Marianne Merten

It’s early on Saturday night, and volunteers are topping up their cellphone airtime before setting out to patrol Khayelitsha’s toughest areas.Together with a handful of police officers and reservists, the volunteers will weave their way on foot from around 7pm to 1am through the tightly packed shacklands of Nkanini, Kuyasa and Harare, Site B and Site C.

Western Cape local government minister Richard Dyantyi has ordered Cape Town mayor Helen Zille to reconstitute her mayoral committee to include her African Christian Democratic Party deputy mayor as one of the 10 committee members, not as an additional post.

Intervention in Cape Town’s affairs by the African National Congress-led Western Cape government would trigger a constitutional crisis, lawyers have advised the city’s Democratic Alliance mayor, Helen Zille. Zille sought legal advice in the wake of ANC councillors’ plea to the province to appoint an administrator on the grounds that the acrimonious wrangle over Zille’s dismissal of city manager Wallace Mgoqi had crippled the council.

<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/262374/vote-box_blue.gif" align=left>The African National Congress is fighting its toughest election yet. The ruling party’s monolithic hold on power is showing distinct cracks, as strongholds have splintered from Khutsong in Gauteng, where residents have staged running battles with authorities, to Khayelitsha in the Western Cape, where a feisty group of independents has challenged for power and Matatiele in KwaZulu-Natal where the former ANC mayor has formed a breakaway party.

The local councillor does not live in the area, seldom visits and "doesn’t really know what is going on, otherwise they would have built houses" …

The government is making an extra R9,6-billion available to the provinces this year, but at the same time is cracking the whip on accountability and better service delivery. A nationally applicable performance assessment system for top municipal officials will be in force by the start of the new municipal financial year, from July 1.

How highly do you rate a positive public profile? Very highly, if you work for the controversial Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) company. Enough, in fact, to swamp a radio poll with pro-PBMR SMS messages. On SAfm’s environmental programme Environmental Matters on Monday night, Eskom’s generation stakeholder manager Tony Stott took on Mike Kantey of lobby group Koeberg Alert.

In a move to whip electoral dissidents back into line, the African National Congress is planning to expel 33 members registered as independents.

Cape Town will soon get its first eco-suburb, with 600 homes, showcasing sustainable living — from its own on-site sewage treatment facility to environmentally friendly construction methods. Oude Molen, an 18ha site earmarked by the Western Cape government for the R80-million eco-development project, is already a platform for "alternative" living.

Eskom maintains that recent Cape power outages were "abnormal", but the signs are there that delays and about–turns in transforming the electricity sector are pushing supply capacity to the limit. Trevor Gaunt, an electrical engineering professor at the University of Cape Town, said procrastination over restructuring has meant years of inadequate planning and infrastructure investment.

More than a year after launching the comprehensive plan on sustainable human settlements, aimed at eradicating slums, South Africa still has a backlog of 2,4-million houses. There are delays in the new housing plan, with most provinces yet to launch pilot projects. The <i>Mail & Guardian</i> speaks to the Minister of Housing, Lindiwe Sisulu, about these and other issues.

The Ekurhuleni Metro will become the sixth municipality to receive a credit rating, a tool that will assist it in raising additional finance, through loans or even muni-cipal bonds, under the Municipal Finance Management Act. In October, Cape Town was rated "positive" with A+ long-term and A1 short-term ratings by CA Ratings, risk analysts in the municipal area.

The Democratic Alliance is setting up an internal commission to deliberate on the diversity of its public representatives — an issue highlighted when four of its senior black MPs defected to the African National Congress and another left to start his own party. The DA lost its court challenge against the five floor-crossers.

South Africa’s major banks and the government are on a collision course over low-cost housing finance, with the banking sector appearing to backtrack on its R42-billion commitment in terms of the financial services charter. The <i>Mail & Guardian</i> has learnt that the banks are demanding higher levels of state protection for the next 10 years against losses caused by defaulting bond holders.

The usual Western Cape black economic empowerment (BEE) beneficiaries were left in the cold as the Cape Town council selected new blood in its second shot at its empowerment transaction of prime beachfront land at Big Bay, Bloubergstrand. In all, 17 parcels of land, mostly sized between 2 400m2 and 2 600m2 have been sold at prices ranging from R2,7-million to R3,4-million.

Racial and gender transformation topped the agenda of the University of Cape Town’s first lekgotla earlier this month and vice-chancellor Njabulo Ndebele has made it the priority of his final three-year term of office. Judging by the university’s employment equity and student profile, it remains an elusive goal.

The first study of the film sector in almost five years says it is "particularly important that the restrictive tax and labour legislation is addressed", if the industry is to maintain its stature and increase its competitiveness. According to the Microeconomic Development Strategy Report, which will be officially released later this month, the sector’s worth stands at a turnover of R1-billion per annum

A R400-million film and residential project called Dreamworld is turning into a conservationist’s nightmare. Headed by film mogul Anant Singh, and backed by the Western Cape government, the project aims to attract millions of celluloid rands to Cape Town and create 8 300 jobs.

The Western Cape African National Congress on recently held an emergency executive meeting over the latest acrimonious intra-party fall-out after a police raid on the city council’s procurement department on Wednesday. The meeting was expected to discuss an accusation that provincial Premier Ebrahim Rasool manipulated police action during their investigation of council tender irregularities.

As a premier without party political authority, Ebrahim Rasool faces a difficult task when it comes to replacing Western Cape minister of transport Mcebisi Skwatsha.
Last week, the provincial African National Congress started discussing the issue and Rasool, who lost the position of party chairperson in June, may find his hands tied over having a replacement of his choice.

Robben Island has not been declared a South African national heritage site because its managers have failed to meet statutory requirements.

The taxi industry is organised along Mafia lines, with powerful, barely accountable associations collecting massive levies to fund war chests and pay for members’ funerals, a commission of inquiry in Cape Town has heard. The probe into the underlying causes of instability and violence in the Cape Town taxi industry was set up in May after clashes over routes to the newly opened Cape Gateway Mall.

Recently, ministerial housing delegates from South Africa, Brazil and India put their heads together in Cape Town to come up with a united proposal for slum eradication ahead of the United Nations meeting on Millennium Development Goals in September. The political fight at that meeting is expected to be over the proposed reduction by 10% of the estimated 100-million slum-dwellers worldwide.

The African National Congress’s Western Cape conference has been postponed for the sixth time in five months, turning a spotlight on the party’s provincial secretary, Mcebisi Skwatsha. Skwatsha, criticised for organisational failures amid acrimonious jockeying for party leadership posts, rejected the charge that he lacks administrative ability.

The bail-out of embattled clothing-maker Rex Trueform was stitched up this week: while the legendary factory will survive, over three-quarters of its workers are likely to get the chop. In addition, the last-ditch deal rests on the company’s commitment to stock its retail outlets with garments from the factory. Rex Trueform owns the Salt River, Cape Town, factory plant where 1&nbsp;000 jobs are currently at risk.

At the beginning of the year, on national television’s <i>Special Assignment</i>, we saw Truman Prince, the Karoo’s most senior local civil servant, asking a girl walking on the roadside to "Show me your tongue". A few weeks later he was arrested on charges of riotous behaviour and assault and was charged with defamation for swearing at three fast-food stop workers.

The government is resisting the impoverished 4 000-strong Richtersveld community’s claim for the restitution of mineral rights in the vast stretches of diamond-rich coastal land currently held by state-owned miner Alexkor, citing changes in the mining rights regime. If the Land Claims Court agrees, the community may lose its seven-year legal battle to win restitution of the land.