Police minister uses state-funded legal advisor in fight with own ministry.

Minister of Police Bheki Cele has sacked his private attorney and instead is using his state-funded legal advisor to help him fight his own ministry in a private civil matter in which – given his new position – he is also a respondent.

It is no doubt a conundrum for his new legal advisor Advocate Simo Chamane; more so because he denies providing advice to Cele-the-applicant despite court documents stating the contrary. Chamane should only be giving Cele-the-minister advice, as his mandate is to protect the ministry, not fight it. Chamane is faced with a clear conflict of interest – although he doesn’t see it.  

A charity better known for its work in Middle-Eastern war zones, has recently gone to the rescue of Afrikaner farmers and their workers in the remote, drought-stricken town of Sutherland.

It’s nine o’clock on a wintry Tuesday in June and Billy Joel’s Piano Man is playing loudly as I jump into the Gift of the Givers’ four-by-four driven by Badrealam “Badr” Kazi, the relief organisation’s government and corporate relations manager. I’m joining him on a mission to deliver emergency supplies from Cape Town to drought-stricken Sutherland in the Karoo.

Following us will be two huge trucks loaded with water tanks, food and blankets for the farmers and farm workers of the Northern Cape town – better-known for the deep-space observatory sited in this remote location because of its clear, dark night skies and relative absence of human activity.

Just eight days after the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) published its disgracefully long-delayed report into the cause of Knysna’s Great Fire, Kam Chetty submitted his resignation as the town’s municipal manager.

His surprise July 6 resignation, citing personal reasons, came just weeks after the equally unexpected departure of Knysna fire chief Clinton Manuel who, as reported in nose225, has returned to Cape Town to become head of training for the city’s Fire and Rescue Service.

Frankel family goes on offensive against sex assault complainants.

Executors of serial paedophile’s estate want to put victims in the dock to avoid paying them damages.

Besides being a trusted tax advisor on tax matters to President Cyril Ramaphosa, Michael Katz is the chairman at Africa’s largest law firm ENSafrica, an honorary professor and a trustee of various trusts including the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, the Nelson Mandela Children’s Trust and the Constitutional Court Trust.

The illustrious Professor Katz is also executor of the deceased estate of his fabulously wealthy paedophile brother-in-law Sidney Frankel, in which capacity he is vigorously opposing the claims for damages brought against the estate by eight of Frankel’s child victims (all now adult) who have testified to having been sexually assaulted by him and to have suffered serious psychological damage into adulthood as a result.

The Royal Court of Jersey has dismissed outright the case brought against Nedbank’s Jersey bank and trust management divisions by 84-year-old  widow Dorothy Brakspear and her two adult children, Ian and Alison, in their capacity as beneficiaries of two offshore trusts set up and managed by the banking group.

Company did surreptitiously grab pension fund money to prop up its ailing balance sheet, but court says it was within the law.

Although a group of Tongaat-Hulett pensioners may have lost their civil claim against the sugar company which they accused of looting their pension fund to buoy the balance sheet and inflate executive salaries, recent disclosures reveal they were not wrong in their supposition of what was  happening to their money.

Cape Times ramps up its vendetta against University of Cape Town and its former Vice Chancellor Max Price.

The vendetta by the Cape Times as a proxy for its owner Iqbal Survé against the University of Cape Town reached a new low on 13 June. In that day’s issue, no fewer than three pages – one, four and most of the op-ed page – were devoted to articles alleging that senior advocates Jeremy Gauntlett and Geoff Budlender had colluded way back in 2007 to ensure the ascendancy to the Vice-Chancellorship of UCT of the “woefully underqualified” Dr Max Price.

Phumelele Hole of Kimberley turns his guns on new target.

It’s been seven years since former Kimberley magistrate Phumelele Hole put his boss, Khandilizwe Nqadala – then-president of the Northern Cape Regional Court – in the dock, accusing him of interfering in a rape case.

And he is still not done with fighting his berobed kind. He is now accusing Judge NV Khumalo of the South Gauteng High Court of “gross incompetence or lethargy, bias, revenge” and lying.

When the US contentiously imposed an additional 25% tariff on $34 billion worth of Chinese goods in July, it was quickly noted that, thanks to a major exemption for Chinese garment and footwear in the tariffs dispute, the clothing industry  was likely to be left unscathed.

About a third of the clothing and 72% percent of the shoes sold in the US are from China.

One of those importers has long been the fashion label of Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter and adviser.

Corruption Watch and TAC march to demand removal of disgraced Mahlangu & Hlongwa from Gauteng Provincial leadership

Johannesburg, 7 August 2018 – Today hundreds of activists from the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Corruption Watch marched to the Gauteng Provincial Legislature to demand that Qedani Mahlangu and Brian Hlongwa be removed from their positions in the ANC, and in the case of Hlongwa, as a MPL and ANC Chief whip in the Gauteng legislature.