On Friday delegates from the ANC’s branches all over the country meet for the first time this year. It will, importantly, not be the last time. Instead, the policy conference, which should be about, you know, policy, is going to be overshadowed by the leadership battle. It is obvious to all and sundry that many people in the party don’t really care about policy at all, and only about who wins. In the slightly unreal politics of the ANC at the moment, it won’t come as a surprise to anyone to read that the ANC Policy Conference is both crucially, vitally, fantastically important, and not important at all. By STEPHEN GROOTES.
This story exemplifies how state capture affects poor people. By Nathan Geffen for GROUNDUP.
You misled Parliament, again, Mr President. I therefore urge you to appoint the independent Commission of Inquiry that the former Public Protector stipulated, without any further delay. By MMUSI MAIMANE.
No more Mr Nice Guy was the message delivered by Outa to President Jacob Zuma in Cape Town on Wednesday. The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse says it has compiled a mammoth dossier detailing several months of investigation into state capture, which it will present to Parliament, African National Congress’s NEC, the Hawks, the Minister of Police, the National Prosecuting Authority and the Public Protector, in an attempt to unseat Zuma. The question is, however, whether any accusations will stick to President Teflon. And whether his supporters will read it. By MARELISE VAN DER MERWE.
The ANC took back the mayorship in Mogale City on Wednesday night, only 10 months after losing it to a DA-led coalition in the last elections. The DA should have won the vote, but the municipality’s councillors have been unpredictable. The council’s future remains uncertain. By GREG NICOLSON.
Eskom being constantly in the news for all the wrong reasons is masking a more structural problem – the utility’s financial sustainability as a vertically integrated public utility company in a rapidly changing world. By PIET VAN STADEN.
On a day when South Africa’s biggest gold mine, Anglo Gold Ashanti, announced that it was considering retrenching some 8,500 workers, miners from North West province marched on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) to demand an end to retrenchments and a fairer share of the economic wealth being extracted by the mining companies operating in the area. By IHSAAN HAFFEJEE.
In a four-part lecture delivered as part of the Oliver Tambo Centenary Series, Former Justice ALBIE SACHS tackles different aspects of the Constitution that are tied in to critical issues facing the country right now. In part three we take a look behind the drafting of the Constitution. Many people horrified by current political developments in South Africa are reflecting negatively on the Constitution, some of them quite harshly. I think we increase the fallout when, instead of standing on the achievements of the past, we trample on them. We should be building on them. Far from the Constitution being the source of our problems, it provides the basic mechanism for dealing with them.
Do government schools have the right to call themselves “Christian” places of learning? This was the dispute before the South Gauteng High Court, where a judge ruled on Wednesday that it is unlawful for a public school to subscribe to only one particular religion. It’s good news for the secular groups supporting the case; bad news for the likes of Afriforum and Solidarity, who attempted to frame the matter as an attack on the religious freedom of their community. By REBECCA DAVIS.
In memory and honour of women and children who are being brutalised by violence in South Africa and to name and shame the perpetrators of this violence, Sizimbokodo will create a mobile memorial wall during women’s month. By MELI NCUBE.
Civil society organisations have reached agreement with Atha-Africa Ventures. By Lukas Spiropoulos for GROUNDUP.
Without finances and reforms, the AU cannot successfully address Africa’s conflicts. By Gustavo de Carvalho and Annette Leijenaar for ISS TODAY.
It’s early days yet and things might change in the future, but it feels like the T20 Global League missed a trick by not considering some of the country’s more rural grounds as hosts to the franchises. By ANTOINETTE MULLER.
The South African government has issued a national ban on the sale of live chickens. The ban follows an outbreak of the contagious H5N8 avian flu virus on at least two farms – one in Mpumalanga and the other in the Free State – where they will now have to cull thousands of egg-laying birds. But it's not just the large-scale chicken farmers who will feel the economic impact of the ban – sellers of live chickens on the streets of Soweto are also being hit hard. By BHEKI C SIMELANE
The email appears to suggest the Guptas were not keen on renting a Cape Town property to a prospective tenant because he was Nigerian. By NEWS24.
by Rouba El Husseini Lebanon's government says a dam planned for a valley near Beirut is vital to tackle chronic water shortages, but the location on a seismic fault line has raised fears among residents.
by Daniel DE CARTERET From country priest to trusted top Vatican aide, the rise of Australia's most senior Catholic cleric George Pell has been plagued in its twilight by sordid controversies from the past.
by Carole LANDRY A deal on cutting nearly $600 million from the UN peacekeeping budget was reached Wednesday following weeks of negotiations over US demands for sharp cost reductions, UN diplomats said.
Sixty-eight years ago, on 29 June, the apartheid government under the leadership of its then Prime Minister DF Malan imposed the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949. This Act made interracial sex and marriage illegal. It was one of a series of repressive laws designed to legalise racial segregation in South Africa. Up until then, South Africa was already a deeply racially segregated society. But the newly elected National Party government of the time used the policy of apartheid to cruelly and forcibly separate people. The state machinery was brutally used to punish those who opposed it.
The #GuptaLeaks contain abundant evidence of wrongdoing. But because the Hawks is not headed by fearless and independent-minded investigators, it is highly unlikely that anyone will be arrested (let alone charged) for corruption, money laundering, fraud and racketeering following the #GuptaLeaks. For this reason, many people have placed their hopes on the appointment of a commission of inquiry to uncover the full truth about state capture of which the Gupta emails have given us vivid (but only incomplete) glimpses in recent weeks. But for several legal and practical reasons, this hope might be misplaced.
There is something about music that transcends entertainment in times of struggle. It not only becomes what unites people, it also becomes their voice because they are unable to speak. In music is found the aspirations, hopes, pain and joys of a people.
Durban – Civil rights organisations have lashed out at recent comments by the wife of KwaZulu-Natal Health MEC Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo for calling homosexuality "evil".
by Pirate IRWIN Defending champion Andy Murray's indifferent form of late did not prevent him being named top seed for Wimbledon for the first time on Wednesday.
Cape Town - South Africa remains a relatively dangerous country in which to serve as a police officer, despite a 52% drop in the rate of cop killings over the past decade, a study by the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR) has found.
One of Europe's largest container terminals was Wednesday forced to return to using manual operations to thwart a wave of cyberattacks targeting global computer systems.
He Slipped on Soap
by Luke PHILLIPS Wayde van Niekerk had promised to get "ridiculous" and the South African tyro hailed as Usain Bolt's likely successor did just that when sprinting to a world record in the rarely-run 300m on Wednesday.
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