ANC President Thabo Mbeki’s call to the South African Communist Party to carve out its own path and leave the ANC to its own devices has created a new dilemma for the SACP’s leadership, which is battling to contain a strong drive within the party for it to contest the elections on its own.
The story of Cuban fugitive Nelson Pablo Yester-Garrido has all the elements of a spy thriller, including spies, submarines, fast cars, Russian mobsters, arrests, escapes and a strip club. Yester-Garrido, now 47, was arrested in 2002 in Johannesburg by police acting on an Interpol warrant.
A once infamous canned-lion breeding farm has been revamped to serve as a sanctuary for predators bred in captivity. Camorhi Game Lodge, at one time a venue of choice for the canned-lion hunting industry, has been renamed Lionsrock and will be the new home of hundreds of lions scheduled to be put down.
Three weeks of violent clashes between street vendors and police have revealed divisions between trader organisations and the hypocrisy of the Informal Traders’ Management Board, which has been instrumental in calling for a boycott of proposed permit rates increases.
Most people get perhaps one chance in a lifetime to make a truly grand entrance. Not so Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, the Ijaw leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force who was released on bail and returned to Port Harcourt in late June after spending 20 months in detention on charges of treason. Asari was arrested in 2005 after he said during a newspaper interview that he would work for the break-up of Nigeria.
Predictions that the African National Congress (ANC) would shift its policies leftwards were confirmed by the outcomes of the commissions at the ANC policy conference on strategy and tactics this week. The ANC will formally adopt the interventionist strategies that the state has been taking recently.
An urgent revamp and strengthening of the powers of the South African Geographical Names Council and its provincial committees may be the tonic for divisive municipal street renaming processes. In Durban, the process has been marred by violent protest, political bickering and a DA legal challenge to the eThekwini municipality.
The Mail & Guardian has identified a notorious international fugitive as part of Glenn Agliotti’s former circle of intimates — adding a new twist to the probe of Agliotti’s relationship with police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi. Antonio Lamas, as he was then known, joined the group around Agliotti in the late 1990s.
The Western Cape department of health has refused to reinstate the Khayelitsha healthcare workers who were dismissed on June 11 during the public strike, despite high court Judge Siraj Desai’s ruling that healthcare facilities be restored to a functional state. If an agreement is reached with National Education Health and Allied Workers’ Union the department will be obliged to reinstate the workers.
Attackers fired a rocket on Friday at a plane carrying Côte d’Ivoire Prime Minister Guillaume Soro as it landed at an airport, killing at least three people, but Soro survived, a top adviser told the media. The plane was landing at Bouake in the centre of the strife-torn country, Soro’s stronghold, when it came under attack.