications.
The Department of Education has announced that the next and necessary phase of its futuristic policy will be introduced on a trial basis during the second half of this year. The new phase is called Incomes-Based Education and will be exactly what it sounds like. The more the learner pays, the more the learner gets taught.
In an unexpected move that caught political commentators on the back foot, President Thabo Mbeki made a surprise visit to South Africa last Wednesday. His unannounced arrival was leaked to <i>Not the Mail & Guardian</i> by a part-time hangar-sweeper at the South African Air Force base at Swartkops, outside Tshwane.
A startling revelation in a cellphone photograph has been e-mailed to <i>Not the Mail & Guardian</i>. It would seem that the controversial businessman Brett Kebble was not in fact murdered late last year. A man believed to be Kebble has been spotted living it up on what are generally believed to be his ill-gotten gains at a small but exclusive holiday resort on the Caribbean island of St Joseph.
In a move typical of its bold and uncompromising style of African National Congress leadership, a convicted fraudster has been appointed to the Cabinet. Prisoner number 456788/98, Mbelikanqa Moujamgabale, currently serving a 33-year sentence for corruption, theft and fraudulently impersonating a tax collector, is the new deputy minister of local government.
Nasa is to rotate the moon through 180°. “We are doing this for entirely scientific reasons,” said Nasa senior director, Dr Lytton J Vasselberg, “but there will be certain aesthetic advantages as well.” Scheduled to begin in June 2007, a series of explosions will slowly rotate the lunar planet over a series of years.
A Freedom Front Plus (FF+) motion to have all Cabinet members confined to Robben Island for a period of 10 years before they take up their appointments was defeated in Parliament this week. Griep du Pisanie of the FF+ had tabled the motion with what he termed the best of intentions.