The National Intelligence Agency’s counsel at the Khampepe commission, George Bizos, struck the right note this week on the question of oversight of the specialised crime-fighting unit, the Scorpions. If there were problems with controls over the Scorpions, Bizos argued, these could be specifically addressed, without the police having to swallow the unit — head, body and sting.
The trial of Saddam Hussein, scheduled to open on October 19, will almost certainly have to be postponed, a senior British official said recently. He said it would be difficult for the Iraqi administration to complete preparations in time. No agreement has been reached on basic requirements, such as whether the glass round the dock should be bullet-proof.
A government programme to provide primary-school children with free lunches has been launched in Nigeria, to encourage parents to educate their children — and to ensure that pupils learn effectively. It has become clear that poverty is still resulting in the exclusion of millions of children from the West African country’s education system.
The arrest of Moujahid Dokubo-Asari, the militant self-proclaimed leader of the Ijaw tribe, has threatened to turn the underlying tensions in the oil-producing Niger delta into a maelstrom of violence. After the arrest of Bayelsa State Governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha on money-laundering charges, many feared that the move would inflame tensions between the Ijaws and the Itsekiri.
More than R1-billion in empowerment deals funded by Brett Kebble’s JCI are in the balance as auditors pore over the company’s books to determine what actual value underpins the maze of transactions undertaken while Kebble was at the helm. Key investments by JCI in black empowerment companies include Matodzi Resources, Orlyfunt Investments, Inkwenkwezi, Lembede Investments and Masupatsela.
Four big terrorist attacks by locally recruited militants in three years — the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing, the 2003 bomb at the Jakarta Marriott hotel, last year’s bomb at the Australian embassy in Jakarta and last Saturday’s second Bali bombing — suggest not only incompetent security forces but something profoundly wrong with society.
While the ruling African National Congress has tried to take the vicious political battles in its midst behind closed doors, two key events this week reveal the storm beneath the calm. From the funeral of Brett Kebble in Cape Town to the first sitting of the Khampepe commission in Pretoria, the divisions and fissures in the ruling ranks were evident.
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An 11-year-old girl was allegedly made to watch acts of oral and simulated sex while spending a weekend with two Pretoria advocates in 2002, the city’s high court heard on Thursday. The girl was allegedly taken into a bathroom by the pair, where Cezanne Visser undressed and told the child to touch her breasts, according to a caregiver at the children’s home the girl attended.