Marianne Thamm

In a surprise move Independent Democrats (ID) caucus leader Simon Grindrod this week came out in support of Cape Town mayor Helen Zille "as an individual" and as a city mayor under an executive committee system with more than "ribbon-cutting" powers.

A month after speaking out on the proliferation of luxury housing and golfing estates in the province, Western Cape agriculture minister Cobus Dowry, seems to have done an about-face and approved the multi-billion rand Lagoon Bay Lifestyle development endorsed by former anti-apartheid cleric Allan Boesak.

South Africans may never get to hear what happened to the millions in misappropriated shares and stolen money redistributed by slain magnate Brett Kebble to a wide network of high-profile beneficiaries. Recently a senior civil court magistrate in Cape Town ordered that the Section 152 inquiry under the Insolvency Act be held in camera.

Ordinary South Africans with knowledge of and access to technology are increasingly doing the police’s detective work and helping to solve crimes. Take the case of Sylvie and Deon Robertse of the Cape Town suburb of Vredehoek. Early one Sunday morning last month, burglars broke into their split-level home after unhinging a sliding glass door. They made off with a cellphone and a wallet but luckily left the sleeping occupants unharmed.

The attractive three-storey flats, with their landscaped gardens and paved walkways, stand empty almost two months after completion. They stand in stark relief against thousands of tin and wood shanties. The strange contrast on view in Cape Town’s Joe Slovo settlement epitomises the controversy that has beset the N2 Gateway housing project.

After the SABC banned an Afrikaans loveLife advert in 2002 because it featured Pieter-Dirk Uys using the word <i>naai</i> (fuck), an unexpected visitor turned up in the West Coast town of Darling. Said Uys: "The window of the car rolled down — it was Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane on his way to a congregation on the West Coast."

It took two weeks for the news of the brutal murder of a young Khayelitsha lesbian, Zoliswa Nkonyana, to filter from the streets to the media. The original police investigation appears to have been sluggish. According to the <i>Sunday Times</i>, the single witness had only been contacted after a journalist alerted police to her existence.