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.

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.

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.

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".

In this season of nascent political larvae, when allegations of conspiracy and other creeping unpleasantness are to be found under every rock, supporters of Cyril Ramaphosa’s presidential metamorphosis are leaving no stone unturned. Reports that the unionist-turned-tycoon is readying his campaign for the presidency are part of the plot against Ramaphosa, they charge.

<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=zuma_report"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/243078/zuma.jpg" align=left border=0></a>Jacob Zuma’s upcoming fraud and corruption trial threatens to become the next round of the ugly power struggle in the African National Congress, with the trial potentially being used to embarrass President Thabo Mbeki by placing him on the witness stand.

A heavyweight government salvage team has been sent into the Department of Home Affairs to rectify the financial disarray graphically detailed in a recent report by Auditor General Shauket Fakie. The task team began its work on July 1 and has a time-frame of six months.

The South African Communist Party (SACP) has established a formal commission to review the proposal that it should contest elections — a move that could be the first formal step toward the restructuring of the "tripartite alliance". The establishment of the body is a clear signal that a split between the SACP, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the African National Congress may finally be taking shape.

A "hoax" e-mail campaign similar to the one that implicated top government officials in an alleged plot to smear African National Congress deputy president Jacob Zuma has surfaced in Namibia, strengthening suspicions that the e-mails are the work of an "outside force".

President Thabo Mbeki will reinforce the message of clean, morally unquestionable leadership, dispel concerns about a centralised Presidency and bank on his urban, middle-class support in countering damaging attacks on him in the presidential succession battle.

Divisions in the African National Congress are being galvanised by a crisis of self-definition and have created a vacuum in the party — a vacuum that the South African Communist Party has moved to fill by suggesting that unless the SACP decisively intervenes, the needs of the poor will never be met.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has launched a stinging attack on President Thabo Mbeki that appears to reiterate what was contained in the hard-hitting South African Communist Party discussion document released last week. On Thursday Cosatu said it was primarily concerned that the ANC leadership was "drifting towards dictatorship".

Two Eastern Cape government ministers, sacked from office this week, have left unanswered questions about alleged abuse of state resources and financial mismanagement amounting to millions of rands in one of the country’s poorest provinces. Premier Nosimo Balindlela fired health minister Bevan Gogqwana and tourism and economic affairs minister, André de Wet, with immediate effect on Monday.

A ruling to dismiss the Mangaung municipality’s top two officials last Friday has highlighted how a group of senior councillors and officials ran an "organised corruption syndicate" that allegedly looted tens of millions of rands from the local authority. The Mangaung Local Municipality ranks among the country’s top 10 biggest councils, with a budget of R1,5-billion.

The local elections are do-or-die for the Inkatha Freedom Party in KwaZulu-Natal, which has haemorrhaged 38 municipal councillors to the fledgling National Democratic Convention (Nadeco) in the past two months. However, analysts say Nadeco lacks the political machinery and ideological direction to pose a serious electoral threat in the province at this stage.

The removal of the social security grant function from provinces will allow the national government to shift its priority away from social assistance towards welfare services, which it says has been neglected over the past five years as social grants consumed as much as 92% of the provincial equitable share.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions supports the government’s Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgi), in principle — but says it will not succeed if it does not tackle poverty and inequality more forthrightly. The clumsily named strategy, unveiled this week, is the government’s blueprint for achieving 6% growth.

President Thabo Mbeki’s to-do list as he goes into the final years of his presidency.