Latest articles on Vicki Robinson

The ANC leadership in the North West has, as expected, nominated President Thabo Mbeki to continue for another term as party president. Although the formal nomination process starts only in October, the provincial executive committee has released a list of its top six preferences to its regions and branches for discussion.

Told in the first person, Elias Masilela's<b> Number 43 Trelawney Park KwaMagoga</b> (David Philip) puts a tragic, and in some ways nostalgic, human face to life in exile during the apartheid years. The book tells the story of 25 PAC and ANC members who passed through Number 43, Trelawney Park, writes Vicki Robinson.

Last week's ANC policy conference brought to mind a traditional proclamation: The king is dead. Long live the king! However one interprets the minutiae of ANC pronouncements on the next leadership selection, three things can be said. First, Thabo Mbeki will not be South Africa's president come 2009; second, the internecine war for the presidency of the ANC will continue right up to the last moment.

Delegates at the African National Congress's (ANC) policy conference this week seemed on course to ensure that President Thabo Mbeki's legacy of centralising power in the Union Buildings would be eradicated through a series of policy changes set to return power to the ruling party's mass base.

Zwelinzima Vavi does not seem to run out of hyperbole to illustrate what is wrong with the government’s economic policies. "It is like a doctor saying an operation has been successful when the patient is dead," he said to great laughter when addressing a youth rally in Mangaung in the Free State last Saturday.

ANC deputy president Jacob Zuma would not alter the broad parameters of South Africa's economic policy, but believes the national treasury has usurped the people "as the driver of economic change" and that "participatory democracy" has foundered under President Thabo Mbeki.

Delta Environmental Centre is at the forefront of shaping the environmental education and the attitudes of South Africa's future generations to preserve our ecosystems and add practical weight to the catchphrase "sustainable development". Greening the Future judges awarded the environmental centre a merit award in the not-for-profit organisation category.

South Africa's only civil society network for rape and abuse victims, Themba Lesizwe, has collapsed after the European Union withdrew â,¬20-million it had pledged to the organisation over the next three years. Themba Lesizwe, established in 2001 by four NGOs, had grown into a network of 269 affiliates in the victim empowerment sector in South Africa.

Polo Radebe, the chief director of the black economic empowerment (BEE) unit in the department of trade and industry, said that the greatest challenge the unit faced was regulating the labyrinth of empowerment legislation, which included eight Acts and 15 industry charters. On February 9, the broad-based BEE codes of good practice passed into law.

Alec Erwin, Minister of Public Enterprises, has been hobbled by the national treasury which, contrary to expectations, advanced only a miniscule portion of the billions of rands the minister needs for his elaborate plans for state-owned enterprises. The finance minister indicated that a transfer of funds were contingent on Erwin's business plans.

On the one hand President Thabo Mbeki's State of the Nation address showed a man of steely resolve -- without the characteristic poetry, Bible verses and George Soros references, his speech was concise, pragmatic and resolute. His marching orders to his Cabinet, "let us roll up our sleeves and get down to work", set out the blueprint for his final two and half years in office.

The presidency and the national treasury are in discussions about how to soften the South African currency, which the government admitted this week was overvalued and was adversely affecting the growth of the non- commodity export sector, which has the potential to soak up thousands of semi- and low-skilled job seekers.

The Department of Minerals and Energy has undertaken to investigate industry complaints that the deluge of prospecting applications received since the promulgation of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (2004) had seriously hindered investment in the mining sector.

As many as 82% of African National Congress MPs have left Parliament since 1994, debilitating the legislature’s oversight powers as its ranks have been filled with junior ruling party members who lack the political clout to hold the executive to account. Only 49, or 18%, of the ANC’s 274 MPs have remained since 1994.

The African National Congress’s national executive committee (NEC) has begun debating the future of South Africa’s nine provinces, in line with a resolution at last year’s national general council that the party should "review [the] provinces in the context of the increasing devolution of powers and functions to municipalities".