Jaspreet Kindra

The government will not elevate HIV/Aids above other diseases by giving it priority attention, says Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

Truth commissioner Yasmin Sooka and the commission itself had been "clueless" about the reality of the Caprivi training and "intentionally blind" to the findings of the Magnus Malan trial court, Mario Ambrosini, Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s adviser, said.

The looming war on Iraq, coupled with calls for the re-acceptance of Pakistan into the Commonwealth, helped cement an Afro-Asian alliance on Zimbabwe. Interviews with diplomatic representatives confirmed that most Commonwealth members do not favour further sanctions.

The replacement for Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele as housing minister is likely to be drawn from the ranks of existing deputy ministers, political observers speculate. rominent among the names being bandied about is that of Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

Prominent ANC intellectual Pallo Jordan’s election to the party’s most select leadership group, the National Working Committee has been hailed as a boost for the party’s left. Jordan was among the 15 members elected by the NEC at its three-day meeting beginning last Friday.

IFP leaders are exploring the idea of a broad electoral pact involving itself the DA, the UDM and the PAC for next year’s general election. The party’s national council will this weekend discuss the immediate task of consolidating its loose alliance with the DA.

KwaZulu-Natal Premier Lionel Mtshali has called a special sitting of the KwaZulu-Natal legislature next week to vote on the dissolution of the legislature, in preparation for a provincial election.

The IFP is likely to dissolve the KwaZulu-Natal legislature before Christmas and call for elections, say senior IFP leaders. The IFP has the support of the DA and the UDM, enabling it to carry a motion for dissolution.

The men of the Magobeni family sit hunched on two wooden benches outside their family home in Hanover near East London and take turns sipping <i>umqombothi</i> (traditional beer) from a metal bucket.

The faction aligned to ANC president Thabo Mbeki goes into the party’s national conference in Stellenbosch next week with the upper hand. The faction’s crackdown on the left-dominated ANC structures in the Eastern Cape has been proclaimed "successful" by all.

The IFP’s decision to fire two ANC members of the KwaZulu-Natal cabinet — and risk an ANC tit-for-tat in the national Cabinet — was based on the calculation that its ruling coalition with the ANC will not survive beyond 2004.

Eastern Cape Premier Makhenkesi Stofile continued to stonewall pressure from above for the removal of his cabinet ministers this week, telling the provincial legislature in Bisho there would be no dismissals.

Former Eastern Cape MEC for education Stone Sizani was already on the skids after announcing last January that he would "ship out" if officials in his department did not perform, say African National Congress insiders.

ANC groupings are already jockeying to position their favoured candidates for the post-Thabo Mbeki era, though he still has another five years as the party’s president. Many provinces are bandying about the name of Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ (Cosatu) member unions boycotted President Thabo Mbeki’s stakeholders’ forum at the Sandton Convention Centre last week, complaining that the federation itself had not been invited.

Elections for the African National Congress leadership in Limpopo could be hotly contested after the emergence of MEC for Agriculture and Environment Aaron Motsoaledi as a rival to provincial Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi.

Talk is growing in DA and IFP circles of a deal which could push the two parties into government in KwaZulu-Natal in an anti-ANC alliance — particularly if they retain the seats of four of their defectors. This comes at a time when relations between the IFP and the ANC are at rock-bottom.

The ANC’s troubleshooter in KwaZulu-Natal, Dumisani Makhaye, is set for a national deployment. Makhaye, currently KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Housing, allegedly played a crucial role in dissuading KwaZulu-Natal workers from taking to the streets during last year’s anti-privatisation strike.

Pressure from the provinces is mounting on ANC leaders to implement the Taylor commission recommendations of a comprehensive social security system. To deflect the pressure, with the ANC’s national conference, President Mbeki is likely to make a strong case for implementing the system.

In an interview published recently in the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai suggested the South African government was dictatorial and would soon play the race card to cover its policy failures. African National Congress spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama replies.

Dumisani Makhaye, KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Housing, has been accused of punching and threatening to stab a Durban African National Congress councillor at the party’s provincial congress last month.

Controversial former UN weapons inspector and US Marine Corps veteran Scott Ritter believes that South Africa is one of three countries that could help restore Iraq’s confidence in a UN arms inspections process. Ritter spoke to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> last week.

The ANC this week agreed to join a civil society march against poverty and joblessness at the World Summit on Sustainable Development — while putting the boot into aspects of the anti-globalisation movement. It makes the point that the global civil society lobby is a "contested terrain".

The African National Congress has called on all democrats to "rip the veil off the power of media".

Independently minded African National Congress leader Makhenkesi Stofile looks certain to hold the party’s Eastern Cape leadership at its conference later this month. This is despite internal criticism of his performance as premier, most recently from Port Elizabeth business-man Mkhuseli Jack.

The 11th congress of the South African Communist Party this week set about drawing up parameters of permissible conduct for party members serving in the ANC-led government. The guidelines are intended to clarify boundaries of behaviour for communists deployed in society.

The Ministry of Health has not officially informed the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria that its grant allocated to KwaZulu-Natal is welcome and accepted, thereby further delaying the province’s receipt of the grant. The fund does not acknowledge press releases as confirmation.

In what would be a setback for national leaders, the Free State African National Congress looks set to elect former United Democratic Front (UDF) activist Ace Magashule as its provincial chief. Magashule has twice been "redeployed" because of protracted divisions in the Free State party.

In a further sign of the widening gap between the Inkatha Freedom Party and the African National Congress, a senior IFP official has cast aspersions on the capacity of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) to improve governance in Africa.

As Machel stormed the Aids conference in Barcelona and lambasted world leaders for doing too little to confront the pandemic, nearly everyone in the hall was swept off their feet. So, too, were television viewers in South Africa as they watched Machel slamming Southern African nations.

South Africa’s national municipal strike is nearing its end, but the African National Congress may be the worst long-term casualty of the workers’ actions.

Confidential Democratic Alliance documents leaked to the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> show the DA plans to prise the Inkatha Freedom Party loose from the African National Congress, and form an electoral alliance with Inkatha before the 2004 poll.