by Peter Fabricius Those who have discerned and welcomed very slight improvements in the Zuma administration’s international stance on human rights might have been dismayed by the speech of South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Maite Nkoana-Mashabane to the Human Rights Council, in Geneva on Monday. It was a template presentation which could ...

South Africa is eagerly preparing to host the World Cup in June 2010, but the government’s preparatory development projects are negatively impacting the country’s poorest citizens. Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe presented a keynote address on 1 March to mark 100 days to the start of the World Cup. He expressed the optimism and pride South Africa ...

 by Jovial Rantao WHY are we surprised when some section of the British nation, as demonstrated by some of their newspapers, don’t take President Jacob Zuma seriously? Why are we shocked and even angered when Fleet Street has found our head of state to be less than deserving of respect? Why are we taken aback when ...

The Pan Africanist Congress has reacted with fury to the removal of the gallows and floorboards in the apartheid era’s execution chambers at the Pretoria Central Prison. The families of six PAC activists who were hanged in 1967 and 1968 were shocked to discover that the gallows and the trapdoors had been removed when they ...

The race for the ANC Gauteng provincial leadership has taken another twist. Sowetan has learnt that that Tshwane speaker Father Smangaliso Mkhatshwa could be co-opted to the ANC’s national executive committee. The move would rule him out of the leadership race. Premier Nomvula Mokonyane might go head- to-head with current ANC chairperson Paul Mashatile. Mkhatshwa’s ...

“Crass materialism” and “tender entrepreneurs” in the ANC leadership is endangering the ruling party, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said on Thursday. “The new tendency is trying hard to take us back to the politics of labelling, back-stabbing, rumour and scandal mongering, marginalisation and the closure of state for free and democratic debate.” This “small ...

Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) general-secretary Zwelinzima Vavi is prepared to lay down his life to prevent the country from degenerating into what he describes as a predator state where a few of the powerful loot the coffers with impunity. Without referring to the ANC Youth League president Julius Malema by name, Vavi said ...

Congress of SA Trade Unions (Cosatu) boss Zwelinzima Vavi has hit out at ANC president Jacob Zuma and the party’s national executive committee (NEC) for keeping quiet while ANC secretary-general Gwede Mantashe has been attacked by the likes of the ANC Youth League. “Not only President Zuma but the whole NEC has failed to defend ...

Voting in Togo’s presidential election began calmly on Thursday against a backdrop of violence in previous polls and opposition allegations incumbent President Faure Gnassingbe may rig the outcome. Hundreds died in post-election violence in the small West African nation after the 2005 presidential election and voting this time comes as the region is shaken by ...

Zimbabwean president says he’ll be running things for years to come. Zimbabwe’s ageing President Robert Mugabe, who turned 86 last month, yesterday told journalists that he was not planning to retire any time soon. Mugabe held a four-hour news briefing with about 20 of the country’s top journalists at Zimbabwe House in the capital, Harare. ...

Zimbabwe’s power-sharing government looks unlikely to step down in 2011 as planned because it has failed to draw up the reforms needed to ensure free and fair elections, political analysts say. President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai formed a coalition last year to end a political and economic crisis, but mutual suspicion and ...

Harare – Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said on Thursday he would stand for re-election if his party nominated him, brushing off calls for the octogenarian to make way for a younger successor after 30 years in power. Mugabe, 86, who has been in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980, formed a unity administration ...

The South African president accused the British media of thinking ”their culture is more superior than others” on the eve of his state visit to the UK. Mr Zuma, who has there wives, hit out after comments about his polygamous lifestyle were made in the British press. But at a joint Downing Street press conference ...

This video show some points of view about what Nigeria needs from its leaders to grow and prosper ...

THE unseemly exchanges between the opposition and African National Congress in the National Assembly last week, which culminated in the “F**k you” statement, have raised a number of issues.  Not the least of them is what constitutes robust debate. Perhaps more importantly, though, the exchanges question the impartiality of presiding officers and the erosion of freedom ...

Former Limpopo Premier Sello Moloto says ANCYL president Julius Malema got government tenders in the province illegally. In an escalating war of words between the two sworn enemies and former comrades, Moloto alleged that Malema got the tenders by intimidating mayors and municipal managers. Moloto, now a Cope Limpopo MPL, said he could not have ...

The National Intelligence Agency (NIA) is in the firing line for once again involving itself in the ruling party’s factional battles. This time around the NIA allegedly provided ANC Youth League president Julius Malema with a list of people who are apparently seeking the destruction of President Jacob Zuma supporters. The NIA played a critical ...

SARS has rejected allegations by ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema that some of its top officials drew up a hit list targeting leading politicians who supported President Jacob Zuma’s rise to power. Malema made the claim in an interview on e.news last night. He said the document had been drawn up by, among others ...

ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema has claimed that he has an “intelligence document” listing the names of prominent political leaders who backed President Jacob Zuma’s rise to power, but who are now being targeted to be toppled. Interviewed on SAfm’s After Eight Debate radio programme yesterday, Malema further claimed that preliminary investigations by the ...

Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus told MPs on Tuesday that the expanded mandate of the bank passed to her by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan last Wednesday, which explicitly requires the bank to consider economic growth and job creation, does not mean that the bank has a specific role in these matters. She also made it ...

South Africa has notified the UN Security Council that it recently seized a shipment of North Korean arms bound for Congo in violation of UN resolutions, diplomats said on Tuesday. One diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the South Africans on Monday informed the council’s panel monitoring sanctions imposed on North Korea that spare ...

Infighting within the Eastern Cape ANC stopped Youth League president Julius Malema and party national executive member Fikile Mbalula from addressing a Nelson Mandela freedom rally in Mthatha yesterday. The two ANC firebrands were expected at the Walter Sisulu University sports ground as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of the unbanning of the ...

COPE president Mosiuoa Lekota said he does not use blue lights to get to his destination faster – he says the blue lights he remembers were the ones when he was arrested and being transported to court and prison during the apartheid era. Lekota gave his views on the controversy surrounding blue light convoys ...

IT WAS time for the African National Congress (ANC) to draw a line in the sand and bring an end to the involvement of office bearers in state tender processes once and for all, said Judith February, head of the parliamentary information and monitoring service of the Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa). February ...

A second, independent report into corruption at Johannesburg City Parks recommended disciplinary action against managing director Luther Williamson – but both the department and Mayor Amos Masondo have ignored it. The Times revealed last week that a forensic audit by law firm Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs found that multimillion-rand tenders were awarded to friends of ...

Sudan and Darfur’s most powerful rebel group will tomorrow ratify an agreement reached after an easing of tension between Sudan and Chad. The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said on Saturday that the framework agreement reached in the Chadian capital N’Djamena last week was not a final peace deal but set out the ...

Niger’s new military junta had not announced plans for an election by yesterday and had not said how long it would hold power after a coup that ousted the uranium-rich west African country’s dictatorial president. After Thursday’s coup, the junta immediately suspended the country’s constitution. The coup was staged to unseat Mamadou Tandja, who ...

US President Barack Obama has sent a special nuclear envoy to South Africa to seek Pretoria’s support for more nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and provision of peaceful nuclear energy to developing countries. These are the three pillars of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is to be reviewed at a conference at the UN in ...

International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane will pay an official visit to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to hold discussions with her counterpart, Mr. Yang Jiechi, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, from 25-26 February 2010. The visit takes place within the context of the Strategic Partnership Dialogue ...

Not only is the African National Congress (ANC)-led alliance plagued by a debilitating succession battle, it is also riven with economic policy fissures. Allegations of corruption in the ANC, linking senior members to lucrative state tenders and patronage networks, have sparked tender wars in the state, and are often the leitmotif for power struggles ...