Fikile Ntsikelelo Moya

"’So which part of the Eastern Cape are you from?’ I have come to accept this and ‘Why have you got a girl’s name?’ as questions I will never stop having to answer. They are a constant reminder of how much is assumed from names. After a decade of freedom, I surely have the right to say where my roots lie", writes the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.

The African National Congress in Mpumalanga appears to have finally shown controversial Ehlanzeni, Nelspruit, mayor Jeri Ngomane the door. ANC sources said Ngomane, dubbed the "Romeo mayor" because of his numerous wives and girlfriends, was found guilty on three out of four corruption charges following allegations published in the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>.

As the political sun appears to be setting for Jacob Zuma, the festive season could be a good time for the former deputy president to try his hand at kwaito. He is, after all, known for his penchant for breaking into song at the slightest excuse, and he has the voice. He can always call for assistance from kwaito star Eugene Mthethwa (he of Trompies fame), one of his friends.

It may never have been his intention, but Sizwe Nxasana, the incoming CEO of First Rand Retail, could very well be employment equity and black economic empowerment’s knight in shining black armour. Nxasana, better known for his seven-and-a-half-year stint as Telkom’s CEO, says he owes his rise to the measures put in place after 1994 to redress the race-based economic divide.

Former Legal Resources Centre director and KwaZulu-Natal Judge Chris Nicholson appears to be an early front-runner to hear the explosive Jacob Zuma corruption case, set down for next July. Law professionals, in what is still officially the Natal Division, say Nicholson’s name is frequently cited among the judges in the division who are seen as sufficiently senior to try the case.

A black executive of the Law Society of South Africa has taken the organisation to the Labour Court, accusing the society of racial and gender discrimination against her. Anna Mkwena, the society’s communications director, accuses the society and its offshoot, the Attorneys Fidelity Fund, of a range of discriminatory practices including bias in the issuing of home and car loans.

Apartheid victims’ organisation Khulumani Support Group will square off against the South African government next month in a New York court when Khulumani accuses various multinational corporations of having aided and abetted apartheid.
The South African government’s decision to appear as a "friend of the court’ on behalf of the corporations goes a step beyond the so-called "Maduna affidavit".

The clocks in the corridors of the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, where Benedict "Tso" Vilakazi is appearing on a rape charge, were not working this week. They have not for many years now. And it seems, as with the timepieces, time itself has stood still for Vilakazi. For the first time since he appeared on the soccer scene almost five years ago, Vilakazi finds himself a truly marked man.

The Limpopo education department can rebuild a Thabazimbi farm school that was mysteriously burnt down in July, the Pretoria High Court ruled recently. This comes after Johan Pienaar, the farmer on whose land the school stood, refused to have it rebuilt or to have temporary classrooms erected on his property.

Last weekend was a special one for Ras Uria, a Unisa law student and member of the Twelve Tribes (of Israel). It was the anniversary of the birth of Marcus Garvey, the African-American who advocated the return of the descendants of African slaves to Africa.

Richard Maponya’s face glows when he talks about his latest project, a new mall he says is the first one-stop shopping facility in Soweto. "This excites me more than anything else I have done. It will be an achievement of a dream and it will create so many job opportunities." If you didn’t know that the Maponya name is synonymous with black business, you might think that the mall is his first venture.

The Cape High Court has found the Cape Town municipality guilty of unfair discrimination after it refused to employ a diabetic as a fireman. The court, in the precedent-setting case, in July ruled that the council was wrong not to give John Murdoch (31), an insulin-dependent diabetic, a job if the only reason for the decision was that he suffered from the "type one" variety of the chronic illness.

Poor Ismail Ayob. Even if he wins, he loses — because his opponent is Nelson Mandela. And so Mandela’s court case against his former lawyer Ayob, who he accuses of abusing his name for commercial purposes, is as good as decided, at least, in the public mind. As an attorney, Ayob depends on his professional reputation to stay afloat.

The mayor of Ehlanzeni district municipality in Nelspruit, Jeri Ngomane, should be disciplined for his part in giving council tenders to his "wives", a forensic investigation ordered by the Mpumalanga department of local government and housing has recommended. The probe has confirmed that Ngomane had relationships with women who benefited from council tenders.

There are many elements to success in business. But some, like hard work, attention to clients’ needs and sheer drive, are universally applicable. Ciko Thomas, one of four directors of the first 100% black-owned BMW dealership, attributes the success of their 18-month-old business to these and an extra ingredient — naïvety.

Beggars and street vendors who thought the directive from the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) not to prosecute "poverty crimes" meant that they could go on with their business are mistaken. NPA head Vusi Pikoli this week said that the authority would be adopting a bias towards the poor and not prosecute crimes where the suspects were clearly driven by poverty.

On Thursday, Judge Molokomme, who has been appointed that country’s attorney general, declined to have an interview with the <i>Mail &Guardian</i>. "Journalists here know that I have an open-door policy towards the media. But I have refused to give interviews to the local media and they will kill me if I were to give it to you," she said with a cross-border warmness.

You could say Mbijane Ngubane lives on a golfing estate. In fact, her neighbour, Sibongile Jiyane, has a stream running past her front door. Yet both women cannot wait to move to a new settlement. Life at this golfing estate is nothing to envy. Property prices are rock-bottom and it has been too long since the grass was cut.

‘An educationist should never be made a minister of education, just like a military person should not be made minister of defence,” Kader Asmal, then water and forestry minister, told the Sunday Times in 1996. ‘They bring their own activist ideas, but there is more to it than that [activism].” President Thabo Mbeki, who has […]

Nobody is perfect. Not even Christ’s vicar could claim to be. So Pope John Paul II, who stepped into the shoes of St Peter, the man who denied Jesus Christ thrice, was only human. But he was the leader of the biggest Christian outfit in the world and, therefore, his actions rightly attract scrutiny. The pontiff had made his mind known with reference to women’s roles in the church

One of South Africa’s most senior judges, KwaZulu-Natal Judge President Vuka Tshabalala, has warned that some judges will consider returning to private practice if the government’s proposed Bills aimed at reining in errant judges becomes law.
Judge Tshabalala told the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> that colleagues told him they would quit the Bench if the draft laws were enacted in their current form.

A witches’ brew of grievances — including fees, transport costs, language demands and state plans to slash student numbers — underlines this week’s turmoil on newly merged campuses. Students and university managements clashed as police cracked down at the universities of Johannesburg, Pretoria and Tshwane.

Circles of black ash and wire that once were tyres, and rocks placed across the street to stop traffic from entering or leaving the township, speak of an explosion waiting to happen. At a meeting at Phomolong’s local library, the message is clear: the African National Congress is wrong, or is refusing to face facts, by demeaning the violence that rocked this part of the Free State as the work of seditious troublemakers.

The state’s continued opposition to the rights of same-sex couples is doomed to failure because of the stringent constitutional values relating to equality, say constitutional law experts. This week, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the common law definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman was unconstitutional.

If the supporters of Geoff Budlender, director of the Legal Resources Centre, left the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) hearings in Cape Town this week feeling their candidate had been harshly treated, perhaps they should meet Judge John Motata and advocate Majake Mabesele.

The words of Steve Biko — "Just like Jews know that if you forget that you are Jewish, a gentile will remind you; if you forget that you are black, a white man will remind you" — must be starting to ring true for black lawyers and newly appointed black judges. These lawyers are finding, right in the corridors of justice, that no matter how high they go or well-read they become, they will never shed the albatross of their blackness. So, what’s new?