Cape Town

Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Brigitte Mabandla has until January 15 to file her submissions with the Ginwala commission of inquiry into National Director of Public Prosecutions Vusi Pikoli. According to the rules and timeframes for the inquiry, Pikoli has until January 31 to do the same.

Controversial African National Congress (ANC) veteran Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has proposed ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma become South Africa’s president in 2009 and that a ”solution” be found for the legal difficulties confronting him. According to a statement issued by her office, Madikizela-Mandela on Wednesday spelled out her ”intervention proposal”.

The City of Cape Town on Wednesday released details of its plans for a multimillion-rand ”facelift” for the historic Greenmarket Square — South Africa’s second-oldest public square. The square, in the heart of Cape Town’s central business district, turns 300 on March 10 2010.

There is no longer any excuse for any country to ignore climate change and South Africa will contribute its fair share, Environmental Affairs Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said on Wednesday. Speaking at the United Nations climate-change conference in Bali, he said 12 years after the Kyoto Protocol the world was faced with further alarming scientific findings.

Nationwide Airlines is gradually resuming its operations, with three of its 17 aircraft already back in service. The airline’s Boeing 767-300 service to London, which resumed last week, is operating as normal and two of its 737-500 aircraft are now being used on domestic flights, company spokesperson Charmaine Thome said on Wednesday.

The assertion by the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs that all is well at the Land Bank and there has been significant progress in the past three months ”does not fly”, the Democratic Alliance (DA) said on Tuesday. It is common knowledge that ”the situation at the Land Bank has been all but rosy,” DA spokesperson Kraai van Niekerk said.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu accused the United States and Britain on Monday of pursuing policies like those of South Africa’s apartheid-era government by detaining terrorism suspects without trial. He said the detention of suspected al-Qaeda members at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay was a ”huge blot on a democracy”.

An elderly British tourist found dead after a fire on Table Mountain could have died of a heart attack, the doctor who did the post-mortem examination conceded on Monday at the trial of British national Anthony Cooper, who is alleged to have started the fire in January last year by tossing a burning cigarette butt on to dry grass.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, together with former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and Graça Machel, wife of former South African president Nelson Mandela, on Monday launched a human rights campaign marking the 60th year since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The prospect of African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma becoming president is profoundly concerning, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille said on Monday at a press conference at Parliament to release the DA’s annual ”report card” on the performance of Cabinet ministers.

As the African National Congress prepares for its elective conference in Polokwane on December 16, satirists have not run short of gags designed to cut the party’s members down to size. ”The satirist in South Africa today has become probably more of a psychiatrist than an entertainer,” says comedian Pieter-Dirk Uys.