Outspoken ANC MP Makhosi Khoza was removed on Thursday as chairperson of Parliament’s public service and administration committee on the instruction of Luthuli House. This came two days after five ANC MPs boycotted the committee over objections to her being in that position. Officially, the deployment rejig in Parliament is attributed to “a breakdown of relations” and is called “re-organisation”. But the reality is that ANC factional battles, and the use of disciplinary action as a tool in the ANC kit to manage these fractures, has reached well into areas of governance and state. By MARIANNE MERTEN.

Bloemfontein: Justice Minister Michael Masutha has 90 days to reconsider whether Chris Hani's killer Janusz Walus should be released on parole, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled on Friday. By NEWS 24.

If all goes well for the disgruntled ANC members in the KwaZulu-Natal case currently before the Pietermaritzburg High Court, the party could ultimately see its national elective conference postponed by three or six months. Even if they lose, this case has exposed the split in a province that needs unity to remain formidable. By CARIEN DU PLESSIS.

ANC MP Makhosi Khoza, who refuses to toe the party line, was unrepentant on Thursday night after she was fired from her position chairing a Parliament portfolio committee. She said she will continue to work to improve the party and the country. By GREG NICOLSON.

Grace Mugabe, controversial wife of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, is most likely to be given diplomatic immunity after she leaves South Africa on Sunday to avoid assault charges in this country. By PETER FABRICIUS.

Here’s the good news: the “Dagga Couple” trial, which has captured the public imagination since it kicked off on 31 July, has not been a complete waste of time. While the State and its co-defendants Doctors for Life have done their best to queer the pitch, all they have really achieved is an exposure of their own hypocrisies. So no, the trial will not bring an immediate answer to the question of cannabis legalisation in South Africa, but it may do something equally important – it may take the country beyond the lies of “morality” and into a truthful assessment of the plant. By KEVIN BLOOM.

Cards linking grant recipients to the company’s services will remain active. By Barbara Maregele for GROUNDUP.

Gerrie Nel, who prosecuted Oscar Pistorius and now works for Afriforum, has joined forces with Grace Mugabe’s alleged victim of assault, Gabriella Engels. With pressure increasing, Zimbabwe’s first lady might actually have to face her day in court. By GREG NICOLSON.

The AU has declared 2018 the year for combating corruption – are governments on board? By Liesl Louw-Vaudran for ISS TODAY.

In the face of expanding personal debt that has been crippling South Africa’s consumer landscape for years, efforts now under way to introduce amendments to the National Credit Act to provide for debt relief and forgiveness are hugely welcome, albeit somewhat overdue. By MOIRA LEVY.

If the African Christian Democratic Party gets its way, women seeking an abortion in South Africa would find it a lot more difficult in future. Proposed amendments to current abortion legislation include forcing women to see ultrasounds of their foetus before going through with the procedure, as well as removing the current provision which allows for abortion after the 20th week of pregnancy if carrying the foetus to term would harm it. It’s difficult to see the justification for making abortion services harder to access than they already are. By REBECCA DAVIS.

This is the third installment of Open Secrets’ series, Declassified: Apartheid Profits. While researching the recently published book Apartheid Guns and Money: A Tale of Profit, Open Secrets collected approximately 40,000 archival documents from 25 archives in seven countries. This treasure trove contains damning details of the individuals and corporations that propped up apartheid and profited in return. Many of these documents were kept secret until now. OPEN SECRETS believes that it is vital to allow the public to scrutinise the primary evidence. Here we invite you behind the scenes to look at the documents that informed the book. This week we zoom out and unpack some of the ways that the private sector colluded with the apartheid government to bust sanctions and some of the tools that made this possible.

But it remains to be seen if the Sekhukhune District Municipality will stick to the court settlement. By Safura Abdool Karim for GROUNDUP.

The South African government is divided on whether or not to charge Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s wife Grace for assaulting a model in Sandton on Sunday. Police Minister Fikile Mbalula wants to charge her but International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane fears this will seriously damage South Africa’s relations with Zimbabwe – and the continent, official sources say. By PETER FABRICIUS.

A case of reckless and negligent driving has been opened following an early morning crash involving two SAPS VIP unit vehicles on Johannesburg’s M1 on Thursday. The crash saw traffic delays of more than 30 minutes on the busy freeway and has once again raised question over the behaviour of drivers of blue light convoys. By ORATENG LEPODISE.

Recently, the public has been seized with the capture of state institutions by the Gupta family. What has not received enough attention, though, are the ways in which systemic weaknesses in how the security services are being regulated, have contributed to the problem. While those who are responsible for plundering the public purse must be brought to book, these systemic weaknesses must be addressed, too, otherwise others will simply take their place at the trough. By JANE DUNCAN.

This August the media will focus on women as consumers, as beneficiaries of state services, and as victims, in a much needed effort to bring attention to gender-based violence, but it is important that we don’t forget women as workers, because it’s precisely the invisibility and undervaluing of women’s labour that plays a key role in reinforcing gender inequality. By ANNIE DEVENISH.

Last weekend in Charlottesville, a Nazi-infused white supremacist rally in support of a statue of Robert E. Lee, a failed confederate general in the US Civil War, became violent and resulted in the death of one individual. As a result of the at times wantonly aggressive rhetoric of United States President Donald Trump, who shepherded the attention of ethno-nationalists on his lumbered path to executive power, many had feared that such an event was inevitable. By DAVID REIERSGORD.

When exactly is Parliament’s own version of a probe into state capture going to leave the starting blocks? Wednesday’s meeting of the Committee on State Enterprises was yet another false start. Billed as a probe into Eskom, it was underwhelming. By Moira Levy and Sune Payne for GROUNDUP.

More than 120 days after his house was raided and he was arrested on charges of treason, Zambian opposition politician Hakainde Hichilema rode in a triumphant motorcade through the streets of Lusaka to the cheers of thousands. By KRISTEN VAN SCHIE.

It’s only a matter of time before Mamokuena Bulane’s two fractured houses collapse because of operations at the Reskol diamond mine in Kolo, Lesotho.
But this 52-year-old widow and grandmother of four has a cruel dilemma: she is caught between two mining companies that either won’t – or can’t – accept responsibility for the damage. By MNN Centre for Investigative Journalism Reporters.


One of the truisms about politics is that it can be a dirty business. Friends are betrayed, backs are knifed, dirt is thrown. In the case of South Africa, where the stakes in the ANC are incredibly high, many among us have been waiting for the dirty war to start, for those involved in this to start throwing whatever mud they may have. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday may have given a demonstration of the best possible way to respond to this kind of attack. And by doing so, he may have revealed exactly how well organised his political team is. By STEPHEN GROOTES

In the world of doom and gloom, the relationship between “Africa’s Team” and the Qhubeka charity serves as a reminder that we’ve not completely fallen off a miserable despotic cliff yet. By ANTOINETTE MULLER.

Kenya gets more critical attention than other African countries with far less democratic elections. By Peter Fabricius for ISS TODAY.

On the fifth anniversary of the Marikana massacre, thousands of mine workers made their way to the open field of the site where 34 striking miners were killed and hundreds injured within minutes by police. By IHSAAN HAFFEJEE.

Not all funding information is useful to voters, argues the opposition Democratic Alliance. By Ashleigh Furlong for GROUNDUP.

The gloves are off between the South African Communist Party and the ANC, which has hit back over “extremely ill-advised and gravely unfortunate” demands by the SACP that “revolutionary discipline” should be applied to President Jacob Zuma instead of to the MPs who voted against him. As usual, though, it’s still too early to sing d-i-v-o-r-c-e. By CARIEN DU PLESSIS.

Are we taking an environmental risk for Japanese sushi? This is a story about a filmmaker, a fisherman, certain government officials and one of the most intelligent animals on Earth. By DON PINNOCK.

On Wednesday hundreds of taxi drivers gathered outside Tshwane House to deliver a memorandum of their demand to the MMC for Roads and Transport, Sheila Senkubuge. The strike, which started in the wee hours of the morning, found commuters stranded and traffic backed up around the capital city. By ORATENG LEPODISE.

Police crime intelligence is in a mess, with scores of senior officers unvetted and without the required security clearance amid a bruising tit-for-tat turf battle between crime intelligence and counterintelligence. The State Security Agency (SSA) has been asked to step in to conduct security vetting of senior police officers, who have cocked a snook at the juniors staffing the police’s vetting unit. What emerged before Parliament’s police committee on Wednesday was an SAPS crime intelligence at war with itself, instead of helping to direct the war against crime. By MARIANNE MERTEN.

SAPS officers pulled the triggers during the Marikana Massacre and the commission of inquiry recommended the cops reform their public order policing. Those recommendations are yet to be implemented. By GREG NICOLSON.

Just before the 2016 election, J. BROOKS SPECTOR re-read, with increasing apprehension, two classic dystopian novels about a racial populist who wins the presidency – Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America and Sinclair Lewis’ It Can’t Happen Here. And then there was Donald Trump’s epic failure of leadership after the events in Charlottesville, Virginia. But there could have been a different way he spoke about it.

Applicants want criminal investigation into bank executives. By Ciaran Ryan for GROUNDUP.

Unless government takes action, 16 August will be a day of perpetual shame for all South Africans. By Gareth Newham for ISS TODAY.

Trump walks back condemnation of racist Nazis, Grace Mugab's flight confirmed, and Albion sign Everton midfielder.

Zimbabwean First Lady Grace Mugabe was due to appear in court on Tuesday facing assault charges. She would have followed the appearance of South Africa’s deputy minister of Higher Education, Mduduzi Manana, in the same court, for similar charges. Instead, Mugabe vanished, making a farce of South Africa’s law enforcement. By BHEKI C. SIMELANE.

There has been persistent unease about whether the public protector, advocate Busisiwe Mkhwebane, was the fit and proper person to fill Thuli Madonsela’s shoes. After yesterday’s damning court ruling in the SA Reserve Bank case and amid the Zumafication of the country, can we afford to continue to give her the benefit of the doubt? By JANET HEARD.

The ANC in KwaZulu-Natal is the boss, but of late it’s had the need to feel out some possible allies very publicly. Its message has been unity instead of battle ahead of the party’s elective conference in December, but this week’s court case on who should be in charge of the province could yet throw all this in disarray. By CARIEN DU PLESSIS.

President Jacob Zuma has regularly told church leaders that they “must mind their own business” and rather “pray for their leaders to do better”. BJ Vorster and PW Botha did the same. Zuma’s latest comments were made after, among others, the South African Council of Churches urged ANC MPs to remove Zuma by voting him out in last week’s no-confidence vote. Zuma claimed that such sentiments were “un-Christian” and that “believers should pray for their leaders to do better”. He said this again last weekend when addressing St John’s Apostolic Faith Mission Church in Evaton, south of Johannesburg. Just like church leaders ignored Vorster and Botha, they will, no doubt, ignore Zuma. By RUSSELL POLLITT.

Asking politicians to decide whether political party funding should be regulated might seem a bit like inviting turkeys to vote for Christmas. But this is the task currently before Parliament, where MPs this week will hear submissions on the funding of political parties. On Tuesday, strong arguments were presented on the need for greater transparency about where political parties get their money. In the past, resistance to this idea has been strong – and united across the political board. By REBECCA DAVIS.

While Minister of Social Development Bathabile Dlamini skipped a Sassa presentation to Scopa on Tuesday to attend, instead, the launch at Constitutional Hill of a mobile app, new acting interim CEO, Pearl Bhengu, braved a barrage of tough questions from sceptical and crabby committee members. While Bhengu held her ground admirably, chair Themba Godi said Scopa was concerned that offcials were not serious about using SAPO to pay grants and were deliberately dragging out the process so that CPS would have to once again come to the rescue. By MARIANNE THAMM.

The claws came out across the parliamentary precinct on Tuesday. SAPS and Hawks generals received a snotklap from the police committee, which sent the SAPS packing for not submitting anti-gang strategy documents in good time and then stopped the acting, acting Hawks head’s presentation after he said: “We are not winning the war (against crime).” And the ANC proved it was at war with itself when five of its MPs boycotted the public services and administration committee, demanding action against its outspoken chairperson, Makhosi Khoza, for conduct unbecoming, as the minister, Faith Muthambi, snubbed MPs. By MARIANNE MERTEN.

South Africa’s medal haul at the IAAF World Championship was their best ever. But the six medals tell just half the success story. There’s so much more talent lying in wait, if only the sporting administrators would do their bit. By ANTOINETTE MULLER.

Marikana should have been a turning point. It wasn’t. Five years after the massacre, the country still fails to come to terms with its apartheid heritage and its failure to benefit the country’s majority. By GREG NICOLSON.

In the aftermath of the no confidence vote of last week the ANC is shaken. President Jacob Zuma and some of his allies are calling for disciplinary action for ANC members who voted for the motion, describing this as “counter-revolutionary” and contrary to their duties under the Constitution. The organisation is less united than ever. But is the opposition ready to take advantage of this disarray? The DA call for new elections took its own caucus and all other opposition parties by surprise. There is some way to go before the opposition can ready itself to win broad confidence for itself as a united force, should the ANC fall below 50% in the 2019 elections. By RAYMOND SUTTNER.

Gauteng Health MEC Gwen Ramokgopa hopes to delay payment of damages in a landmark medical negligence case. By SASHA STEVENSON.

The Southern Cape wildfires have died down, but for someone, the burn is just beginning. Following the release of a forensic report into what may have caused the inferno, officials say the search is on for the culprits, who will face the full might of the law. Meanwhile, Knysna needs to find R4-billion to R5-billion to fix the damage. By MARELISE VAN DER MERWE.

Illegal miners, organised under the banner of Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA), took to the streets of Pretoria on Tuesday and marched on the Department of Minerals Resources to deliver a memorandum demanding the scrapping of the Mineral And Petroleum Resources Development Act and to decriminalise zama zamas. By ORATENG LEPODISE.

The Canadian government’s ability to integrate immigrants was the result of the generosity and welcoming spirit of Canadian people. Ahmed Hussen knows this all too well. He now heads the very department that welcomed him and integrated him into Canada as a refugee from war-torn Somalia 24 years ago. By PETER FABRICIUS.