It all started with a wedding. A 200 plus entourage of friends and family landed their private aircraft at the Waterkloof Air Force Base in April 2013. What South African’s didn’t know was that the country had already entered a new era of corruption that was to have a myriad negative consequences. Now, after years..
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Is the net about to close on Zuma and his Gupta patronage network?
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Bathabile Dlamini’s former advisor accuses her of thwarting ConCourt ruling
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One of Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini’s closest aides has accused her of trying to thwart the Constitutional Court’s rulings on Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) in a revealing affidavit filed with the high court in Pretoria. Sipho Shezi was Dlamini’s full-time adviser from 2013 until she fired him last year. He had worked with Zane..
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Listeria outbreak: Why your back-to-school lunch box staples may be dangerous
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Worried your child could be at risk of contracting the bug as they head back to school? You might have to leave polony off the menu. South Africa’s ongoing spate of listeria cases has claimed more than 60 lives in what the World Health Organisation (WHO) is now calling the world’s biggest outbreak of the..
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Why Zuma’s free higher education plan will cripple SA’s finances
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The country’s fee-free higher education initiative, controversially introduced by President Jacob Zuma in the dying weeks of 2017, will plunge the country into a deeper financial crisis if it isn’t adjusted one way or another. Days after Zuma made his surprise announcement, Ramaphosa was elected president of South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress…
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Ramaphosa: Zuma should not be humiliated
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If President Jacob Zuma has to leave before his term ends, he should not be humiliated in the process, Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa told eNCA on Sunday. Speaking in his capacity as newly elected president of the majority party the African National Congress, Ramaphosa conceded that people are eager to know if Zuma will stay..
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JZ sets conditions if he’s to go
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Supporters of President Jacob Zuma are demanding that ANC MP Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma take over as the country’s interim president as a condition for him to step down, ANC insiders told the Mail & Guardian this week. Party insiders familiar with the behind-the-scenes negotiations on Zuma’s future say the former ANC president and his supporters have..
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South Africans are trying to decode Ramaphosa (and getting it wrong)
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During the Cold War, a new profession emerged – “Kremlinologists”, a hodge-podge of academics, journalists, other scoundrels, and commentators, who would study every minute detail of the behaviour of Soviet Union leaders when they were in public. They examined who stood next to whom, whose chair was closer or further away from the leader, who..
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Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo to head commission of inquiry into state capture
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Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng has made the decision to appoint deputy chief justice Raymond Zondo, the Presidency announced in a statement on Tuesday evening. In the statement, President Jacob Zuma announced that he is officially appointing a commission of inquiry into state capture. Zuma said that the Pretoria high court’s order for him to appoint..
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To lead South Africa, Ramaphosa must balance populism and pragmatism
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Maiden speeches are tricky. They only come once. The one delivered by newly-elected president of the African National Congress (ANC) Cyril Ramaphosa required extraordinary ingenuity. Ramaphosa had to knit together multiple dynamics into a coherent whole. He managed to do this, delivering a speech which largely resonated with the delegates. His maiden address to the..
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Ramaphosa: Taking land will turn SA into the Garden of Eden
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South Africa could turn into the ultimate paradise with the implementation of the policy of expropriation of land without compensation, ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa said in Nongoma, Kwazulu-Natal on Sunday. “In fact, it is possible for us to begin a process of working the land and improving agriculture – making it a very successful factor..
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Sassa wants CPS for 6 more months
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The invalid Cash Payment Services (CPS) contract may be extended for a further six months if the South African Social Security Agency’s (Sassa) gets its way — yet the Constitutional Court ruled that the contract is to end on March 31. The extension is contained in the latest Sassa report to the Constitutional Court, filed less..
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Israel plans to force out thousands of African migrants
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Israel plans to force tens of thousands of African migrants to leave over the next three months by threatening to arrest those who stay, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday. Under the plan, some 38 000 migrants who entered Israel illegally, mainly Eritreans and Sudanese, will have until the end of March to leave. Each..
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UDM wants urgent explanation of free higher education
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The UDM wants President Jacob Zuma and his Cabinet to urgently spell out his plan for free higher education to avoid a “commotion” at registration. “One can argue that President Zuma’s announcement of free tertiary education for students who can’t afford it, is a populist Hail Mary pass; but the United Democratic Movement (UDM) believes..
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Mogoeng’s ‘very serious’ attack on majority judgment difficult to comprehend
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When does a court overreach and thus intrude into a domain exclusively reserved for the executive or the legislature? In an unusually harsh minority judgment, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng was clear that the majority of the Constitutional Court had done just that in ordering Parliament to introduce a mechanism to deal with the possible impeachment..
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ConCourt: Parliament has failed to hold Zuma to account
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The Constitutional Court has ruled that the National Assembly failed to put in place mechanisms to hold President Zuma accountable. The EFF, Cope and the UDM asked the highest court to compel Parliament to hold the president to account after its Nkandla judgement. Judge Chris Jafta, reading the orders, said the National Assembly failed to..
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