Staff Reporter

The Zimbabwe government has directed the country’s largest journalism training school to accept only students who have completed a controversial national youth-service training programme — blamed by critics for brainwashing youths into zealots of President Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party.

This week, a man described by the trial judge as ambitious, far-sighted and brazen — if not positively aggressive — in pursuit of his financial interests found that our legal system may grind slowly, but it sure grinds finely. The Supreme Court of Appeal handed down a judgement that in its fine attention to detail exposed Schabir Shaik, not only as a ruthless crook, but also as the person who may have destroyed the political ambitions of Jacob Zuma.

Of course the word going around when the death of former president PW Botha was announced was: “How could they tell anyway?” The invincible old crocodile had been lounging around at his place in the Wilderness virtually unseen by human eyes, except for his youngish new wife, who popped up from time to time to say that he was not only fit and well but had healthy sexual appetites to boot. She was around to prove it.

Workers’ skeletons litter the mines of this land. Many of those killed underground were never retrieved; their families never had the opportunity to bury them decently, according to African rituals and tradition. In the worst disasters the recovered mineworkers are often unidentifiable and those families that insist on remains for ritual burials risk interring the wrong body.

Zimbabwe’s annual inflation galloped to 1 070,2% in October after a rare slowdown in September, the government’s Central Statistical Office said on Friday. Inflation dipped in September to 1 023,3% from a record high of 1 204,6% in August.

Former Limpopo premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi received a R100 000 payment from a businessman whose company won multimillion-rand tenders from his government, the Scorpions have alleged. This is just one of a range of cash benefits that allegedly flowed to him after a R750-million pensions administration contract was awarded to Cash Paymaster Services.

Viktor Vekselberg, the 48-year-old Russian oligarch, is not known for his corporate ethics. Described by <i>Forbes</i> as a "deal junkie", Vekselberg is ranked the third-richest Russian and the 44th richest person in the world by the magazine. His net worth is about $10-billion, accumulated predominantly through metals and oil.

First oil. Now manganese. This week we reveal the second major funding front set up by the ruling ANC. The party is clearly behind Chancellor House, an empowerment holding company that has won a stake in manganese mining rights with a potential value of R1-billion. It is part of a consortium chasing a R26-billion power station tender, and has lesser stakes in many other businesses.

"I can’t believe it," Shabir Shaik reportedly exclaimed after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) dismissed his petition against conviction on two counts of corruption and one of fraud. "Boom, boom, boom; one, two, three: they didn’t uphold anything. All the lawyers were wrong about what was going to happen."

Tony Leon has threatened to launch a libel lawsuit against a British historian who raised questions about his proximity to the apartheid intelligence establishment during his time as a conscript in the defence force. James Sanders, a London-based researcher, has sent Leon draft pages of his forthcoming book, <i>Apartheid’s Friends: The Rise and Fall of South Africa’s Secret Service</i>.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) will cooperate with the South African Human Rights Commission on the use of appropriate sign language on television news programmes, the public broadcaster said on Wednesday. The use of sign language on SABC1 and SABC2 is reportedly not linguistically correct.

Although credit and debit cards are more convenient and safer than cash, you still have to be vigilant to protect your card from criminals. According to FNB Credit Card CEO Jan Kleynhans, there are more than four-million FNB credit and debit cards in circulation in South Africa. Of these, about 10 000 credit cards are reported lost or stolen every month.

In the year 2006 we have received clear signals from you, our readers, about the things that irk, worry and upset you as you go about your day-to-day duties. As we mentioned before in this space, we picked up a message from teachers that they are miserable about their earnings.