Politics.za

The accounting records kept by the department were so poor that Gauteng Auditor-General Adronica Masemola chose not to express an opinion on the department’s audit report and refused to confirm its claimed R980-million revenue.
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Gauteng Transport MEC Ignatius Jacobs admitted that his department – which has had qualified audits for the past two years – deserved just one star (out of five) for its woeful administration record.

Well at least they won’t be in charge of the entire R20 billion Gautrain budget right? Right?!?

The sexual harassment allegations against ANC Chief Whip Mbulelo Goniwe have “broken” him and it seems like he will not be returning to parliament. He is currently set to face an ANC disciplinary hearing.

I’m not in parliament for a living, but to serve the people.

Did he pause after that and look around nervously to make sure no one was laughing?

The DA must be absolutely insane if they think that replacing soon to be outgoing leader Tony Leon with Mayor Helen Zille will be anything short of a political disaster. Why on earth would she go from a position where she actually has some political power to one where she has none?

For her to abandon the post so soon after the bitter fight for mayor will be comparable to Rudy Giulani leaving his post as mayor of New York right after the 9/11 attacks. Cape Town DA voters would not be happy.

This also highlights the fact that the DA has no one at the top (who is not a middle aged white male) who can take over. DA Western Cape leader Theuns Botha can prattle on about how it won’t be hard to replace Zille as mayor, it will just be a lot harder to clean up the ensuiung PR fallout.

Tony Leon will be vacting his leadership of the DA in May 2007. As Someamoungus noted the future leadership still has a few problems.

The Mail & Guardian have published a long and detailed article describing the relationship between Jackie Selebi, Glen Agliotti and their respective organisations: the SAPS and Agliotti’s Palto.

To say the least it’s not very flattering to Selebi.

Despite being the underlying cause of thousands of death each year pathologists in South Africa are not currently permitted to specify AIDS as the cause of death, instead they have to write down the opportunistic infection (such as Tubercolosis) that deals the final blow.

If Aids could be entered as the cause of death, South Africa would for the first time be able to measure the extent of mortality related to the disease.

For the first time?!? Shouldn’t the Dept of Health know that already?

SABC paid mag to put CEO on cover

The minister admitted that the SABC paid R123 000 to the business magazine, and that the money came out of the corporation’s marketing and public affairs division as well as the international and regulatory affairs budgets.

Matsepe-Casaburri said that Phumelele Ntombela-Nzimande, the SABC’s group executive: public, international and regulatory affairs, had authorised the expenditure.

The magazine’s editorial position apparently requires those featured on its cover page to pay, and the amount varies depending on the size and type of company.

Seriously? You have to pay to be put on the cover? I haven’t paged through an issue of Leadership in yonks but has it always been seemingly little more than a vanity press magazine CEOs can leave in their corporate reception areas to impress visitors?

It’s about time that the Dept of Transport has finally decided to allocate some funds towards upgrading the trains that hundreds of thousands of commuters use everyday.

Except that the R40 million to be spent nationwide on new coaches over the next 3 years is miniscule when compared to the R20 billion(!) budget of the Gautrain, which will carry (an estimated) 20 000 people a day. Now it might be just me but things would make a whole lot more sense if those numbers were swopped.

R40 million is 0.2% of the entire Gautrain budget, and yet it is to be spent on a national level as opposed to the regional focus of the Gautrain. Now granted this R40 million is just for new coaches but it’s indicative of where the effort is being made and it’s just not making much sense to me.

Back in 1999 national elections the DA ran on a platform that included a basic income grant (BIG). At the time the ANC pooh-poohed the idea as being unworkable and impractical. But in a turnaround Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya has now come out in favour of the BIG. Of course he’s careful to stress that this is just his personal opinion and not that of the ANC.

The arrest of Glenn Agliotti in the muder of mining tycoon Brett Kebble and his previous arrest in a potential R250 million drug/cigarette smuggling operation puts national Police Commissioner in a very very uncomfortable place. Selebi after all did describe Agliotti as “my friend, finish and klaar” and admitted to receiving calls from Agliotti on the night Kebble was murdered.

The questions still surrounding the forensic investigation of the murder are even more troubling. How could Kebble’s car be released from police custody the very next day and be cleaned before forensic investigators had a chance to go over it?

This also puts Selebi’s attempt to put the NPA’s Scorpion’s under SAPS control in a new light. Both the SAPS and the NPA were investigating the murder but it was the Scorpions who made the arrrest.