The article, “Sanlam does NOT love dogs” (nose214) contains several inaccuracies and casts aspersions on the reputations of Sanlam, the trustees and legal representatives appointed as executors of ...

KPMG: A history up for audit.

Glowing reports masked major unsavoury business.

On several occasions over the years, Noseweek has noted KPMG’s willingness – for a handsome fee – to apply an audit gloss to some or other unsavoury business in order to give it the appearance of probity. 

The drift is always the same. Early on we noted that KPMG had absorbed what remained of Arthur Andersen, the auditing company that collapsed under the weight of its bad reputation. It seems KPMG may have absorbed more than just the remains.

The centenarian who has been fighting since 2001 for transfer into his name of a modest piece of land near Pietermaritzburg (nose213) so that he, his family, and his nine goats can live there in peace and contentment, has won a significant court battle to speed up the transfer.

Zabalaza Mshengu, who is 103 years old, was officially declared a labour tenant in 2007 after having lodged his claim in 2001 for a 5-hectare portion of a farm near Ashburton and the N3. 

Anger in the largest organisation of militant poor in post-apartheid South Africa.

To put it bluntly, the eThekwini Municipality is deep in shit. Shack dwellers from its 569 informal settlements (which comprise about 238,000 households) are growing increasingly angry as they wait for basic services and housing. But it will take more than R42 billion “excluding inflation, and excluding any improvements to the current housing typology” to provide shelter for those households. Durban’s entire annual budget for 2017/2018 is R45bn.

Illegal collusive tendering has been going on for a long time.

South Africa’s major furniture removers may have been cheating the public on a grand scale for the past half century.

In 1976 when I was a Financial Mail journalist, I probed the widespread tendering collusion in the industry. Some of the same names that featured in that exposé all those years ago have come up again in the Competition Commission’s current extensive investigation into price collusion in the industry.

It seems it never stopped.

The mystery of the bid that died and rose again.

The City of Johannesburg’s refusal to give any rational explanation for having cancelled a multi-million-rand tender after it had been adjudicated upon, only to re-advertise the identical tender months later and then award it to a politically connected firm, leads one to assume they’ve got something to hide.

Although assumptions can be dangerous, in this case documentary evidence obtained by Noseweek – and in some instances the absence of it – leads to the same conclusion. 

The City of Johannesburg recently released a tranche of documents to Noseweek in response to a Promotion of Access to Information Act (Paia) application. At first the city refused the request which was then successfully appealed by Noseweek.

However it is clear that vital documents specifically requested by Noseweek are missing, while others that have no relevance at all to the initial request have been handed over. 

Secrecy and fury as Tiso Blackstar’s Bonamour pays off the rebel pensioners.

There’s been a secret settlement in the long-running legal battle between Times Media Group – now renamed Tiso Blackstar – and 51 of its pensioners over their frozen medical aid subsidies (noses189; 191). Although Andrew Bonamour, chief executive of the newspaper publishing group, insisted on a strict confidentiality clause, Noseweek can reveal that the group has shelled out well over R10 million to the old- timers. Individual payouts (the biggest secret) range from R96,000 to R384,000.