Sunday Times, Johannesburg (16 September 2007) - 09/17/2007
ANC'S BULLIES RAM THROUGH SABC BOARD
Ndivhuho Mafela, Brendan Boyle, Paddy Harper and Mpumelelo Mkhabela

ever-fasternews.com - 09/17/2007
A CALL FOR A HISTORY OF THE LIBERAL PARTY
Paul Trewhela

A missing history

There
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ever-fasternews.com - 09/15/2007
AN EPITAPH FOR “AZANIA”?
Paul Trewhela

A “detail from Absurdistan”

There is a curious coda to the news report that the once significant Pan Africanist Co
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ever-fasternews.com - 09/09/2007
SOUTH AFRICA AND ANIMAL FARM: AN UNWELCOME COMPARISON
Paul Trewhela

New regime for old

Following its first democratic election in 1994, there was no more bleak assessment of the future of the “new” South Africa than that of the count
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ever-fasternews.com - 09/09/2007
KRUGER PARK UNDER THREAT
Paul Trewhela

South Africa’s “jewel in the crown”

One of the greatest regions of wildlife conservation in the world, the Kruger National Park – a “jewel in the crown” of environme
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- 09/07/2007
FOREWORD TO THE GUKURAHUNDI REPORT
Elinor Sisulu

ever-fasternews.com - 09/07/2007
WHEN CROSSTITUTES WALK THE FLOOR
Paul Trewhela

- 09/04/2007
PLAYING GAMES FOR THE PRESIDENCY
Stanley Uys
                Oh, what a tangled web we weave
                When first we practise to deceive!
Read entire article.

- 09/02/2007
THE DAY OF THE CROSSTITUTES
Stanley Uys
There are 400 members in South Africa’s National Assembly. Of them 293 belong to the African National Congress. The question is: with such a “colossal” majority, why does President Thabo Mbeki still want more? What does his insistent need to control all the “levers of power” in state and party tell us about the quality of “democracy” in the country? Why are all MPs (as from yesterday) being permitted a two-weeks’ opportunity to defect to other political parties without losing their National Assembly seats? What is the motive behind Mbeki’s relentless centralisation of authority, dehydration of parliament, blurring of the boundaries between executive and legislature, rearranging the judiciary, etc.? In this article and the succeeding one by Paul Trewhela we explore the ideological mindset behind the President’s actions. We also commend to our readers the Jacobin Option by James Myburgh below.
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- 09/02/2007
THE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
Paul Trewhela

The legacy of “the vanguard party”
Read entire article.

Politicsweb. 30/8/2007 - 09/02/2007
THE JACOBIN OPTION
James Myburgh
An old and dangerous threat is revived by the ANC.
Read entire article.

- 09/01/2007
BRUTAL TRUTH IN NAMIBIA: A FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER
Paul Trewhela

Three passages from history
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- 09/01/2007
A MINISTER ABOVE THE LAW?
Paul Trewhela
To arrest a government minister
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JAUNDICED EYE COLUMN - 08/31/2007
GETTING NAILED TO THE MBEKI CROSS
William Saunderson-Meyer

WS-M writes: During apartheid the leaders of the old National Party set great store in projecting an image of complete imperviousness to current events. Like yesterday’s men, President Thabo Mbeki also appears to believe that to show any sign of flexibility or to respond to popular opinion by deviating from his initial publicly stated position, is to be tainted as weak and malleable.
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- 08/31/2007
'PROFOUNDLY UNDEMOCRATIC" - TONY LEON'S ANALYSIS OF MBEKI'S THINKING
Tony Leon, MP

A notion of truth
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- 08/29/2007
"PARANOIA" IN THE ANC" - THE DETENTION OF PALLO JORDAN
Paul Trewhela
Ominous language
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The Star, Toronto. (AUG 13, 2007) - 08/29/2007
"IN SEARCH OF AFRICA'S TRUE LEADERS"
Craig and Marc Kielburger
There was no shortage of excitement when Sudanese telecom billionaire Mo Ibrahim announced his Prize for Achievement in African Leadership late last year. Everyone from Nelson Mandela to Bill Clinton praised the idea, suggesting that by recognizing honourable former heads of state, the lucrative lifetime award could discourage current leaders from the rampant corruption that has plagued Africa for so long. But now that we are passed the halfway point of the year-long selection process, one important thing seems to be missing – suitable candidates.
Read entire article.

- 08/27/2007
STATE BROADCASTING OFFICIAL IN ALLEGED R2M FRAUD
Paul Trewhela

South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) group CEO Dali Mpofu is tight-lipped about whether his friend and business partner, Mafika Sihlali, the SABC’s legal services chief, resigned or was suspended on Friday. Reporting in Business Day today, Sue Blaine refers to an allegation that Sihlali defrauded the SABC of up to R2m (R14.5=£1), although no criminal charges have been laid. Sihlali apparently resigned before he was suspended on Friday, but Mpofu said he had seen no resignation letter, and refused to comment on the SABC decision to suspend Sihlali with immediate effect and on full pay, months after the fraud allegations were made. “I have not seen the letter,” Mpofu said.
Read entire article.

City Press - 08/27/2007
"POWERS BEHIND THE ANC THRONE"
S'tembiso Msomi
The selection process presently taking place in the African National Congress – to choose its top leaders – is democracy at its best. Or so we are told.  But closer examination of the process, which starts with the ramshackle branches (400 or thereabouts), advances to regional and then provincial levels, and ends up with 18 provincial chairpersons and secretaries doing a final sift, tells a different story.  The process may have worked in the past when the ANC for all its internal rivalries was a single party, but it is so factionalised now that the complicated stages seem to be a recipe for deadly infighting. For example, chosing the 60-member National Executive Committee showed the relative popularity of members, and that was that. Now choosing the NEC will be an exercise in separating the pro-Mbekirites from the pro-Zumarites, and ending up with a sharply divided NEC – two (or more?)  adversaries, face-to-face.The outcome is clear: the loser will shout foul. In the highly informative report below, S’tembiso Msomi, writing in Johannesburg’s City Press yesterday, explains just how tortuous the election process will be:
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Sunday Times, JHB - 08/26/2007
MAKHANYA ON THE ANC OF THABO MBEKI
Mondli Makhanya
An increasingly paranoiac ruling party
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- 08/26/2007
POOR MUST INVADE EMPTY SUBURBAN HOMES, SAYS S.A. COMMUNIST LEADER

Writing in Johannesburg’s City Press (August 25), Caiphus Kgosana says that Young Communist League (YCL) national secretary Buti Manamela has called on homeless people in South Africa to invade unoccupied houses in upmarket suburbs. He made the call through the organisation’s weekly online newsletter, The Bottomline, adding that such a radical step would help resolve the housing problem in the country. Until now political activists have been pressing for seizure of white-owned farms and other rural dwellings. A grab of urban residential properties would cause widespread alarm in the country.
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THE STAR. JHB - 08/26/2007
"WHAT WENT WRONG WITH THABO MBEKI"?
Max du Preez
Below is an extract from journalist Max du Preez’s column in the Johannesburg Star (23 August 2007). Du Preez founded the first Afrikaans-language anti-apartheid newspaper, Vrye Weekblad (Free Weekly), in 1988 and remained its editor until it closed in January 1994. He reported on the crucial transition from the old regime to the new, and was a member of the delegation of eminent white South Africans who met the exiled African National Congress in Dakar, Senegal, to weigh up common interests. On abandoning Vrye Weekblad, he joined the post-apartheid SA Broadcasting Corporation in 1994 as television anchor and documentary film producer, and was executive producer and presenter of the highly regarded Special Report on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Special Assignment - until he was fired in 1999. The media-watch body, Friends of the Public Broadcaster, described the reasons for his dismissal as "spurious" and a "blatant transgression". Du Preez is one of SA’s most respected journalists, an historian, a film-maker, and author of an acclaimed autobiography, Pale Native (Zebra Press, 2004).
Read entire article.

- 08/25/2007
BUTHELEZI'S "DEFENCE" OF MANTO
Stanley Uys
Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang must be thinking, “With friends like Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who needs enemies”? Buthelezi had hastened to support the Health minister after she had been battered last week by the Johannesburg Sunday Times, which described her as a “drunk and a thief”. But whoever is advising him is not thinking straight.
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- 08/24/2007
ANTHONY SAMPSON'S CRITICISM OF THE ARMS DEAL
Paul Trewhela

A 'familiar pattern of corruption'
Read entire article.

The Zimbabwean - 08/24/2007
"MBEKI AFRAID OF MUGABE? TALKS NOTHING BUT SMOKE AND MIRRORS"

For months Zimbabweans have placed their hopes for economic and political salvation in South African President Thabo Mbeki as mediator between the ruling Zanu (PF) and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. But The Zimbabwean can exclusively reveal that the mediation process is little more than a smoke and mirrors display as Mbeki unwaveringly supports Mugabe and has, according to recent Zanu (PF) Politburo minutes, criticized MDC founding president, Morgan Tsvangirai during closed session deliberations of SADC leaders.
Read entire article.

- 08/24/2007
SOUTH AFRICA'S BIZARRE FOREIGN POLICIES
Tony Leon, MP
Addressing the S.A. Institute of International Affairs in Cape Town on August 21, Tony Leon, former leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, discussed the Mebki government’s foreign policies. Here is an extract from his address:
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- 08/23/2007
TIME TO GET CLARITY OVER S.A,'S "DIRTY WAR"
Prof. Hermann Giliomee
In “The Battle of Algiers” (1965), a gripping film about a modern freedom struggle, Colonel Philippe Mathieu, the French officer in charge of the counter-insurgency forces, poses the question: “Must we stay in Algeria?” And he continues: “If the answer is yes, one must accept all the consequences that necessarily will flow from that”.
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Sunday Times (UK) - 08/22/2007
"WHY I'M LEAVING SOUTH AFRICA"
Anne Paton
By Anne Paton (widow of Alan Paton)
Read entire article.

Die Burger, Cape Town - 08/21/2007
"NOW IS NOT A NICE PLACE FOR THE ANC IN THE COUNTRY"
Henry Jeffrys, Editor
Following is an editorial from Die Burger, flagship of the giant Naspers publishing group in Cape Town, which is becoming increasingly  critical of President Thabo Mbeki's regime. Naspers showed the resiliency of the Afrikaner in adapting to the regime change in 1994 when the apartheid book was closed and the African National Congress took over.  Today, Naspers’ interests, particularly in the field of communication technology, stretch from Africa to China. Some of its editors tended to become pro-ANC, but now as the national tide turns against Mbeki, Naspers is making its own adjustments. Its new editor atDie Burger , Henry Jeffreys, is not letting the ANC off as lightly as the newspaper used to for the past five years or so. Here is his remarkable editorial published this week.
Read entire article.

- 08/20/2007
DID HEALTH MINISTER JUMP LIVER TRANSPLANT QUEUE?
Democratic Alliance
In a statement today, Helen Zille, leader of the opposition Democratic Alliance, called on South Africa’s Public Protector to investigate President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in connection with alleged preference for the Minister in a liver transplant.
Read entire article.

- 08/19/2007
DOUBLE-BARRELLED BLAST FIRED AT MBEKI'S HEALTH MINISTER
Stanley Uys
Last Sunday, the Johannesburg Sunday Times fired the first barrel of its shotgun at President Thabo Mbeki’s Health Minister, Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang, accusing her of drinking whiskey and wine while at a Cape Town clinic for a shoulder operation, of ill-treatment of staff, and possibly of jumping the queue for a liver transplant. Today, the newspaper fired the second barrel. Its front-page headline read: “Manto: A Drunk and a Thief”. In an editorial, the newspaper added: ‘Manto Tshabalala-Msimang is unsuitable for office. She is an abrasive bully, a bad, a drunk and a petty thief”.

The gloves are off now between the Sunday Times, edited by Mondli Makhanya, and Mbeki. The newspaper is setting new standards of outspokenness in South African journalism and has made itself the most influential publication in the country. After moving into government in 1994, the ANC was given a relatively easy ride by the media, but steadily criticism by some newspapers has sharpened, and at the same time there has been speculation about growing dissent within the ANC, even in Mbeki’s closed circle of loyalists. The new confrontation will feed into the ANC’s December 15-20 conference when Mbeki seeks re-election as the ANC’s president - against a challenge from the man he sacked as deputy state president in mid-2005, and possibly against others who have not yet declared their candidatures.

Mbeki would be lame duck
If Mbeki is defeated in the contest for the ANC’s presidency, he will be a lame duck state president for the rest of his second five-year term, which ends in 2009, when constitutionally he must retire. Much will depend therefore on how he handles the “Manto affair’. In most democratic countries she would be fired or forced to resign, but according to reliable sources, powerful forces in the Mbeki camp are determined to hold on to power at all costs, even if this means open manipulation of the 4,000 delegates at the December conference. South Africa then would be drawn perilously close to the Zimbabwe situation, where President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party has dug in its heels, regardless of the cost to the country.

Following are brief extracts from today’s Sunday Times:

0 Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang stole a patient’s watch, hospital blankets, linen and heaters when she was hospital superintendent in Botswana. She was convicted of theft when she was a medical superintendent at the Athlone Hospital in Botswana in the mid-1970s. Hospital staff became suspicious as for months watches, jewellery, hats, handbags and even shoes were being stolen from patients. She was found guilty in the Lobatse Magistrate’s Court of stealing a patient’s watch, hospital blankets, linen, and heaters, and was declared a “prohibited immigrant”.

0 Manto had alcoholic liver disease caused by years of excessive drinking when she had a transplant this year. Today the Sunday Times exposes a cover-up around the transplant by medical staff to hide her true condition — alcoholic liver cirrhosis — a disease synonymous with chronic alcoholism. The minister, despite getting the gift of life donated to her by a teenage suicide victim, is still drinking — damaging her new liver.

0 The Sunday Times has established that: Pressure was put on medical staff to keep secret her true condition;
Read entire article.

AIDSAlert281. Aig 17, 2007 - 08/18/2007
AIDS: "MBEKI HAS MADE A POWERFUL ENEMY"
Virginia van der Vliet
Virginia van der Vliet has written widely on the South African AIDS epidemic and is the author of The Politics of AIDS (published by Bowerdean in London in 1996), which examines the global AIDS pandemic. Her expert services are available to Omega Investment Research clients on a consultancy basis.
Read entire article.

- 08/17/2007
"TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION"? A SAD AND BITTER TALE
Stanley Uys
In August last year, Adriaan Vlok, Minister of Law and Order in apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, went one weekend to the Union Buildings in Pretoria where President Thabo Mbeki’s government is located. Pretoria is South Africa’s executive capital and Cape Town its legislative capital. Vlok went to the office of the Rev. Frank Chikane, Director-General of the Presidency. He presented Chikane with a Bible on whose cover the words were written: “I have sinned against the Lord and against you. Please forgive me. John 13:15”.  Vlok said he was repenting to Chikane as the representative “of all the others I should be talking to”. Vlok then opened his bag again and took out a bowl and two towels and insisted on washing Chikane’s feet ,which a somewhat bemused Chikane permitted him to do.
Read entire article.

The Zimbabwean - 08/16/2007
INSIDE STORY OF ZIM COUP PLOT

Three generals killed as Operation 1940 fails to remove Mugabe.
Read entire article.

- 08/16/2007
ARMS DEAL: THE SHAKING OF THE FOUNDATIONS
Paul Trewhela
Rotten pillar of state
Read entire article.

Moneyweb - 08/16/2007
BAe AND THE ARMS DEAL: PART TWO
James Myburgh

How the lead-in fighter trainer contract was given to the Hawk.
Read entire article.

- 08/15/2007
THE PEOPLE ARE WAITING, NOZIZWE
Stanley Uys
Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, sacked by President Mbeki as Deputy Health Minister, has departed, leaving us with a puzzle. She said, "I will campaign hard to get a leader that is brave and able to stand up for the truth”. But she omitted to say which leader. It’s not Thabo, that’s for sure. Tokyo Sexwale? Who he?
Read entire article.

Moneyweb - 08/15/2007
BAE AND THE ARMS DEAL
James Myburgh
Part 1: How the British won the Gripen contract
Read entire article.

Moneyweb - 08/15/2007
BAE AND THE ARMS DEAL: PART ONE
James Myburgh
Part 1: How the British won the Gripen contract
Read entire article.

- 08/14/2007
MUGABE'S MODEL: NORTH KOREA'S 'GREAT LEADER"
RW Johnson
Visitors to the offices of high-ranking officials in Robert Mugabe's beleaguered government in recent weeks have noticed the same book open for study: Juche ! The Speeches and Writings of Kim Il Sung. “Some may actually believe this stuff but it's more that they want to understand where the President is coming from”, one insider told me. For it appears that those who have become anxious about Mugabe's Canute-like attempt to order inflation of 7,000 per cent to be halved and to subordinate the economy in general to his political will, is not just acting wildly. He has a model, North Korea's Great Leader who, though he died in 1994, is still enshrined in that country's constitution as “president for eternity”, so that the current ruler, his son Kim Jong-Il, never actually uses the title of president. Receiving the new North Korean ambassador in May this year Mugabe told him that North Korea had been a guiding light and friend ever since it began to aid his ZANU guerrilla army, Zanla, in the 1970s, and that “everything in Zimbabwe is associated with the exploits of President Kim Il Sung”.
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- 08/14/2007
A GREAT WEEK IN SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNALISM
Paul Trewhela
This past week has seen a remarkable contribution to journalism in South Africa. It was a moment, within the topmost hegemonic circles of the African National Congress, when moral courage confronted state power. It saw journalism at its best, accurate and precise - above all, from the largest-selling single newspaper in the country, the Sunday Times. In the grim decades of apartheid, the press - banned and unbanned - often measured itself against the state. This past week the Sunday Times, under its editor, Mondli Makhanya, claimed a place in this illustrious history.
Read entire article.

Borrie le Grange - 08/14/2007
MANTO'S LIVER TRANSPLANT: CALL FOR MISCONDUCT INQUIRY
Sunday Times, JHB.
The medical specialists who decided that Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang qualified for a liver transplant are under the microscope. The Health Professions’ Council of South Africa has been asked to investigate the possibility of misconduct by the doctors concerned. The Times reported yesterday that there was speculation in the medical profession that Tshabalala-Msimang had an alcohol-induced liver disease before her liver transplant earlier this year. This followed a Sunday Times report detailing Tshabalala-Msimang’s alleged wine and whisky binge in a Cape Town hospital in 2005 before undergoing a shoulder operation.
Read entire article.

- 08/13/2007
MBEKI'S SACKING OF A MINISTER: A LOOK BENEATH THE WAVES
Stanley Uys & Paul Trewhela
Reaching critical mass
Read entire article.

Sunday Times, JHB - 08/13/2007
HEALTH MINISTER 'BOOOZES IN CLINIC"
Jocelyn Maker,Megan Power
Yesterday, on the front page report in the Johannesburg Sunday Times, under the above headline,Jocelyn Maker and Megan Power wrote about the behaviour of South Africa's Health Minister when she was in a Cape Town clinic receiving treatment. President Mbeki, who has had a long association with the Minister, Mantombazana Tshabalala-Msimang, has not responded to the clamour for her to be dismissed. Instead, he has dismissed the Deputy Minister, Nozizwe MadlalaRoutledge:
Read entire article.

- 08/12/2007
ZIMBABWE: DECISION TIME FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA?
Mike Hale
A critical moment, not only for Zimbabwe, but for the region will come when the Southern African Development Community (SADC) meets in Lusaka, Zambia from August 10 – 18. At its March meeting, SADC leaders not only asked Mbeki to mediate between President Robert Mugabe and the opposition, but also instructed the SADC Executive Secretary, Tomaz Augusto Salamao, to visit Zimbabwe to assess the economic situation and to formulate recommendations.  Both will now report back to the region’s leaders.
Read entire article.

Democratic Alliance - 08/09/2007
"ANOTHER BLAST FROM THE PAST'
Dene Smuts
‘In yet another blast from the past, former APLA (Azanian People’s Liberation Army) and commander and now PAC (Pan Africanist Congress) leader Letlapa Mphahlele is reventilating his old mantra that the liberation movements cannot be treated on a basis of moral and legal equivalence with the former state’, says Dene Smuts, an opposition Democratic Alliance MP,  in a statement. ‘After asking the President (Thabo Mbeki) for an investigation of atrocities by the former state, he told SAfm’s PM Live “No right-thinking state can prosecute people who were fighting for freedom”. Mphahlele avoided engagement with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on these exact grounds and has continued to evade the consequences of his actions in ordering some of the most shocking massacres and killings of the transitional period.
Read entire article.

- 08/09/2007
A DISTURBING PROSECUTION
Paul Trewhela
The Eighties in South African political life
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- 08/08/2007
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION IS NOT DEMOCRATIC IN ITSELF
Stanley Uys
The electoral system – proportional representation (PR) – adopted by South Africa when it made the transition from apartheid to non-racial government was an obvious compromise. The Westminster constituency-based system was not appropriate for the occasion. If it had been retained, probably the African National Congress would have won 80-90 percent of the 400 National Assembly seats. Indeed, if an old-style delimitation commission had been set up, and the ANC had wished to manipulate it (in the way the apartheid regime manipulated constituencies to the disadvantage of the white opposition), the ANC could have come close to winning almost all of the 400 seats. It knew though that this would be too brazen: a hopelessly flawed launch for the new South Africa. It would have been a one-party state, as distinct from a one-party-dominant state, from day one. Besides, for the ANC the concession really was no big deal.
Read entire article.

- 08/08/2007
THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM BECOMES AN ISSUE
Paul Trewhela
Lack of accountability
Read entire article.

PERSPECTIVE.VOL 20. NO.30 - 08/08/2007
THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM AND THE QUALITY OF DEMOCRACY
Prof.David Welsh
[Editor’s note: Electoral systems resemble conveyor belts that convert votes cast in to seats won. They are a vital part of the machinery of democracy.]
Read entire article.

- 08/07/2007
VICTOR'S JUSTICE?
Paul Trewhela
A forthcoming trial
Read entire article.

- 08/06/2007
BACK TO CHAOS IN THE CLASSROOM
Paul Trewhela
A failure of leadership
Read entire article.

- 08/06/2007
WHY THE WITCHHUNT AGAINST EX-PRESIDENT DE KLERK?
Prof. David Welsh
Our premier political analyst, Evita Bezuidenhout, was absolutely correct when she observed that ‘the future is certain, it is the past that is unpredictable.’ The debate over who did what to whom in the apartheid era will last a long time, and no resolution is likely to be achieved. Over the entire span of apartheid from 1948 to 1994 over 23 000 lives were lost in political violence; between 2 700 and 3 000 were killed by the security forces, including those murdered in detention or assassinated. Of the remainder the great majority were killed as a consequence of political competition, largely between Inkatha and the UDF / ANC, but some in conflict between the ANC and AZAPO.
Read entire article.

THE ZIMBABWEAN - 08/03/2007
S.A. FARMERS 'HUNT' ZIM REFUGEES

HARARE
Read entire article.

Moneyweb - 08/03/2007
WHO IS THE REAL OPPOSITION IN S.A.?
James Myburgh
Writing in his Political Blog column in Moneyweb (July 27, see here), under the headline “Who is the real opposition”?, James Myburgh asked: “How the DP’s record compares historically with the SACP and COSATU’s”?
Read entire article.

- 08/03/2007
MULTIPLE MURDERER SAYS FW DE KLERK IS A MURDERER, TOO.

A report in the Johannesburg Sunday Times on July 29, 2007, was headlined,  “You're a murderer too, FW!”.  FW de Klerk was South Africa’s last apartheid president. Under his presidency, the government was transferred to the African National Congress in a non-violent election. Beneath the headline were two subheadings: "Vlakplaas killer Eugene de Kock claims De Klerk ordered Mthatha raid that killed two 12-year-olds" and, "TRC document outlines former President's attendance at meetings that set up death squads." The basis for the main headline were comments Eugene de Kock made to a radio show the previous week, in which he described De Klerk as an "unconvicted murderer."
Read entire article.

- 08/02/2007
BRING CLOSURE TO "SHAME OF PAST", SAYS ZILLE

In 1995, the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act set up South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The purpose was to provide "as complete a picture as possible of the nature, causes and extent of gross violations of human rights" (during the apartheid years).  The period covered was March 1, 1960 (when the apartheid government clamped down on the mostly black liberation movement, driving many into exile from where they launched an armed resistance movement), and May 10, 1994 (when the country’s first non-racial elections were held, the African National Congress took over the government from the white apartheid rulers, and Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the country’s president). The TRC began its work in April 1996.
Read entire article.

www.da.co.za - 08/02/2007
THE FLAWED STRUCTURE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
Democratic Alliance
The policy of which President Thabo Mbeki appears to be most proud is “demographic representivity”. It’s a fancy word for affirmative action – in an extreme form. Briefly, it means that South Africans should have access to jobs in portion to their percentage of the population, e.g.: 37,307,700 Blacks can claim 79.3% of the jobs; 4,379,800 Whites: 9.3%; , 4,148,800 Coloureds: 8.8%; 1,153,900 Indians: 2.5%.
Read entire article.

The African Communist. No. 65/1976 - 07/31/2007
ESSOP PAHAD - 30 YEARS AGO IN CUBA
Essop Pahad
If President Thabo Mbeki owes his local and international reputation to anything, it is to his (fairly) orthodox economic policies. It would be interesting to know, therefore, whether his Minister in the Presidency (and lifelong friend and confidant), Dr Essop Pahad shares his views.
Read entire article.

- 07/30/2007
THE PRESIDENTIAL SUCCESSION: THREE X FACTORS
Stanley Uys
When the ANC assembles for its December 15-20 ‘elective’ conference in Polokwane, Limpopo province, Thabo Mbeki will be re-elected as the party’s President for the third consecutive five-year period. He will remain South Africa’s president until 2009, when constitutionally he has to step down, but he can continue as ANC president, as no doubt he will do.
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- 07/30/2007
STATE AND MEDIA IN SOUTH AFRICA, AGAIN
Paul Trewhela
A bad heritage
Read entire article.

- 07/29/2007
CRIME: ITS DAMAGING EFFECT ON S.A.
Stanley Uys
Since the African National Congress took over the government in South Africa in 1994, crime has soared - and with it vigilantism and a public clamour for the return of the death penalty. Last week, Judge Dennis Davis said that "85 percent of the (47 million) population are probably now in favour of reviving the death penalty because of the rise in the number of murders since it was repealed". Davis opposes the reinstatement of executions, but suggests that one reason why the public are so incensed is that police and prosecutors are so "sloppy" that "judges are often forced to dismiss a murder case - although they and everyone else in court believe the accused to be guilty - because there is no firm evidence".
Read entire article.

- 07/27/2007
SERVICE DELIVERY ANGER AND LACK OF REPRESENTATION
Paul Trewhela
Two interconnected issues
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Sunday Times Online (UK) (22/7/07) - 07/27/2007
THE INVISIBLE CURE: AFRICA, THE WEST AND THE FIGHT AGAINST AIDS

By Helen Epstein: The core part of this book is a devastating critique of the West’s Aids programmes
Reviewed by Paul Collier
Read entire article.

- 07/27/2007
DESPERATE MEASURES IN ZIMBABWE
A Business Correspondent
The measure of gold
Read entire article.

Business Day (25/7/2007) - 07/26/2007
'KEY POINTS OPEN DANGEROUS DOORS'
Raymond Louw
On July 14, this web-site (ever-fasternews.com) published an article which appeared in the Johannesburg Star, written by the former editor of the now extinct Rand Daily Mail, Raymond Louw (see below: RDM ‘covered uprising in most professional manner’). In yesterday’s Business Day (July 25), Louw broadened his comment to warn against government moves towards censorship (‘Key Points Open Dangerous Doors’). We reprint Louw’s article, and will be making our own comment later.
Read entire article.

- 07/26/2007
MUGABE" 'PUT ZIMBABWE FIRST'
PAUL TREWHELA
THE following is the text of the speech delivered by President Robert Mugabe at the opening of the Third Session of the Sixth Parliament in Harare, Zimbabwe, on 24 July.
Read entire article.

- 07/25/2007
CHRIS HANI: AMBIGUITIES IN HIS LIFE
Paul Trewhela
At its recent national conference, members and leaders of the South African Communist Party sang a song implying that the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, had a role in the murder in 1993 of the SACP and ANC leader, Chris Hani. (See 'SACP jeers Mbeki', 14 July) No evidence for such a suggestion has ever been produced. We reproduce here a very brief supplementary obituary of Hani by Paul Trewhela, published in the daily newspaper, the Independent, London, on 24 April 1993, setting out important features of his life:
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The Star, JHB, July 24 - 07/24/2007
RDM 'COVERED UPRISINGS IN MOST PROFESSIONAL MANNER'
Raymond Louw
Raymond Louw was one of three editors of the Rand Daily Mail who were dismissed from their jobs: Laurence Gandar, Raymond Louw and Allister Sparks. Finally, in 1985, the RDM was closed under Rex Gibson. In a letter to The Star today (July 23), Louw – one of the finest editors South Africa has ever produced – defends Patrick Laurence, who had a long association with the RDM. Louw writes:
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- 07/24/2007
IN SUPPORT OF PATRICK LAURENCE AND THE RAND DAILY MAIL

BY Paul Trewhela
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The Star, JHB, July 24 - 07/24/2007
'TRAITS OF AN UNBALANCED PARANOID'-JHB STAR QUOTES A JUDGE ON RS ROBERTS
Patrick Laurence
'Roberts would have done well to get his facts straight before beginning his unfounded accusations'
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Sunday Times, JHB - 07/24/2007
McBRIDE CASE: NEED FOR A 'NEW CULTURE OF PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY'
Editorial
An 'easy ride on the margins of the law'
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Jaundiced Eye - 07/23/2007
DEMYTHOLOGISING MANDELA?
William Saunderson-Meyer
A gossip column in the UK’s This Week (July 21 - www.theweek.co.uk) says ‘Nelson Mandela’s status as a living saint is under threat from a forthcoming film. British dramatist William Nicholson has been researching the former South African president for a screenplay due to go into production next year. “He was politically magnificent, but there was also a dark side to him”, says the Gladiator writer. “He screwed around like a rabbit on acid in his early life. He was a one-man disaster zone. His first wife became a Jehovah’s Witness, which is a form of mental suicide”.
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AIDSAlert. 279. omegainvest.co.za - 07/23/2007
AIDS: TEST DRIVE
Virginia van der Vliet
In the past year of two, the call for individuals to go for testing to establish their HIV status has grown ever louder. At the same time, the debate around testing policy has grown more heated. Once upon a time, the issue of testing was relatively simple - no one except those who voluntarily sought testing, should be tested, and they could not be tested without their informed consent, based on pre-test (and followed by post-test) counselling, at least in theory.
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Sunday Times, JHB. - 07/22/2007
TIME TO PURGE THE SABC
Editorial
The Johannesburg Sunday Times today (July 22) published this outspoken editorial under the headline Time to purge the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation). The newspaper is edited by Mondli Makhanya.
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- 07/22/2007
ECONOMIC LUNACY IN ZIMBABWE


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- 07/22/2007
CIA ASSESSMENTS OF SOUTH AFRICA'S TRANSITION: HOW ACCURATE WERE THEY?
Martin Plaut
Introduction
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- 07/21/2007
COURT INTERDICT AGAINST M&G
Paul Trewhela
The editor of the Mail&Guardian, Ferial Haffajee, has warned against pre-publication censorship, saying that this is ‘emerging as a major threat to investigative journalism in South Africa’.

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Omegainvest.co.za - 07/21/2007
KEEPING THE RED FLAG FLYING
Prof. David Welsh
[Further thoughts on the recent SA Communist Party conference. See also on this web-site: Fiery Youth...)
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- 07/21/2007
'POLICE CHIEF TRIED TO FAKE BLOOD TEST'

One of South Africa’s police chiefs, Robert McBride (the Ekurhuleni metropolitan police, who are separate from the South African Police Service) has finally appeared (after a seven months’ delay) in the Pretoria Regional Court on charges of driving under the influence of alcohol, defeating the ends of justice and fraud. He is on R1,000 (£70) bail. The charges relate to McBride’s car accident in December last year, near Pretoria. He was allegedly drunk when he crashed his car, and his officers are said to have bullied witnesses and covered up for him.
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- 07/20/2007
A VITAL DISTINCTION IN PUBLIC LIFE
Paul Trewhela
Paul Trewhela sums up the latest exchanges over the 'unlikeable' Ronald Suresh Roberts:
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- 07/20/2007
'DEVELOPMENTAL STATE' IS 'JUST CANT'
Paul Trewhela
What is actually meant when South African political figures in the ANC use the term 'developmental state'? The problem is that insofar as the ANC had an economic theory during the adult lifetime of the present generation of political leaders, this was formed by marxism and the reality of the Soviet bloc. There was a certain latitude, as the Freedom Charter suggests, towards state nationalisation of the vanished 'Old Labour' kind within a capitalist economy: comprehensive state bureaucratic control of whole sectors of production, offering massive feather-bedding to an equally bureaucratic trade union corporatism.
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BUSINESS DAY 18/7/2007 - 07/20/2007
SA IS DEVELOPING A FALSE IDENTITY
Jac Laubscher
Writing in Business Day (July 18, 2007), Jac Laubscher, group economist at Sanlam, says:
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- 07/19/2007
ARMS DEAL INQUIRY: THE KRAKEN AWAKES
Paul Trerwhela
The South African Institute of Race Relations has issued invitations to ‘the first in a new series of round table briefings – an overview of the Arms Deal’. The speaker will be the recently appointed director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, Raenette Taljaard. The invitation states that ‘She was instrumental in investigating the arms deal during her tenure as a Member of Parliament and member of the Standing (Parliamentary) Committee on Public Accounts. She is a respected military consultant and publishes widely’. The briefing will be on August 2. It reflects reawakening interest in South Africa in the allegedly corrupt arms deal initiated in 1999 .
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IDASA - 07/19/2007
QUESTIONS ABOUT ARMS DEAL STILL REMAIN
Idasa staff
IDASA is the Institute for Democracy in South Africa. This article first appeared in the Cape Times on June 7, 2007.
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- 07/19/2007
POLITICIAN'S EIGHT-YEAR CAMPAIGN AGAINST ARMS CORRUPTION
Patricia de Lille
In September 1999, Patricia de Lille, president of the small opposition party, the Indepenent Democrats, in the South African parliament, began a campaign over the country’s Arms Deal corruption scandal. She introduced a motion in parliament calling for a commission of inquiry into the ‘suspicious circumstances’ surrounding the Deal. At the same time, she released the De Lille Dossier to the media. In November, she submitted allegations of corruption to Judge Willem Heath, head of the corruption-busting Heath Special Investigative Unit.
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- 07/17/2007
FIERY YOUTH: THE NEW WARRIORS OF BLACK POLITICS?
Stanley Uys
Step by step, conference by conference, black politics in South Africa is reshaping itself.  The process will take a surge forward at the December 15-20 conference of the African National Congress (ANC), when some 4,000 delegates vote to re-elect Thabo Mbeki as the party’s president, or replace him with another president. The point is that whoever wins will preside over faction-forming, new identities and new directions, on a scale probably never seen in the ANC’s 95-year history.
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- 07/17/2007
A HOMILY FROM COMRADE MUGABE
Paul Trewhela
A speech by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe gives a luminous idea of the paranoia, denialism and state-organised violence, by means of which a whole society can be wrecked. It is worth reading for a closer idea of the psychology of unreality at the head of state. The president’s words exist in inverse relation to the subject they address.
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- 07/15/2007
'COLONIAL CREATURE'? IF ONLY S.A. HAD MORE OF THEM!
Paul Trewhela
The magnificent essay on shame - shame at the moral attitude of South African blacks towards the crimes in neighbouring Zimbabwe - by Dr Xolela Mangcu (reprinted from Business Day on ever-fasternews yesterday, 15 June), was a wonderful reminder of the qualities of South African journalism at its best.
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The Harbinger (15/7/07) - 07/15/2007
THE LIMITS OF DISCOURSE
Anton Harber
We want robust and tough debate, but when does it cross the line into abusive attack? It is a question raised by Ronald Suresh Robert’s vindictive, personal approach to debate in his Thabo Mbeki book. And it is one often raised by others in the presidency as well. The impact of one’s writing is, obviously, dependent on one’s position. It means something different when a pen is wielded by those who hold political power, fand they have therefore different responsibilities from those who are writing about, rather than wielding, power. Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad’s recent response to Patrick Laurence comes to mind.
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- 07/15/2007
A LOOK AT THE ELECTORAL LAW
Paul Trewhela
The time has come to consider a revision of the South African Constitution of 1994, with focus on the electoral law.
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- 07/15/2007
VIOLENT HOUSING PROTESTS. A REPRISE FROM THE APARTHEID ERA
Paul Trewhela
Anger over lack of lack of adequate housing turned to violence at hostels in the Gauteng (Johannesburg) area on July 14, with seven arrests at Jabulani hostel, as well as at other hostels in Soweto, and in Alexandra. In the course of coordinated street demonstrations, police fired rubber bullets to disperse crowds at the Nancefield and Dobsonville hostels. Disruption also took place at hostels at Dube, Mzimhlope, Jeppe, Denver and George Goch.
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Business Day (12/7/07) - 07/15/2007
FOR OUR COLLUSION WITH MUGABE, BLACK SOUTH AFRICA SHOULD FEEL ASHAMED
Xolela Mangcu
[Dr Xolela Mangcu is executive chairman of the Platform for Public Deliberation, and a visiting scholar at the Public Intellectual Life Project at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is one of writers maligned by Robert Suresh Roberts in his ‘intellectual biography’, Fit to Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki (STE Publishers, 2007), which has been extensively discussed on ever-fasternews in the two weeks since publication.
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Financial Mail (13/7/2007) - 07/15/2007
A 'SETTLER'S NEED TO BELONG

More than a decade ago, Trinidad-born Ronald Suresh Roberts turned up in South Africa, and in due course has written an 'authorised biopgraphy' of President Thabo Mbeki: (Fit to Govern - The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki) . Few high-flying authors have received such a trouncing - for the calibre of the book, the tongue lashing Roberts received from a High Court judge when he unsuccessfully sued the Johannesburg Sunday Times for poublishing an article entitled The Unlikeable Mr Roberts, and the disclosure that the Minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad, persuaded Absa bank to fund the book to the tune of R1.4 million. Now Ken Owen, former editor of the Johannesburg Sunday Times (who once took a kindly view of Roberts), has added to the trouncing. He writes:
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- 07/14/2007
AUDITOR-GENERAL WARNS ON PUBLIC FUNDS JUMBLE

Auditor-general Terence Nombembe has painted an unflattering picture of financial administration at all three levels of government, warning that wastage and under-spending are hampering service delivery, says Sanchia Temlin in Business Day (13/7/07). Speaking at the Johannesburg Press Club, the state’s audit chief said the annual financial reports of government departments at national, provincial and municipal levels were dismal, a situation that could affect public confidence in the government’s financial administration. Inadequate departmental systems, guidance and tools to manage the movement from cash to accrual accounting, and a lack of skills, were some of the root causes hampering the government’s ability to collect and administer revenue. “These trends have an impact of diminishing confidence the public has in the administration of accounts,” Nombembe said. He deplored the government’s inability to account properly for the expenditure of tax resources, which he said had an effect on service delivery. Nombembe’s comments come amid recent violent protests in certain municipalities over the pace of service delivery.
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- 07/13/2007
POLICE CHIEF McBRIDE AND THE ISSUE OF DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY
Paul Trewhela
The court interdict served this week on Robert McBride, the police chief for the Ekhuruleni (former East Rand) metropolitan region, restraining him from threatening, harassing or intimidating three of his senior police officers, has placed the system of political appointments to the police in South Africa in sharp focus. (See 'Judge tells police chief: No more threats', 12 July).

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- 07/13/2007
ESSOPGATE: A REVIEW OF UNPARLIAMENTARY PRACTICE
Paul Trewhela
Professor Hermann Giliomee has published a damning historical comparison, relating the recent ‘intellectual biography’ of President Thabo Mbeki, written by the British-born and Trinidad-educated Robert Suresh Roberts, to one of the worst abuses of parliamentary practice by the apartheid government of the National Party.
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Sunday Times Online - 07/13/2007
ZIMBABWE COLLAPSING

Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has ordered the dreaded war veterans, youth militia and Zanu-PF Women’s League to help enforce price cuts and stem the country’s descent into chaos, reports the Johannesburg Sunday Times (July 10). As Zimbabwe faced complete meltdown, state radio summoned the brutal militias to Zanu-PF headquarters so they could provide back-up for police and secret agents. Mugabe’s order to businesses to cut the price of goods by 50% triggered mass stampedes, panic buying and near-riots byZimbabweans. Economists and political observers are now warning that fuel, the price of which was cut in half on Friday (July 6), will run out by midweek and that there will be major food shortages by today (July 13).
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Sunday Times Online JULY 12 - 07/12/2007
JUDGE TELLS POLICE CHIEF: NO MORE THREATS

‘If anyone of you co-operates with the police or gives any statements which directly incriminate me in any criminal activities I will rape your wives before I kill them, kill your children, and thereafter kill everything that moves at your homes, including your cats and dogs’. 
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MONEYWEB - 07/12/2007
AIDS: HERE IS THE EVIDENCE OF MBEKI'S DENIALISM
James Myburgh
A reply to the Minister in the Presidency, Essop Pahad
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- 07/11/2007
THE SACP AND THE ZULU HERITAGE: AN INQUIRY
Paul Trewhela
A Zulu predominance
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- 07/10/2007
AIDS: AN IDEOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE
Paul Trewhela

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Omega Investment Research - 07/10/2007
THE POVERTY TRAP
Virginia van der Vliet
AIDSAlert270. The Expert Analysis Service
Read entire article.

- 07/09/2007
CRUNCH TIME FOR SA COMMUNIST PARTY
Stanley Uys
The next stage in the disintegration of the Tripartite Alliance in South Africa is set for July 11-15 in Port Elizabeth when the SA Communist Party holds its 12th national congress. Founded in 1921, the SACP has had a close relationship with the African National Congress (founded in 1912) in an often turbulent struggle with the country’s white rulers. Following the formation of the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) in 1985, and then by the formation of the Tripartite Alliance, black politics came together in a central aim: liberation from apartheid.
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- 07/08/2007
DENIALISM ABOUT DENIALISM: Minister Pahad’s attack on a critic of Ronald Suresh Roberts’s book
Paul Trewhela
‘Where’s proof of denialism?’
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AIDSAlert January - 07/07/2007
AIDS: FURTHER COMMENT ON DURBAN CONFERENCE
Virginia van der Vliet

Read entire article.

Africa Insight (www.omegainvest.co.za) - 07/06/2007
WAITING FOR THE DUST TO SETTLE
Prof. David Welsh
Until the dust settles on last week's Midrand onference (of the African National Congress), it will not be possible to declare a 'winner' - if, indeed, there was one. At this moment it looks very much as though it was a draw. The ANC's policy conference, as noted in last week's Insight Africa, was in major respects a run-up to, or a dress rehearsal for, the major ANC conference to be held in Limpopo province in December. It is there that the critical decision about who will lead the ANC will be taken.
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Liberation Africa - 07/04/2007
NEW MAGAZINE'S STRANGE TITLE
'Andreas'
A new magazine appeared in South Africa in March with the curious title of Molotov Cocktail, edited by James Sanders, assisted by Ronald Suresh Roberts. However, Sanders and Roberts (according to the investigative magazine noseweek) had a row, Roberts was fired, and members of the staff quit. So far, the second issue has not appeared. Some think that without government funding it cannot survive. A review in South Africa (see here) by ‘Andreas” says: ‘Aimlessly looking over a CNA magazine rack the other day, I was quite excited to find a new South African mag called Molotov Cocktail. I’m an enthusiastic supporter of the independent media in this country and have long thought there is glaring gap in the otherwise glutted magazine market for a progressive, even radical (heaven forbid), edgy, locally-produced title. Personally I’d be especially excited by anything along autonomous, anti-authoritarian or anarchist lines, but this looked pretty good at a first glance - the provocative title, the cover art of a hand poised to throw a lit petrol bomb, and the subtitle, Dismantling the Master’s House Brick by Brick, were all very promising.
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JAMESTOWN - 07/04/2007
NEW REPORT OF TERRORIST CAMP IN SOUTH AFRICA
John Solomon
By John Solomon
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- 07/03/2007
FURTHER INTO THE MIRE. The President's friends in the media
Paul Trewhela
An explosive issue
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- 07/02/2007
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT THE ANC CONFERENCE?
Stanley Uys
On the opening day of the ANC’s ‘policy conference’ (June 27), just to make sure that everything got off to an harmonious start, President Thabo Mbeki let loose what the media called a ‘blistering’ attack on the South African Communist Party (SACP) which, with the ANC and the Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu), forms the country’s Tripartite Alliance. Mbeki told the SACP to stop telling the ANC what to do (i.e. change its economic policies): the ANC had never sought to ‘prescribe to the SACP the politics it should adopt, the programmes of action it should implement, and the leaders it should elect’ (Business Day, June 28, here). What Mbeki did not say was that he had never been unhappy with SACP support at election time. Later, in a television interview, he effectively preempted three choices that had been put before the conference concerning the election of the ANC president. According to News24 (June 28, here), he ‘outed’ himself as available for re-election as ANC leader if party structures asked him to stand. Before Mbeki communicated this news, all he had been saying, at spaced intervals, was that he would ‘consider’ standing if approached. Now, he will not ‘disrespect’ a request. It sounds like something from the Godfather.
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- 07/01/2007
'REALITY' OF LAND OWNERSHIP IN SOUTH AFRICA

While President Robert Mugabe’s government allows land seizures by its African supporters at random in Zimbabwe, President Thabo Mbeki’s government has set a target of 30% land ownership by Africans in South Africa by 2014. But now it says this expropriation is open-ended and eventually must reflect the country’s demographics: Africans 79.3%; Whites 9.3%; Coloureds 8.8%; Indians 2.5%. In reply to a Democratic Alliance parliamentary question, the Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Lulu Xingwana, ‘has revealed that land restitution will not end when the 30% target has been reached by 2014, but that government will continue in its attempt to restore the imbalance between white and black land ownership, even after all the land restitution claims have been settled’.
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- 06/29/2007
A SOUTH AFRICAN MEDIA SCANDAL (with a commentary by Bertolt Brecht)

From Mulder to Mbeki
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Star, Johannesburg - 06/28/2007
ANC 'AS WASTEFUL' AS APARTHEID REGIME
Abba Flint
In a letter to the Johannesburg Star (ANC government as wasteful as the Nats, 25 June 2007), Abba Flint of Alberton writes: ‘After reading a report in The Star about the furore over Gauteng Health MEC (Member of the Executive Council) Brian Hlongwa's new R1-million boardroom, my mind went back to the twilight years of apartheid misrule. A Nationalist supporter told me at a business conference how proud he had been when the Nats (the Afrikaner apartheid regime) swept into power in 1948, promising to restore the Afrikaner volk's pride, and build a sterling and just South African nation, after decades of English subjugation, resulting in a wretched second-class existence.
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Moneyweb - 06/28/2007
SENSIBLE OR SOVIET?
JAMES MYBURGH
The ANC plans for a single public service in SA
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- 06/27/2007
ANC 'POLICY CONFERENCE' OPENED TODAY
Stanley Uys
Analyst Aubrey Matshiqi puts it rather neatly. The ANC’s ‘policy conference’, which starts today (June 27-July 1), he says, will be a ‘proxy debate’ for the December 15 conference at which delegates will either re-elect Thabo Mbeki as the party’s president or install someone else in his place. In Business Day today (see here) Karima Brown agrees. ‘When delegates to the African National Congress (ANC) policy conference gather today to deliberate key political, economic and social policy questions , the party’s presidential succession race will be the proverbial elephant in the hall. There are real fears that the debates - especially about organisational redesign (internal reform in the ANC) and the review of SA’s justice system - could degenerate into proxy debates for the succession dog fight. Any analysis of the balance of forces between competing factions needs to take into account that the policy conference is not a decision-making forum and that all the recommendations will be forwarded to the elective conference in December. It is only then that the recommendations will be accepted or rejected’.
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- 06/27/2007
RONALD SURESH ROBERTS, REVISITED
Paul Trewhela
The President and his imbongi
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- 06/25/2007
MANDELA AS MORAL LEADER: AN EVALUATION
Paul Trewhela
There are four principal areas that biographers of Nelson Mandela have tended to neglect, all crucial for an assessment of this major, though flawed, political leader.
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- 06/24/2007
STATE AND THE MEDIA IN SOUTH AFRICA: A QUESTION MARK
Paul Trewhela
A question of probity
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AIDSAlert - 06/23/2007
AIDS: BACK TO THE BAD OLD DAYS?
Virginia van der Vliet
Remember the story of the Sleeping Beauty? Well, the Durban AIDS Conference (5-8 June, 2007) was a bit like that.
Read entire article.

www.omegainvestment.co.za - 06/22/2007
THABO MBEKI'S POISONED CHALICE
Prof. David Welsh
So far President Thabo Mbeki's efforts (in Zimbabwe) do not appear to have borne any fruit. On the contrary, all the evidence appears to suggest that Robert Mugabe is thumbing his nose at SADC's initiative, using the supposed mediation as a delaying tactic. Indeed, ZANU-PF delegates simply did not show up for the first scheduled meeting in Pretoria 10 days ago. MDC (opposition Mass Democratic Movement) delegates had already arrived in Pretoria when a message was received from ZANU-PF that its representatives would not attend. Ostensibly the reason for their non- attendance was that ZANU-PF was not yet ready to participate in the mediation exercise.
Read entire article.

BUSINESS DAY - 06/21/2007
ADDING UP SAD FIGURES OF EDUCATION AFTER LIBERATION
John Kane-Berman
By John Kane-Berman
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Moneyweb - 06/20/2007
WILL MBEKI'S 'AUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY' RESTORE HIS REPUTATION?
James Myburgh

Read entire article.

- 06/20/2007
AN APOLOGIST FOR A VANISHED ERA
Paul Trewhela
Brezhnev's Ghost
Read entire article.

- 06/18/2007
ANC POWER STRUGGLE - NEXT WEEK, NOT DECEMBER
Stanley Uys
The expectation that black politics will explode when the ANC holds its December 15 conference appears to have been preempted. Now it seems that the explosion – if that is what one calls it – will be on June 15–July 30 when the ANC holds its ‘policy conference’. Cosatu’s general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi (never at a loss for a word) said last week that if the working class failed to win certain ideological positions at the policy conference ‘we must know that we are finished as a working class’. So it’s 10 days to high noon. Cosatu president Willie Madisha, rather more moderate than Vavi, agrees: ‘This (the strike) is notice of very serious and militant actions by the workers of our country - unless the government moves there will be problems. We are not baboons. We cannot be given peanuts’.
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Moneyweb - 06/16/2007
'WHITE' DOCTORS: DID MBEKI GET HIS FACTS STRAIGHT?
JamesMyburgh
In parliament on Wednesday (June 14), President Thabo Mbeki attacked both the Sunday Times and Democratic Alliance over claims that the Western Cape health department was delaying in approving the appointment of white South Africans to specialist positions at hospitals in the province. Mbeki said that in a speech on Tuesday that the leader of the DA in parliament, Sandra Botha, had made ‘various serious allegations’ in this regard, that these had been based upon a Sunday Times article, and they were complete ‘falsehoods’. It is not quite clear whether the newspaper was wrong, and certainly Mbeki seems to have made some errors of his own. The background to the story is as follows:
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Moneyweb, June 14 - 06/15/2007
THABO MBEKI AND THE NAZI IDEOLOGY
James Myburgh

Or why those living in crystal palaces shouldn't throw stones
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- 06/13/2007
AFRIKANERS 'TIRED OF SAYING SORRY'
Stanley Uys
Afrikaners are making no attempt to conceal the divisions in their ranks over the future of their language. Two camps have formed and have locked their horns in battle: those who are prepared to fight for it, and those who are prepared to let English take its course as South Africa’s lingua franca. Colloquially, the former are called the taalstryders (activists for Afrikaans) and the latter the taalglyers (language slide-aways). Increasingly, the debate has focussed on education as the key - at schools and universities; and more particularly at the mother university, Stellenbosch, where a leading campaigner for Afrikaans is the well-known historian, Professor Hermann Giliomee.
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- 06/12/2007
DEATH OF A SOUTH AFRICAN FILM?
Stanley Uys
Three United States foundations (Ford, Kellog, CS Mott) last year donated funds to a South African NGO (non-governmental organisation), the Film Resources Unit (FRU), specifically for it to sponsor a film, Nothing But the Truth. However, the FRU, founded in 1986 and successful for almost 20 years, came under new management, ran into financial difficulties, and is now declaring insolvency. The result is that the film has ground to a halt and may never be completed. Yet it could have been a landmark ‘South African made’ film. The FRU is said to have used the funding to resolve its own problems, including paying staff salaries, instead of observing the donors’ ruling that the money should be ring-fenced for the film. So far, incredibly, no other donor, South African or international, has stepped forward to rescue the film.
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- 06/12/2007
ROSS DEVENISH: PROFILE OF A FILM-MAKER
William Pretorius
In this profile of Ross Devenish (see report above), who now lives at Barrydale in the Cape Province, William Pretorius asks:
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Mail&Guardian. June 3, 2007 - 06/10/2007
WHAT ARE S.A.'S ECONOMICS NOW?
Jeremy Cronin
Jeremy Cronin, deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party, writes in the Mail&Guardian (June 3, 2007):
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AIDSAlert276 - 06/08/2007
PUBLIC SERVICE STRIKE - AND AIDS
Virginia van der Vliet
There is something very ugly about news stories of hospital workers in the current public service strike threatening nursing staff, working to keep paediatric intensive care units running, and forcing them to rush critically ill babies to facilities across town, or locking up mortuaries, so that the dead cannot be moved from wards. But the tales of everyday life in the country’s public hospitals are not much prettier.
Read entire article.

- 06/08/2007
HUGE STRIKE ANOTHER CHAPTER IN CONFLICT WITH ANC
Prof David Welsh
One of the biggest strikes in South Africa’s history is involving up to one million public servants. They are demanding a 12% wage increase, but the government is offering only 6.5%. Writing in Business Day today, Amy Musgrave suggests that the unions may lower their demand to 10 percent. The strike has badly affected the performance of government departments, including the teaching at schools where there is an 80% stayaway by teachers. Some provinces have postponed their midyear matric exams. Although essential services employees are not allowed to participate in the industrial action, many nurses have downed tools, leaving hospitals understaffed. The strike has also turned violent and there have been arrests across the country. The National Union of Mineworkers, Cosatu’s largest affiliate, is demanding a 15% pay hike from platinum mines. The cabinet minister responsible for handling the strike claims that if the government’s entire package was taken into consideration, it amounted to an 18,7% pay hike for the lowest-paid public servants.
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- 06/05/2007
AFRICA AND ITS OIL

Nigeria pumped its first barrel of oil in the 1950s and has since set records for corruption. The government's own anticorruption watchdog, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, estimates that between independence in 1960 and 1999, the country's rulers stole $ 400 billion in oil revenues - equal to all the foreign aid to Africa during the same period. And Africa increasingly has become the target of oil-seeking developed countries. The National Intelligence Council, a U.S.-government think tank, predicts that the Gulf of Guinea will supply 20-25% of total U.S. imports by 2020.
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- 06/04/2007
DEPARTMENTS WHOSE WHEELS HAVE COME OFF
Democratic Alliance
Almost daily, parliamentary members of the opposition Democratic Alliance in South Africa ask questions, issue statements and make speeches on subjects affecting the running of government departments. Many of the allegations made by DA MPs point to poorly run departments. Here are some:
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- 05/31/2007
A CAPETONIAN'S EXTRAORDINARY LIFE
Paul Trewhela
An extraordinary Capetonian, Bernhard Herzberg, died this month in London , while putting the final touches to his second MA degree – on the subject of apartheid - a month before his 98th birthday. He became the world’s oldest graduate at age 90 when he completed a BA degree in German literature at London University in 2000, followed by his first MA (in refugee studies) in 2005, Bernhard Herzberg vividly recalled the vibrant anti-racist cultural and political life in Cape Town from seventy years ago. Born in Hanover, Germany, in 1909 to a proud, stern family of wealthy German Jews – his father won the Iron Cross during the First World War – and after a rebellious youth as a socialist active in combat against the rising tide of Nazism in Germany, he arrived in Cape Town as a refugee in November 1933. His father, who had cast him out of the family house in anger at his warnings about what Hitler would do to the Jews, survived incarceration in Buchenwald concentration camp, but was able to leave Germany with Herzberg's mother before the final catastrophe.
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- 05/31/2007
TARRING MBEKI WITH HIS OWN BRUSH
Prof. Hermann Giliomee
In his latest internet letter, our usually phlegmatic President completely lost his temper. It was with Zwelinzima Vavi (general secretary of the Congress of SA Trade Unions) who said that the stories the government was spreading about an economic boom in South Africa were nothing other than propaganda and similar to those of the Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. For Vavi it would be more correct to say that there is growing inequality between poor and rich. According to him it is true that a black elite is developing, but at the same time inequality between white and black is increasing and is not improving the quality of life of blacks generally.
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- 05/29/2007
MAHARAJ: UNRAVELLING THE MYSTERY
Paul Trewhela
PAUL TREWHELA REVIEWS Padraig O’Malley's, Shades of Difference. Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa (Viking Penguin, 2007)
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CITY PRESS. 24/03/07 - 05/29/2007
MAC'S FOREIGN STASH
Makhudu Sefara
The Scorpions’ (elite police unit) investigation of former Transport Minister Mac Maharaj and his wife, Zarina, is centred on millions of rands stashed in foreign accounts. has traced a sizeable number of questionable payments made by, among others, Jacob Zuma’s jailed former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik. They were made into accounts belonging to Maharaj or his wife in the Isle of Man, the UK and in Zurich and Geneva. City Press has also established that Shaik, former boss of Nkobi Holdings, used a company he established offshore called Minderly Investment to put money into a Banque SCS Alliance account belonging to Zarina Maharaj.
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Business Day - 05/29/2007
THE PRESIDENCY: PUPPET FOR MBEKI?
Peter Bruce
In The Thick End of the Wedge (Business Day, May 28), editor Peter Bruce speculates on who might get the top jobs in the ANC and the country. Turning his attention to women, and says that if Thabo Mbeki is elected as ANC president in December, who will become the country’s president in 2009. He writes: “Some people say Mbeki wants a pliable friend in the job, someone who could protect him from prying and hostile eyes. And, hell, why not a woman? That would guarantee Women's League support for his continued chieftainship of the party…
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- 05/29/2007
SHAIK ROAD SHOW COMES TO TOWN FOR FINAL BID

CHIPPY Shaik, 46, former head of South Africa’s huge arms procurement programme, is moving to Australia with his wife and children following allegations of bribery and of plagiarising a doctorate in engineering. He is the brother of Schabir Shaik, who was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment last year for corruption, and who acted as financial adviser to Jacob Zuma, with whom he was said to have a ‘generally corrupt relationship’. Schabir is waiting for the Constitutional Court to rule whether he can appeal against his conviction and sentencing. (Zuma was dismissed by President Thabo Mbeki as South Africa’s Deputy President two years ago for corruption related to the arms scandal).
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- 05/29/2007
S.A. PAYS ARMS WHISTLE-BLOWER R15 MILLION

The huge arms procurement programme embarked upon by the South African government in the 1990s continues to reveal the corruption that accompanied bids by foreign suppliers. Well-connected ANC members acted as “facilitators” for foreign companies and received kickbacks, some of them massive. Now a Cape Town businessman, Richard Young, who thought he had secured the contract to supply corvettes, but lost the bid to a French firm, has been paid R15 million by the state after 10 years of litigation.
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- 05/28/2007
UNBELIEVABLE STORY OF S.A.'S TOP COP

The Scorpions ( South Africa’s eite police unit) have searched the offices of Jackie Selebi, the National Police Commissioner. The Afrikaans daily Beeld reveals that the search which took place two weeks ago was into the police chief's alleged involvement in crime. There has been a denial from his spokeswoman, Sally de Beer, who said: "It's not true. If it had taken place, I would've known about it, especially as my office is next to his." A spokesman for the Scorpions also denied that the raid took place. Despite this, Beeld is sticking to its story, saying its report came from two independent and "reliable" sources. Beeld's sources indicate that the raid was connected to allegations of corruption, fraud, drug smuggling and money laundering.
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Business Day - 05/27/2007
PRESIDENCY STRUGGLE GETTING MADDER AND MADDER?
Karima Brown & Vukani Mde
The succession struggle for the presidency of the African National Congress looks as if it is getting madder and madder. Now a report has surfaced making wild allegations that President Thabo Mbeki’s rival for the presidency, ANC deputy president, Jacob Zuma, has enlisted the help of African heads of state who are “hostile to SA’s interests”. They include Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and Angola’s president Jose Eduardo dos Santos. The National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has been asked to investigate the report, according to Karima Brown and Vukani Mde, writing in Weekender (Business Day, May 27. See here). They state:
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BUSINESS DAY - 05/26/2007
A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE
Xolela Mangcu
Writing in Business Day (see here), Xolela Mangcu asks about himself: can Xolela Mangcu write objectively about Tokyo Sexwale? That is the question that has been raised by some newspaper reports suggesting that my support for Sexwale stems from my ownership of shares in his consortium, Batho Bonke. Although I am one among more than a million beneficiaries, it is only fair that this question be raised. After all, I am a regular commentator on the leadership succession debate. I am flattered by the idea that my writings will influence the outcome of those elections. However, I am also smart enough to know that the extent of my influence is grossly exaggerated. Nonetheless, let us jointly endeavour to see if there is any link between my ownership of Batho Bonke shares and my public writings.
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Moneyweb - 05/25/2007
DOES SUCCESS CHANGE SOMEONE'S CHARACTER?

One key question has to be asked when assessing the candidates for the ANC presidency, says Moneyweb in its Political Blog (here).
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- 05/25/2007
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF AFRIKAANS?
Prof. Hermann Giliomee
The eminent South African historian, Prof. Hermann Giliomee, writes on: Meeting the legitimate demands of Afrikaans and other indigenous languages at the level of tertiary education.
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Abuja Vanguard - 05/25/2007
TALES ABOUT WOLFIE
Peter U.Igbinovia (Washington)
When outgoing World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz was captured by paparazzi at a Turkish mosque earlier this year wearing less than sexy socks with holes on both feet, many people wondered what his underwear might look like. After all, anyone holding such a prominent public office and visiting a Muslim holy site can expect some probability to take his shoes off. Unless being a complete naïve or fool (which even his strongest critics would say he is not) the departing Bank President should have been prepared for such a possibility. Yet, he did not plan accordingly when leaving his hotel room that morning. Therefore, the question about the status of his underwear (which he clearly was not prepared to reveal at the mosque) is a fair one. How did it look that day? Fortunately for him and for us, there was no paparazzi picture to expose his lack of taste at that level?
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- 05/25/2007
O'MALLEY: S.A. AND THE ANC TODAY
Paul Trewhela
The historian and biographer Padraig O’Malley makes a sober assessment of current conditions in South Africa and the quality of achievement of the African National Congress at the end of his biography of Mac Maharaj, Shades of Difference. Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa (Viking Penguin), published last month. Born and reared in Ireland, O’Malley is Professor for International Peace and Reconciliation at the McCormack Graduate School of Studies at the University of Massachusetts in Boston, USA, and is a visiting professor of political studies at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. He began his scholarly connection with South Africa in 1989.
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Democratic Al'iance bulletins - 05/24/2007
"ANC MAKING FARCE OF S.A. SPORT"

1.DONALD LEE, DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE, MP
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- 05/24/2007
REFLECTIONS ON CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA BY MAC MAHARAJ
Paul Trewhela
After Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo, the late Communist Party leader and chief of staff of Umkhonto weSizwe – the army of the African National Congress and the SACP – Satyandranath Ragunanan (‘Mac’) Maharaj, now 72, was probably the single most important leader of the armed struggle against the apartheid regime. In an extraordinary, heart-felt and lengthy foreword to a biography of Maharaj by the Irish and United States academic, Padraig O’Malley, published last month (Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa, Viking Penguin, 2007), Mandela gives powerful praise to Maharaj, who not only transcribed and smuggled out of prison Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, but later at tremendous risk to himself set up a successful communications link within South Africa between Mandela in prison and the ANC leadership in exile. O’Malley’s biography is the most comprehensive so far on details of the underground struggle against the apartheid government.
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Cape Times, May 23, 2007 - 05/23/2007
S.A.'S "DISGUSTING' EMPLOYMENT ACT
Andrew Kenny

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Moneyweb - 05/23/2007
MBEKI AND SEXWALE: HAVE THEY REALLY SETTLED THEIR DIFFERENCES?
James Myburgh
Tokyo Sexwale has been presented as a ‘compromise candidate' for the presidency of the African National Congress. The claim is made that he is someone able to appeal to both camps. This requires remaining on reasonable terms with both President Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, while manoeuvring for the top job. Earlier this week the editor of Business Day, Peter Bruce, even suggested that Sexwale and Mbeki could even make a double play. "Two good and (economically) like-minded leaders combining to get what they each want? Mbeki gets Tokyo's support to lead the party again. Mbeki backs Tokyo to become head of state." (See here for James Myburgh's full report in Moneyweb).
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ETHICAL CORPORATION magazine - 05/23/2007
"GODMOTHER OF BLACK EMPOWERMENT FALLS"
Markus Reichardt
South Africa’s largest financial scandal, having toppled a key black empowerment figure, raises serious questions about the roles of directors and trustees, writes Markus Reichardt in Ethical Corporation magazine- see here.
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- 05/22/2007
TIME TO PLACE YOUR BET ON THE NEXT ANC PRESIDENT?
Stanley Uys
With the arrival of Tokyo Sexwale on the scene, the time is approaching to consider placing our bets on who will be the winner of the ANC presidential race in December. No doubt this is a bit early to try to spot the winner. Nobody is officially nominated yet – that can happen only at the conference (December 15-20) – and nobody has even been unofficially nominated either. But we all know that the field so far consists of Thabo Mbeki, Jacob Zuma and Tokyo Sexwale. And that others may be waiting in the wings.
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Insight Africa May 8 - 05/21/2007
WHAT IS MOTIVE FOR REDUCING THE NINE PROVINCES?
Prof. David Welsh
Recent suggestions by two senior ministers, Mosiuoa Lekota (Defence and ANC national chairman) and Trevor Manuel (Finance) that consideration be given to reducing the number of provinces from nine to four or five have given rise to considerable debate. What lies behind the suggestions?
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Sunday Times, Johannesburg - 05/20/2007
HAS SEXWALE TORPEDOED MBEKI?
Moipone Malefane
Under the headline, ‘Sexwale candidacy torpedoes Mbeki’, Moipone Malefane writes in today’s Johannesburg Sunday Times (see here) that Tokyo Sexwale’s bid for the ANC presidency (at the December conference elections) is gaining support. He says that with the exception of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), the Zuma camp has been quiet about Sexwale, and that President Thabo Mbeki’s chances of a third term in the ANC’s top job look slimmer as his loyalists defect to the businessman.
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CITY PRESS - 05/19/2007
AN INTERESTING TALE ABOUT A WHITE MAN
KHATHU MAMAILA
He was the embodiment of pity. And when you listened to his story, you just had to feel pity for the man, a Mr Robert. Robert told a Roodepoort magistrate that he broke into a house on the West Rand because he wanted food. He pleaded guilty to a charge of house-breaking. Robert broke a bathroom window and entered the house. However, the bathroom was locked and he was trapped inside. Police were called and he was arrested. He had been in custody since February because he could not ­afford bail.
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STAR, Johannesburg - 05/19/2007
IS GORDIMER A 'BORING' WRITER?
Christine Qunta and Mosiuoa Lekota
Paul Trewhela has written on Culture Wars in South Africa (see here). Following is the actual exchange between Christine Qunta and Mosiuoa Lekota as reported in the Johannesburg Star on May 9 and May 17 (see below).
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- 05/18/2007
CULTURE WARS IN SOUTH AFRICA
Paul Trewhela
Literary war has broken out between a cultural representative of the black consciousness movement of the Seventies in South Africa and a senior figure in the ruling African National Congress: its National Chairperson, who happens also to be the country’s Minister of Defence (and, some say. a possible contender for the presidency of the ANC at the December conference). The subject of conflict is the literary status and political credentials of one of the country’s most acclaimed living (white) novelists, the author Nadine Gordimer, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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- 05/17/2007
AWKWARD QUESTIONS FOR THE S.A.GOVERNMENT TO ANSWER

The opposition Democratic Alliance has submitted a number of questions to parliament relating to shortcomings, malpractices and possible corruption in government departments:
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- 05/16/2007
DE KLERK'S 'SACRIFICE': WHAT WAS THE ALTERNATIVE?
Prof. Hermann Giliomee
   
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- 05/14/2007
MBEKI-ZUMA: LET THE GAME BEGIN
Stanley Uys
The latest gossip on the Mbeki-Zuma front is that Tokyo Sexwale, really, truly, will ‘consider’ standing for the ANC presidency at the party conference in Limpopo province on December 15-20, thus annulling his earlier denials that he was not interested. At the weekend, he said he would accept any ‘instructions ’ from the ANC. This is exactly what Jacob Zuma says – he, too, is awaiting the call. When it comes, he will be ready. Maybe it will not come at all, in which case, alas, poor Jacob, we knew you well. We are sorry to hear that people are plotting to assassinate you – a sniper we hear has been promised R1 million (R13.8=£1), poisoners tried to poison your food and your clothes, your bodyguards work 24-hour shifts, when you are on the move there are six vehicles in the cavalcade and upwards of 20 bodyguards and other staff, and (curiously) two different police teams are investigating the threat against you. The consolation is that the state foots the bill.
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- 05/12/2007
DOES CHINA HAVE 'SINISTER' AIMS IN AFRICA?
Stanley Uys
Is China playing a 'sinister' role in Africa? Several analysts say yes. But in November last year South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad denied that China had ‘sinister’ colonial motives on the continent. His remarks followed a statement by Finance Minister Trevor Manuel that much of the nervousness in the West over China’s expanding role in Africa was becomes some people saw the Chinese as being now ‘on our patch’. Pahad said: ‘We don’t understand the argument that China has an ulterior motive. They have needs, like India, for raw materials. The Chinese have given an ‘absolute commitment that, as they expand their relations in Africa, they will do everything possible to ensure that this does not reintroduce colonial relationships’. This meant China would open its markets to African exports and not ‘just take raw materials’ without a genuine partnership. Pahad said the multicountry summit (held in China) at which China announced an aim to increase trade with Africa by two- and-a-half times, the doubling of aid, preferential credits and an initiative to train 15,000 African professionals, would help ensure that the relationship did not become, ‘one of the old colonial types’.
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MONEYWEB - 05/10/2007
RICH SOUTH AFRICANS BUY UK PROPERTIES

South Africans are queuing to buy property abroad and most want to invest in the UK, reports Gaylyn Wingate-Pearse in Moneyweb (here). Barak Geffen of Sotheby's, is quoted as saying that most of the interest is from buyers looking to buy property between R3,57m (£250,000)  and R28,5m (£2m). ‘These are second-home investments that buyers will generally rent out,’ he said. Andy Collett of Pam Golding's international division confirmed the ‘huge’ interest in UK properties, especially in London (Golding is one of SA.s top estate agencies).
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Star, Johannesburg - 05/10/2007
SA AIRWAYS STAFF IN CREDIT CARD SCAM
Lee Rondganger
A Nigerian credit card fraud syndicate has infiltrated South African Airways and is colluding with its call centre staff to scam thousands of unsuspecting travellers. Forensic investigators have discovered that between January and August last year, call centre staff at www.flysaa.com helped the syndicate to process 1,949 fraudulent transactions, costing the national carrier more than R14-million (R14=£1). SAA itself is in deep financial difficulties and the government has given it a deadline to restore its profitability. The syndicate has apparently recruited several staff at the call centre to help them buy airline tickets using unsuspecting international tourists' credit cards, which they sell to a third party at half the price. Police have arrested several "runners" working for the syndicate, who claim they are working for a Nigerian man based in London.
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MONEYWEB - 05/09/2007
ON HELEN ZILLE: OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES
James Myburgh
The difficulties and opportunities facing the Democratic Alliance under Helen Zille, are quite different to those that once confronted Tony Leon. While the opportunities are potentially greater (particularly if there is a split in the ANC) the threats are less evident but more insidious.
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- 05/08/2007
IS A CLASS STRUGGLE WAITING IN THE WINGS?
Stanley Uys
The purpose of this article is to emphasise, once again, the depth of ill-will between the government and the labour-left in South Africa, and the serious consequences this will have for the country’s economic stability if it continues after the forthcoming ANC conference - regardless of who wins the ANC presidency at that conference.
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- 05/08/2007
ANC 'AT FORK IN THE ROAD'
Paul Trewhela
The ANC does now really stand at a fork in the road. Its Leninist past from the exile period (mostly 1960-90) now comes back to haunt it in the unreconstructed Stalinist fantasies of Zwelinzima Vavi (Cosatu General Secretary) and Blade Nzimande (SACP General Secretary), who seek an economic state dirigisme (or control) to replace the political dirigisme of Mbeki precisely at a time when the economic dirigisme of the CGT trade union confederation in France - a possible model for the South African etatistes, or statists - has suffered a huge political defeat.
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Sunday Times, Johannesburg - 05/08/2007
LEON REFLECTS ON HIS LEADERSHIP

On Sunday (May 6, 2007), Helen Zille took over the leadership of the Democratic Alliance from Tony Leon, who had occupied the position since 1989, the year before the release of Nelson Mandela and five years before the end of the apartheid system. Leon will remain a member of the National Assembly. In an interview with the Johannesburg Sunday Times before the change-over in the DA’s leadership, Leon reflected on his time as leader of the opposition.
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- 05/07/2007
LABOUR-LEFT SET THE SCENE FOR A CLASS STRUGGLE
Stanley Uys
The purpose of this article is to emphasise, once again, the depth of ill-will between the government and the labour-left in South Africa, and the serious consequences this could have for the country’s economic stability - regardless of who wins the ANC presidency in December.
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NOSEWEEK ,CAPE TOWN - 04/29/2007
BLISTERING ATTACK ON FIFA

THE Daily Mail in London describes it as “an astonishing story of bribery and vote-rigging. Transparency International writes: "Mismanagement, misbehaviour and the pursuit of personal gain seem to have had few consequences for its leaders..The evidence and findings will certainly be fodder for further investigations.” The Columbia Journalism Review calls it “... a corrupt fiefdom rife with bribes”.
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The Zimbabwean - 04/26/2007
"MUGABE DISHES OUT LAND TO CHINESE..."

Desperate for foreign currency, the corrupt Mugabe regime is now dishing out prime agricultural land to the Chinese, having grabbed it from commercial farmers under the pretext of giving land to the people. The Chinese have also been given mining concessions and future tobacco crops in exchange for foreign currency and farm machinery. 
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Cape Times Letters. April 26, 2007 - 04/26/2007
RECIPE FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: 10 PERCENT WHITE
Matthews Bantsijang
The arguments put forward by Professor David Benatar on affirmative action using race, gender and disability lack understanding of the objective of the policy and also the history of South Africa. Benatar needs to understand that the apartheid regime left the South African citizens unequal, and affirmative action is the government's vehicle to redress (the) past (and) smooth transformation to address this legacy of inequality.
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http://constitutionallyspeakingsa.blogspot.com/ - 04/24/2007
THIRD PROFESSOR JOINS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DEBATE
Prof. Pierre de Vos
PROFESSOR PIERRE VOS, LAW FACULTY, UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN CAPE, WRITES:
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Monday Paper (UCT) - 04/24/2007
EQUITY, NOT 'EQUITY'; TRUTH, NOT 'TRUTH'
Professor David Benatar
Professor Hall's comments respond not only to my Cape Times essay (reprinted here), but also to my inaugural lecture. I shall similarly not restrict myself to those of his comments printed here, but will also reply to his read remarks at the 'debate' between us on 16 April.

Professor Hall responds to my reasoned argument with a number of rhetorical moves. Indeed, by his own admission, he eschews "fixed sequential logic with irrefutable outcomes at each of its stages" and regards himself freed "from the shackles" of my "analytical prison". His implicit message is: "Don't worry if you dislike David Benatar's conclusion but you are unable to refute his argument; just dismiss his argument as ahistorical and decontextualised". The problem with this is that insofar as history and context are irrelevant, the argument is flawed, and insofar as they are relevant, no good argument could ignore them. Yet, Professor Hall offers no arguments to show that I ignore relevant considerations.

What he does is claim that my distinction between three varieties of affirmative action is an artifice because "there are no rules or guidelines for the work of [UCT] selection committees" that use the terms "tie-breaker", "strong preference" or "set aides". Consequently he denies that my typology is a "factual account of UCT policy or preferred practices". I never claimed that it was. I was mapping out the possible policies. However, some of these policies do indeed describe UCT's practices. What Professor Hall ignores is that a description can be correct even if this is not recognised by those whose practices are being described. For example, one might, act unfairly without recognising one's own actions as unfair.

Hall's argument 'unhelpful'
By the same token, simply because one describes one's own actions in a particular way does not mean that that description is accurate. Thus Professor Hall's insistence than UCT practices 'equity' rather than 'affirmative action' is unhelpful. There are such things as euphemisms. Describing something as equitable does not make it so. His allegedly contextual and historical comments - about the United States and South Africa - do not affect this. Many African Americans, for example, would vigorously deny his claim that US affirmative action policies "may not be aimed at redress for past wrongs" and must instead be based on present disadvantage.

Apples and pears
Professor Hall misunderstands me when he claims that I believe that "rectification" and "consequentialist" arguments are "mutually exclusive". They are logically distinct - they are different kinds of arguments. That does not mean that they may not both be employed by a single person. In other words, although they are indeed "apples and pears" they may be consumed by a single person. The point he missed, is that if both the apples and the pears are inedible, then nobody should consume either. Under those circumstances it is no good to say: "Since the pears are inedible, I'll eat the apples and since the apples are inedible, I'll eat the pears".

Professor Hall charges me with not saying what I mean by 'race'. However, it is precisely because I take 'race' to be a pseudo-scientific concept that is wielded with absurd implications, that I reject it. It is thus not I but those who defend 'race'-based policies who need to define this term. In offering UCT's understanding of 'race' Professor Hall misleads. He denies that UCT uses "race as a biological type". Instead, he says, UCT uses "race as a historical and social construct, founded in shared histories, customs and values" and that 'race' is "shorthand for [a] cluster of experiences, perceptions and abilities".

'Utterly false'
This is utterly false, at least if we are to judge by UCT's actual policy and practices. This is borne out, for example, by the fact that UCT administrators routinely classify people (including applicants for positions and existing members of staff) without the sort of knowledge of those people - their histories, customs and values, their experiences, perceptions and abilities - that would be necessary if Professor Hall were correct.

He also says that "there is no continuity between race as evoked in apartheid race legislation" and as evoked in UCT's equity policies. If that is so, the link between affirmative action policies that use 'race' in Professor Hall's sense and the injustice inflicted on the basis of the apartheid understanding of 'race' is weakened even further, making the rectification case for affirmative action less plausible.

When Professor Hall says that we need to use 'race' (in his sense of the word) "to construct new knowledge paradigms and build innovative intellectual traditions" and to move "towards new standards of excellence" he restates, in different words, one of the arguments I examined and rejected in my lecture. That he simply restates the argument rather than responding to my refutation of it, is an example of how he fails to engage what I have said. When one is confronted with a refutation of an argument, one does not rescue that argument simply by stating it again.

Is Equity clear?
Professor Hall claims that UCT's Equity Policy is clear and that this leads to "a set of clear expectations of selection committees". However, I have previously reported instances where selection committees were not clear on how much weight they should attach to 'race'. When I asked Professor Hall, in an appropriate University meeting, to clarify this he refused to do so. He seems to prefer selection committees' not knowing whether they should only attach tie-breaker weight to 'race' or whether it should be an overriding consideration as long as the candidate from the designated 'race' is minimally qualified. That preference for ambiguity is curious.

Professor Hall agrees with me that, to use his words, "slavish adherence to proportionality" of national and university racial demographics "would be absurd". Yet he is opposed only to tinkering with rough proportionality to achieve perfect proportionality. He does not engage my arguments that even vague proportionality is not itself an indicator of a more just society.

Taint by association
The final rhetorical move that Professor Hall employs is to taint me by association. Although he is careful, in places, to clarify that I do not hold the noxious views he describes, the mere association he makes is poison to undiscerning minds, of which there is no shortage.

Professor Hall, like the person who chaired the debate between him and me, is obviously suspicious of truth. He accepts only 'truth', not truth. Although not uncommon among the so-called post-modernists, this is nonetheless a confused view. If there is no truth, but only 'truth' why get so worked up in response to somebody else's 'truth'? If what I say is simply my 'truth', then there is no point in his trying to show me that I am mistaken. Unlike some people, I am not allergic to truth. I do not claim to have it, but I do think it is worth pursuing and that evidence and reason are the means to it. Moreover, I am committed to equity, but not to 'equity'.

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Monday Paper - 04/24/2007
"AFFIRMATIVE ACTION" DEBATE: IT WILL RUN AND RUN
Martin Hall

The University of Cape Town is engaged in a fierce debate over affirmative action – more particularly as it affects staff appointments at the mother of the English-language universities in South Africa. The debate was launched by David Benatar, Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University at his inaugural lecture, delivered at the university on April 11. Benatar’s lecture was entitled “Justice, Diversity and Affirmative Action” (a version of it can be found here.)
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The Star, Johannesburg. April 24 - 04/24/2007
S.A.'s MOST EXTREME SPORT
Helen Grange
One wrong move and you end up a bloody, charred mess on the rails below, often with your body in pieces. Helen Grange looks at a risky game that outranks Russian roulette in the risk stakes, and the factors fuelling it. (The “players” are mostly young blacks).
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- 04/23/2007
TRANSLATING ZIM'S WORDS INTO STALINESE
Paul Trewhela
Under the headline 'The last Phase of Our Struggle', the Zimbabwe Herald wrote in an editorial "We must all pull in the same direction" (reported on this website on April 18).
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Der Spiegel - 04/22/2007
'AFRICA HAS HUGE PROBLEMS"

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH FORMER ZAMBIAN PRESIDENT KENNETH KAUNDA. (See full report here)
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Insight Vol 2, No 14 - 04/20/2007
AIDS: ACCURATE DATA
Virginia van der Vliet
Apart from the annual antenatal HIV survey, begun in 1990, and the mortality data, which have become increasingly reliable as death registration has improved, national household surveys carried out in 2002 and 2005 have broadened the database considerably. There are also countless smaller studies in, for instance, work- place settings, blood transfusion services, market research organisations and academic projects. Unfortunately, many of these latter data are not in the public domain. Nevertheless, their broad dimensions are often known to those trying to construct an accurate picture of where the epidemic is, and where it is heading, and help to provide a useful reality check.
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- 04/19/2007
THE CRUSHING OF ELECTIONS IN THE ANC: DECEMBER 1989
Paul Trewhela
The African National Congress and other militant organisations active against apartheid were unbanned in South Africa on February 2, 1990. Nelson Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990. Only weeks before these events, however, a test of the commitment of the ANC to the process of democratic elections took place in the biggest centre of ANC exiles anywhere in the world, in Tanzania: a test failed by the ANC.
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- 04/18/2007
A GLIMPSE INTO THE ANC
Paul Trewhela
The following comment was made a year ago by a long-standing member of the ANC. It gives an insight into some tensions within the organisation, as well as an insight into how senior posts are filled. It is possible that developments over the past year have limited the ability of the Mbeki grouping to impose its own agenda unilaterally.
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Zimbabwe Herald and New Republic - 04/18/2007
ZIMBABWE HERALD: LAST PHASE OF OUR STRUGGLE

In an editorial today, under the heading "We must all pull in the same direction", the Zimbabwe Herald (here) writes:
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Insight Vol 2, No 14 - 04/18/2007
RACE QUOTAS IN SPORT - OR NO PASSPORTS?
Prof. David Welsh
Mr Butana Komphelais a somewhat obscure ANC parliamentarian who happens to be chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio on Sport and Recreation. In recent remarks about the state of transformation in sport, but especially in rugby, he threatened to press the Home Affairs Ministry to withdraw the passports of the Springbok rugby team should it fail to ensure that the players selected for the World Cup squad were representative of the country's racial profile. In the storm of protest that followed Komphela's remarks,
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 04/17/2007
ANC POWER STRUGGLE: THE NEXT PHASE?
Stanley Uys
Most South Africans, clearly or dimly, know that December 2007 is the critical month for black politics in South Africa - and for national politics. It seems though that June may be almost as important in that it will prepare the scene for the December showdown, pointing in advance to where some in the ANC think real power should lie. June is what the ANC calls its “policy conference”. At this conference proposals will be considered to rearrange ANC structures in a way that virtually guarantee President Thabo Mbeki (or his nominee) continued leadership of the ANC after the December conference.
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Weekend Post - 04/16/2007
MANDELA EMBRACES MEER AFTER ATTACK ON ANC
Mike Loewe
Nelson Mandela showed why he is admired as one of the world‘s great leaders yesterday at Rhodes University, writes Mike Loewe in Weekend Post (Port Elizabeth). He rose gingerly to publicly embrace his friend, Fatima Meer, after she delivered a devastating public attack on the party he had dedicated his life to building. Mandela and his wife Graca Machel, dressed in matching black and white outfits, were in Grahamstown for the graduation ceremony of his grandson, Mandla. Meer is the author of Mandela's first "authorised" biography.
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MONEYWEB - 04/16/2007
THE SKIN COLOUR PREMIUM

Writing in Moneyweb (here), Jackie Cameron states: “Darker banking and financial services' professionals earn 30% more than pale colleagues, a 2007 survey by international recruitment company Robert Walters reveals. In an era when companies are on a major drive to boost their employment equity figures, and skills still relatively scarce, salary brackets for affirmative action (AA) candidates are considerably higher than the rest. This trend, says Robert Walters, is expected to continue over the next few years. AA  accountants in particular are enjoying much higher pay packets than their white peers - particularly those who are qualified and have experience.
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Sunday Times, Mail&Guardian - 04/15/2007
DUMPING ZUMA FOR MOTLANTHE: PROPHECIES THAT CAME TRUE

Under the headline, Cosatu 'dumps' Zuma, the Johannesburg Sunday Times reports today: Congress of South Africa Trade Union (Cosatu) leaders have demanded that the federation ditch it's support for Jacob Zuma as their preferred candidate for the ANC presidency. The Mail&Guardian made similar predictions in September and November 2005.
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- 04/14/2007
'AFFIRMATIVE ACTION NOT THE WAY TO TACKLE INJUSTICE'
Prof. David Benatar
By David Benatar, Professor and Head of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. This article is based on his inaugural lecture, delivered at the university on April 11.
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- 04/13/2007
'STALIN IS TOO RUDE'

The article below, and the succeeding one on ‘Revolutionary Morality’, should be read as a prelude to the main article ‘Stalin Is Too Rude’.
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Sunday Times, Johannesburg - 04/11/2007
"I AM AFRAID AND ASHAMED"
S. Joseph
The item that follows is a little dated now (it was published by the Johannesburg Sunday Times on March 25), but seeing that almost one million South Africans have left the country in the past decade (of African National Congress rule), and cabinet ministers are bewailing the loss of skills, it more than makes its point. The newspaper recalls three articles written by its staffers: Brendan Boyle’s ‘Mbeki blames white racists for SA perception of crime’, Mondli Makhanya’s ‘After bruises and broken bones, a lesson on Quiet Diplomacy’ (Makhanya is the editor), and the editorial ‘Mbeki has lost the plot’. The newspaper says the articles generated a huge response. It gives one of its reader’s views:
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Vukani Mde and Karima Brown - 04/11/2007
MBEKI'S MINISTERS RUINING HIS LEGACY
Business Day
Vukani Mde and Karima Brown write in Business Day’s The Weekender: President Thabo Mbeki has just two years left in his presidency, and increasingly it looks as though the battle to secure a positive legacy will be lost, not to a populist successor who charts a different policy path, but due to an inability to wield his authority against inept cabinet ministers. While Mbeki and his closest allies and advisers are hard at work to frustrate the political ambitions of his African National Congress (ANC) deputy, Jacob Zuma, the Mbeki legacy is being squandered by government failure. This is compounded by an inability or unwillingness on Mbeki’s part to sack those who have let the country down.
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Financial Times - 04/11/2007
'CAT AMONG BEE PIGEONS"

On April 3, the UK Financial Times published a lengthy ninterview with President Mbeki. It touched on the subject of BEE. The interviewers were Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, and Alec Russell, Southern Africa correspondent. They interviewed Mbeki in his official residence in Pretoria.
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Omega's Insight - 03/24/2007
WHEN WILL ZIMBABWE'S AGONY END
David Welsh

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www.ever-fasternews.com - 03/24/2007
COSATU PLANS TO CAPTURE ANC
Stanley Uys

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- 03/14/2007
RETHINKING SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY AND POLITICS
Prof. Hermann Giliomee
The speech below was addressed to the Politically Incorrect Group (P.I.G.) in Cape Town by the eminent South African historian Professor Hermann Giliomee on March 6, 2007.    
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- 03/09/2007
"DISTORTION OF A CRUCIAL PERIOD OF SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY"
HERIBERT ADAM
Heribert Adam reviews  Robert Harvey’s “The Fall of Apartheid. The Inside Story from Smuts to Mbeki” (London: Palgrave MacMillan, pbk, 2003).
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Moneyweb - 03/02/2007
ON FNB, DE LA REY, AND OUR GUARDIANS AGAINST UNWELCOME NEWS
Hermann Giliomee

Two seemingly unrelated events have dominated extra-parliamentary politics over the past month: There was First National Bank’s aborted advertising campaign about the grave crisis of violent crime, and then there were the concerted efforts by white and black commentators to discredit the enthusiastic response to Bok van Blerk’s song calling for a heroic figure like the Boer War general Koos de la Rey to lead the Afrikaners out of their present state of political disarray and impotence.

Yet both events are intimately connected.  Both have to do with the ANC’s enduring desire to impose its will over civil society. It has long been recognized that such domination is achieved not through extending control over each and every individual, but rather through the atomization of society.  The goal is, Leonard Schapiro observed, to reduce individuals to moral loneliness “by denying them the support of what Emile Durkheim called ‘intermediate societies’. ... Isolation of the individual was brought about with the aid of the party which was used to penetrate and render harmless virtually all institutions of society.” 

It is in this context that FNB’s breaking of ranks to launch its anti-crime campaign, and the revival of Afrikaner patriotism which has finally found its anthem is felt as such a profound challenge.

One of First National Bank’s senior board members told me that the phrase that caused most alarm in government ranks about its planned advertisement was the reference to “mobilizing the population’.  In the first meeting with Paul Harris and his team the Minister for Police demanded to know what this meant. Clearly he had visions of the mass demonstrations in the late 1980s of the Eastern European societies. Taken aback the FNB officials explained that by mobilizing the population they had merely meant getting the public to assist the police more effectively and purposefully.

According to reports, the De la Rey song was born after a very convivial evening in a pub. The idea of the creators of the song was to celebrate a heroic figure in the more distant Afrikaner past. Gen. Koos de la Rey was probably preferred to Christiaan de Wet mainly because it rhymes with the refrain “om weer die Boere te kom lei.”

As it happens, no panel of historians could have chosen a figure from the Anglo-Boer War that speaks more tellingly about our present. In the South African War (1899-1902) Koos de la Rey, along with Louis Botha, Jan Smuts and other Transvaal Bittereinders, along with their Free State counterparts, fought a heroic battle against the might of the British army.

It was the valor of the Bittereinders and the courage during the grim but ultimately glorious final two years of the war which prompted Smuts to write that ‘every child to be born in South Africa was to have a proud self-respect and a more erect carriage before the nations of the world.’

Farming in the western Transvaal, De la Rey was elected to the first Union Parliament as member of the Louis Botha’s South African Party. The Union of South Africa was still young and the white euphoria accompanying the establishment of the new state quickly dissipated. The Afrikaners found it difficult to identify with many of the new state’s institutions, for example, the military and the civil service.

The trigger of the armed rebellion that broke out in September was the decision of the Botha government to agree to the request of the British government to occupy German South Africa.  De la Rey now summoned armed burghers of the Western Transvaal to a meeting. His reputation was so great that thousands of burghers would rally to his call, particularly if it was cast as an attempt to regain the independence of the republics. But before he could address a meeting he was shot dead accidentally at a police road blockade. There were widespread rumors that he had been killed on government orders, but a judicial inquest later found that it was an accident.

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- 01/15/2007
"THROUGH THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE"
Stanley Uys
So now we know what kind of an organisation the ANC is: it is Stalinist to the core, and to survive in it every member has to play it by the Stalinist book. This comes straight from the party’s deputy president himself, Jacob Zuma. There is presently no struggle for the presidency, he says – it’s just media fiction. There may be “activity” later on, but only when the Stalinist book says so, say, in mid-2007. Until then every member must be obedient. When the head of policy in the presidency, Joel Netshitenzhe, said the leadership issue was paralysing the ANC, Zuma explained, he was only commenting on the flurry caused by the media.
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- 01/08/2007
MBEKI-ZUMA: FIRE BURN AND CAULDRON BUBBLE...
Stanley Uys
All political contests go through modes, and South Africa’s presidential contest at the moment is going through what might be called the pot stirring mode. Suddenly, it’s all happening. Not only are President Thabo Mbeki and ex-Deputy President Jacob Zuma still holding what might be called their pole positions - opposite poles, that is – than Tokyo Sexwale is said to to have moved into 4X4 gear, Cyril Ramaphosa is reported to be entering the arena at last, and Kgalema Motlanthe is dismissing Tokyo as an upstart, with no chance. It is all good, clean (sort of) fun.
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- 12/22/2006
MBEKI-ZUMA: THE TURBULENT 2007 AHEAD
Stanley Uys
Our website today offers this update of the Mbeki-Zuma clash over the presidency and related issues.
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- 12/13/2006
MBEKI REMAINS STUBBORN OVER AIDS TEST

President Thabo Mbeki is still refusing to show strong national leadership in the anti-AIDS campaign. The opposition Democratic Alliance accuses him of stubborn refusal to acknowledge the urgent need for medical treatment of victims. Deputy Health Minister, Nozizwe Madlala Routledge (who seems to have relaced the controversial Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as AIDS spokesperson) was reported as saying she had called on Mbeki to take a public HIV test. But, according to the Johannnesburg Business Day, she now says she did not say so, although she repeats her belief that it is important for leaders to do so. The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) expresses scepticism about Madlala Routledge’s assertion that she has been misunderstood, suggesting instead that she has been “persuaded” by her colleagues to issue her statement.
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- 11/30/2006
A VERY STRANGE SOCIETY?
Stanley Uys
Forty years ago - a decade after apartheid’s introduction - the American author Allen Drury wrote a book about South Africa called A Very Strange Society. If Drury were alive today (he died in 1998), it is doubtful whether he would want to change the title. What follows below is not new, but perhaps its repetition confirms that South Africa remains A Very Strange Society indeed.
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www.theharbinger.co.za - 11/26/2006
THE MEDIA'S NAUGHTY LITTLE SECRET
Anton Harber
Leadership magazine’s fall from grace – with the revelation that you can buy an appearance on its front page – is one example of an increasingly common occurrence across our whole industry: the tendency to mislead readers about paid-for content. It emerged in Parliament last week that the SABC had paid R123,000 to put their CEO Dali Mpofu on Leadership’s glossy cover. Appearing in this spot was once a coveted and honourable recognition of status and achievement. Now it has been debased and the magazine discredited, as it appears that it might go to the highest bidder.
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 11/21/2006
MYTH-MAKING AT BUSINESS DAY
Review 2 -- James Myburgh

Introduction

Somewhat paradoxically, the
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AIDSAlert. November 15, 2006 - 11/18/2006
AIDS CAMPAIGN TURNAROUND IN SOUTH AFRICA?
Virginia van der Vliet
After stalling for years,  the South African government now has indicated that it will accelerate the anti-AIDS campaign in the country. Virginia van der Vliet, who has written widely on the South African AIDS epidemic and is the author of The Politics of AIDS (published by Bowerdean in London in 1996), asks whether the official promises will be fulfilled. She writes in AIDSAlert: The Expert Analysis Service. (www.omegainvest.co.za.
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 11/17/2006
UNCLE JOSEPH AGLIOTTI
from the archives

The arrest yesterday of a well-known Johannesburg personality, Glenn Agliotti, on suspicion of murdering mining magnate Brett Kebble on September 27, is reported by the Mail&Guardian (here) to have “opened perhaps the biggest can of worms in South Africa's criminal history”. A further report, in Business Day, says Agliotti’s arrest “threatens to shake the top echelons of South Africa’s politics” because of Agliotti’s friendship with the country’s police commissioner Jackie Selebi, whose resignation has been demanded by two opposition political parties following allegations of “links to organized crime”.
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 11/17/2006
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID ABOUT SELEBI ON HIS APPOINTMENT
From the archives

On the 20th of October 1999 Cabinet announced the appointment of Jackie Selebi as Commissioner of Police, although he would only formally take up the position in the new year. There were four factors which should have made this appointment a highly contentious one, even if some of his questionable associations were not known at the time.
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 11/14/2006
ZUMA PARTISANS SEIZE ON SCA SLIP-UP
Review 1 -- James Myburgh

www.omegainvest.co.za - 11/13/2006
WELSH ON PW BOTHA'S "REFORMISM"
Prof David Welsh
The death of PW Botha brings to a close the life of a politician whose impact on South Africa was greater than he was ever given credit for during his lifetime Pieter Willem Botha, 90, the leader of apartheid-era South Africa from 1978 to 1989, died peacefully on 31 October at his home in Wilderness, a southern SA coastal town.
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 11/08/2006
MBEKI, THE MEDIA, AND AIDS
Commentary

www.ever-fasternews.com - 11/08/2006
PW BOTHA: A STARE THAT WOULD NOT FLINCH
Hermann Giliomee

“Die Afrikaners skiet nie hul leier dood nie, hulle skiet hom plat” (“The Afrikaners do not shoot their leaders dead; they just shoot them flat”). These were the words of the Rev. J.S. Gericke, after his great friend John Vorster went to the grave as an embittered and lonely man. P.W. Botha was determined not to be shot down. He stuck by what he had done. He did not ask favours from friends or forgiveness from enemies. After his retirement from politics he remained unbowed and unrepentant at a time when more and more whites were learning to live on their knees politically. Botha gave the Truth and Reconciliation Commission the one-fingered salute.
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 11/06/2006
AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL CLAIMS THAT DEPLOYMENT COMMITTEE WILL VET CANDIDATES FOR ANC PRESIDENT

- 10/27/2006
STRANGE GOINGS ON IN THE JOHANNESBURG HIGH COURT

Judge Phineus Mojapelo, the Deputy Judge President of the Transvaal Division (Johannesburg), sentenced Kerigwyn Lewis of Randfontein to a month’s imprisonment for contempt of court because his mobile telephone rang while he was sitting in the public benches of the court, and he answered it as he left the court room. Lewis was waiting for his attorney (solicitor) at the time. His attorney later found him in the cells and he was freed on bail. Beeld says Lewis was “summarily” sentenced - neither Lewis’s lawyer nor the public prosecutor were involved.
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- 10/27/2006
'AMAZED" BY SUGGESTIONS TO FIGHT POVERTY
RW Johnson
RW Johnson responds to Robert Pollin’s article (see below) on ‘Cheaper Money: Key to S.A. Jobs Crisis?’ :
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www.ever-fasternews.com - 10/25/2006
DOWN SABC's MEMORY LANE...

On August 8 last year, this website published a comment on the goings-on at the SABC. This seems to be an appropriate occasion to republish that comment just as it appeared then. Plus ca change…
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London Review of Books - 10/24/2006
WAS MANDELA A COMMUNIST?
Paul Trewhela
Following the publication on this web site (see below) of Mandela:The Authorised Portrait, by Mike Nicol (the third ‘authorised’ version so far), Paul Trewhela writes: ‘In the light of yet another “authorised” biography of former President Mandela, I'm sending you correspondence published in the London Review of Books (and available on the net) setting out an “unauthorised” version.
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- 10/23/2006
OIL SCANDAL: COURT RULES AGAINST STATE COMPANY

Corruption is commonplace in South Africa, but one of the biggest scandals (next to the huge arms procurement programme) is the Iraqi oil-for-food scheme. Briefly, a South African based oil company, Imvume, received an oil quota from the Saddam Hussein regime, in return for which, allegedly, South Africa would use its diplomatic influence to reduce international sanctions against Iraq. The South African state company PetroSA was involved, and revenue from the quota, it is further alleged, found its way to the ruling African National Congress - to help fund its 2004 general election campaign.
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