Ferial Haffajee Author

In 23 days, the Jacob Zuma rape trial has shaken our world. Regardless of the outcome, we are in an altered state. The political damage is incalculable, with the ruling African National Congress now an openly divided and faltering movement. This has had a domino effect on the South African Communist Party and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

Schabir Shaik will tell the Durban High Court next week that there was nothing improper in his relationship with Deputy President Jacob Zuma, but that they were bound together by deeply personal ties of family and political struggle. Central to the fraud and corruption charges Shaik faces is the allegation that he had a corrupt relationship with Zuma, who facilitated contracts for Shaik’s company in return for bribes. Both Zuma and Shaik have disputed this.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-National&ao=123337">Politics of patronage</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=Insight-National&ao=123340">Zuma’s popularity undented</a>

A ground-breaking study by the United Nations Development Programme has sought to predict what life in Africa could be like by 2025. Contributions to the study came from more than 1 000 African thinkers. Their prognosis: four scenarios ranging from imminent doom to rapid modernisation and heightened prosperity.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s five-nation tour, which began in the island nations of Sao Tome and Principe, will end in South Africa this week. Lula will stay for just a day in South Africa, ending a week-long African tour that has taken him predominantly to Lusophone nations including Angola, Mozambique and Sao Tome and Principe.

South Africa has world-class financial architecture but faces the conundrum that the majority of the poor do not have access to these globally competitive financial services. With more than six in 10 South Africans classified as "unbanked", the challenge is to localise services while continuing to be globally competitive.

Less than one in three South Africans who need social grants get it, yet this week’s Cabinet <i>lekgotla</i> officially jettisoned a basic income grant (BIG) in favour of an expanded public works programme.

Deputy President Jacob Zuma this week went for the jugular as he staged a counter-attack against the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions and its chief Bulelani Ngcuka.

Since she took office in 1999, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has plunged the country into at least 13 crises about HIV/Aids, obscuring the Cabinet’s multibillion-rand efforts to end the damaging era of denial and confrontation.

Cabinet this week approved a black economic empowerment Bill, setting in motion the law that will give guidance and substance to the transfer of wealth.