Cape Town

Over 60% of the Jali Commission’s recommendations have either been or are in the process of being implemented by the Department of Correctional Services, Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour said on Monday. Briefing the media at Parliament, Balfour said he welcomed the commission’s findings and recommendations, as they affirmed the department was on the right track.

Fourteen current and former African National Congress MPs were convicted and fined on Monday after pleading guilty to theft and fraud charges stemming from abuse of parliamentary travel vouchers. The sentencing, carried out in the Cape High Court in terms of plea-bargain agreements with the Scorpions, came only a day ahead of their next scheduled court appearance in the case.

There will be ”far-reaching negative consequences” if government abandons the willing-buyer, willing-seller approach to land reform, the Democratic Alliance (DA) warned on Monday. The party was reacting to media reports that government is considering radical changes to its land-reform policy.

Criminals are exploiting South Africa’s liberation for their own gain and therefore the battle to curb crime needs full community participation, like the liberation struggle, Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula said on Friday. ”Our liberation, as the case has been in other parts of the world, created spaces that have been exploited by wrongdoers.”

Cape Town mayor Helen Zille has accepted Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi’s invitation to a meeting next week to resolve the city council dispute and wants to have the matter resolved quickly, South African Broadcasting Corporation radio news reported on Thursday.

Top parliamentary officials are ignoring their own policy guidelines to protect African National Congress chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe from court action aimed at getting him to pay maintenance for two children he fathered. The Sheriff of Cape Town has repeatedly requested permission from the legislature to serve Goniwe with a summons to appear in the Bedford maintenance court.

The Sudanese government must be convinced to accept the deployment of a United Nations force in its war-torn western region of Darfur, South Africa said on Thursday. ”All efforts must continue to be made to try to convince the government of Sudan that it is in the interests of everybody that we blue-hat the African Union forces,” Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Aziz Pahad said.

South African President Thabo Mbeki has dismissed as ”mischief” suggestions that he was involved in arms-deal corruption. In the National Assembly on Thursday the president was asked by United Democratic Movement president Bantu Holomisa about ”repeated insinuations” that he had been involved in meetings with arms-deal bidders ”at a critical time of the tender process” involving South Africa’s arms deal.

If South African President Thabo Mbeki had met high-ranking executives of a French arms company — when he was still deputy president — that would not have been problematic, Public Enterprises Minister Alec Erwin said on Thursday. Asked why the president was himself not responding to the questions arising about this possible meeting, Erwin said he was ”sure the president will address that”.

The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) is still investigating whether there are grounds to impeach Cape Judge President John Hlophe, it announced on Wednesday. This quashed speculation that a decision might be made known on Wednesday. In a statement the JSC said it had considered a complaint against Hlophe by African Christian Democratic Party MP Steve Swart.

The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) has voiced its concern about the current spate of personal attacks within the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions alliance. ”NUM is worried about the potential of reducing broad and genuine matters of policy debate to personal mudslinging,” general secretary Frans Baleni said.

The two former joint chief executives of LeisureNet went to ”great lengths” to cover up what the state claims is an unlawful kickback on a deal concluded by the company, the Cape High Court has been told. The submission was made by the prosecution team in heads of argument handed in on Tuesday as it began its closing submissions in the trial of Peter Gardener and Rod Mitchell.

The Cape High Court on Tuesday dismissed an application to strike from the roll the case against an actuarial assistant accused of beating and stabbing his ex-girlfriend to death. Fred van der Vyver (24) is charged with the murder of Stellenbosch University student, Inge Lotz, who was allegedly beaten to death with a hammer and stabbed in March last year.

If he had the money, he would sue the Sunday Times for the story ”ANC chief in R50m get-rich-quick deal”, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) head of the Presidency Smuts Ngonyama said on Monday. Speaking on Tim Modise’s show on Cape Talk 567/Radio 702, he said: ”I see they don’t say how many shares were given to me and how many shares were sold … ”