Staff Reporter

No one paid much attention to National Car Free Day — except for higher than usual numbers of Orthodox Jews who marched resolutely through the streets of certain Orthodox suburbs of Johannesburg, the men with wide brimmed black Mafia hats clamped to their heads and bits of string dangling from their waists.

United States President George Bush left his problems at home on Thursday only to find himself flying into a whole new world of hurt at the Summit of Americas in Argentina, where tens of thousands of protesters, led by the football star and broadcaster Diego Maradona, were due to greet the president in a "say no to Bush" march.

Giant French defence company Thales is set to be charged alongside Jacob Zuma when the provisional indictment against the former deputy president is delivered. Charging Thint strengthens the state’s case against Jacob Zuma and adds to the legal pressures facing parent company Thales.

The theatre around who is to succeed President Thabo Mbeki in the African National Congress involves a formidable political cast, comprising not only the president and his deputy, but also almost every significant figure in South Africa’s ruling political hierarchy.

The gaggle of girls who hung about outside the restaurant were pitiful in their disconsolate finery. Miniscule black cocktail dresses ballooned like tiny soft-porn spinnakers up their toothpick thighs in the Cape Town gale, and when no one was watching, beautifully manicured hands rubbed concentration-camp elbows and shoulders in a vain attempt to keep warm.

It was noble of Visdorp mayor Nomaindia Mfeketo to tell last week’s council meeting that urgent steps must be taken to end racism and intolerance; but things went pear-shaped when she started bemoaning the shortage of engineers in the OR Tambo municipality. This district, she said, has only one engineer "and he is not even South African". Clearly the good mayor has forgotten about one Blackman Ngoro, an engineer of sorts, who wasn’t South African either.

I’m disgusted and appalled that local media — and, more importantly, lawyers — have not sought immediate court action to stop the financial rape of net users by Telkom, which clearly puts the internet out of the reach of the majority of citizens in South Africa. It is digital apartheid.

It was an intense three days: at the South African Human Rights Commission’s headquarters in Johannesburg, about 30 people had their chance to say their piece on the state of basic education. A few (the government and union officials) wheeled out statistics that claimed to demonstrate the success of the system and referred to failings as "challenges".

Election officials on Tanzania’s politically volatile Zanzibar archipelago met on Friday to consider a possible delay in polls set for this weekend after a postponement of the vote on the mainland. Members of the Zanzibar Electoral Commission were discussing whether to follow the lead of their mainland counterparts who put off Sunday’s scheduled elections there until mid-December.