Fikile Ntsikelelo Moya

A packet of chips and an empty two-litre bottle of Sprite in a plastic bag are still there. This is the site where Johannesburg’s most famous unknown man was found two weeks ago, the morning after paramedics refused to put him in their ambulance because he was too dirty, stinking and flea-ridden. Anonymity has replaced humanity on the streets of Johannesburg.

If the truth be told, President Thabo Mbeki did not need to go on the imbizo that ended in Mpumalanga’s Ga-Manoke village last week, to understand the concerns of his people. This is not to say that the president wasted his time. Nor does it mean that it is a futile exercise for people to meet their elected public officials. Each village and town has its own nuances and idiosyncracies, and the country’s number-one citizen can surely learn a thing or two by paying them a visit.

Gaye Derby-Lewis, the wife of one of the two men jailed for the murder of Chris Hani, is suing Minister of Safety and Security Charles Nqakula for about R1,4-million, alleging wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution. Derby-Lewis was arrested in November 2002 as part of a police crackdown on alleged Boeremag members or sympathisers. She spent a weekend in jail.

Meadowlands, Soweto, police have found a novel way of dealing with the high number of criminal cases withdrawn by complainants and the attendant sapping of staff morale. They have taken up 18 psychology interns from Rand Afrikaans University to help crime victims come to terms with their plight and make informed decisions about steps to take.

A mysterious fax suggesting that the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s recent stories about the alleged shenanigans in the Ehlanzeni District Municipality are motivated by a desire to attract advertising for the <i>M&G</i> is doing the rounds.
The fax suggests that the newspaper is part of a campaign to replace the incumbent mayor, Jeri Ngomane.

Nathaniel Pretorius, affectionately known as Nat or NP by those close to him, lived an interesting life, as the Chinese would say. Although the corpse is still missing, events in the last week have caused experts to presume Nat dead. The official presumption of Nat’s demise was made on Saturday by the curator of his estate, Kortbroek van Schalkwyk.

February 26 2004. Johannesburg. The date and place where the seeds of the ongoing match-fixing scandal in South African football were sown. The event was a meeting of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) executive committee — made up of club chairmen and other club officials — at the PSL headquarters in Doornfontein. The meeting was called to discuss a spate of bad refereeing decisions.

A Johannesburg civil engineering consulting company is suing the Gauteng department of transport and public works for R6-million in the Equality Court, arguing that the department still favours white over black firms. The case is one of the first in which a provincial government is being sued by a black company for not implementing an affirmative procurement policy.

Controversial Johannesburg lawyer Peter Soller would like to sue a judge whom he says defamed him. There’s just one snag: he first must get a colleague of the judge to give him the go-ahead. The disgraced lawyer is claiming that a judgement
made against him is defamatory.

The duplicity of humans never ceases to amaze me. Look at how all and sundry were willing to take up cudgels for an alien antelope, while they never so much as whimper when their fellow human beings are mocked, abused, exploited and then jailed because they are <i>makwerekwere</i> (aliens). Who said defending the rights of fellow humans is the sole preserve of outfits such as the Roll Back Xenophobia campaign?

Institutions mandated by the Constitution to "support constitutional democracy" — specifically the Public Protector and the Human Rights Commission (HRC) — should be merged to curb costs and spread their know-how, says former HRC chairperson Barney Pityana. However, the deputy chairperson of the Gender Commission believes there is still room for the organisations to exist separately.

The prospect of a South African city bigger than Los Angeles could be a reality as early as 2015, according to a report on the state of local cities. The South African Cities Network’s State of the Cities Report predicts that the Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni metropoles put together will be larger than Los Angeles, boasting a population of just more than 14-million.

In different circumstances, Lawrence Mushwana and Bulelani Ngcuka would belong to the same support group for civil servants aggrieved by perceptions that they would sacrifice their professional integrity in the interests of their political party.
Both are former deputy chairpersons of the National Council of Provinces, with Mushwana having replaced Ngcuka, who had taken up the newly created post of National Director of Public Prosecutions.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=67046">Protector’s report could hurt Ngcuka</a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=67055">Mbeki drawn into Ngcuka probe </a>
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=67061">Ngcuka rapped over the knuckles</a>

<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>They should have seen it coming, poor foreign correspondents. The signs were there as early as Tuesday evening at the Independent Electoral Commission nerve centre in Pretoria. A fellow who was supposed to have been an elections observer was observed sleeping in front of the TV, while BBC News was observing what he was supposed to be observing — South Africa’s third democratic elections.

Things are changing at St Angela’s in Dobsonville, Soweto, and other Catholic parishes. A hierarchy of worship is being challenged as these congregants return to their African roots, eschewing the connection to Rome and the conduct of service in Latin, previously elements they held close to their hearts. And as the orthodox hymn goes, all over the world the spirit is moving.

Still reeling from being found guilty by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of invading a woman’s privacy, the SABC will now have to answer to the Commission on Gender Equality — and possibly the police. The complaints commission last week fined the public broadcaster R20 000 for airing a live SABC3 programme, <i>3 Talk</i>.

Four death-row inmates will on Friday ask the Johannesburg High Court to free them because they believe their detention is unconstitutional. The inmates were all sentenced before the 1995 Constitutional Court ruling that the death penalty was constitutionally invalid.

It all started at the White House. This is where African National Congress leaders in the Free State held an impromptu rally last week in preparation for Mbeki’s arrival to launch his drive to be elected for a second term as South Africa’s president. The president’s recent visit to the Goldfields area to canvass votes saw a poverty-stricken community open their doors and speak their minds.

It must have seemed all innocent — the kind of fun people get up to when they are at distant locations far from spouse and family, and free of collegial restraint.
There were the Saturday afternoon snacks, the nightclub, the post-midnight drinks. Then came the now infamous 3am SMS…

"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 <i>Sunday Times</i> in 1996. "They bring their own activist ideas, but there is more to it than that [activism]."
As the matric furore rages, spotlights focus on the man at the centre, Minister of Education Kader Asmal, reports

These are names you will be seeing a lot more of in the next decade. On their way up but yet to reach their peak, these people will emerge as key figures in our public life over the next 10 years — from politics to fashion, sport to the arts. Some already have achieved a lot; others are just beginning the upward curve. But all are symbols of South Africa’s future — the rise of fresh minds, and the potential to help fulfil our dreams of a vibrant, progressive country.

A mere formality awaits Judge Hefer when he draws the curtain on the R3-million inquiry next week.

The Road Accident Fund (RAF) has spent more than R60-million paying off employees allegedly unfairly dismissed and in "fruitless expenditure" on contracts whose value were dubious, an internal RAF audit report in the possession of the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> shows.

<b>Finalist</b> – Corporations Investec Cida City Campus
Opened to its first students in January 2000, Cida is provisionally registered as a private higher-education institution with the ability to award a degree. The number of students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds has increased from about 100 in 2000 to more than 1 500 this year.

The Soweto suburb of Meadowlands suffers more murders and twice as many burglaries as Johannesburg’s flatland, Hillbrow, research by the Institute of Security Studies has shown. Researcher Patrick Burton said that, overall, there was more violent crime in the Jo’burg inner city than in Meadowlands, but that if the trend continued the position would soon be reversed.