An amoral Compass. 

KZN Department of Health in hot water again after evidence of unconstitutional contracts and dealings.

The KwaZulu-Natal Department of Health is no stranger to chaos.

Its history is replete with tales of corruption, maladministration, a lack of consistent leadership, costly litigation due to staff negligence, collapsing infrastructure and poor service delivery. 

A noticeably large swath of the troubles took place under the former MEC for Health, Dr Sibongiseni Dhlomo, now an MP tasked with the responsibility of ushering the controversial National Health Insurance Bill through Parliament.

What became of Tannenbaum’s loot?

The Ponzi scheme run by Barry Tannenbaum and his main accomplice Dean Rees started to come unstuck in late 2008 and early 2009. The two men hurriedly made plans to move their loot out of sight.

So, what have the trustees of Tannenbaum’s insolvent estate – who were faced with the task of unravelling one of the biggest and logistically most complex frauds in local history – been doing since then? One thing they did was blow R5.5 million on an Australian trip that turned out to be a largely fruitless attempt to extract information from Tannenbaum, who by then was resident in Runaway Bay in Queensland.

The first skirmish between new liquidators and the purported buyer of a Lenasia mall has begun to play out in court as the ‘buyer’ tries to maintain his hold, despite having not yet paid a cent for it in 12 years.

A new set of liquidators appointed to wind up the business of a Gauteng shopping centre that went under 12 years ago, promptly cancelled the sale of the property so that they could take over management of the mall themselves. This prompted the prospective owner to rush to court to try to interdict them and block any management takeover while he is engaged in opposing the cancellation of the sale.

Former SARS chief to confront Pravin Gordhan about efforts to derail probe.

Former commissioner of the South African Revenue Service, Tom Moyane, is preparing to confront Public Enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan with allegations that government ministers, including President Cyril Ramaphosa, attempted to derail investigations and prosecutions concerning the so-called rogue unit at SARS.

1. Confidential Separation and Settlement agreement between SARS and “Visvanathan” Pillay in deputy finance minister Mcebisi Jonas’s office in Parliament on 6 May 2015. 2. Correspondence b ...

Scamster ‘cost investors their homes, savings and even marriages’.

In December 2016 Noseweek reported extensively on the flood of binary options scamsters, most based in Israel and Cyprus, who were targeting the South African market on social media and via internet news channels. A damning follow-up article appeared in February 2017.

Mossel Bay fishmeal company put in its place by fearless local journalist.

In a victory for press freedom, Judge Siraj Desai of the Western Cape High Court has dismissed with costs the urgent application to gag the website mosselbayontheline.co.za and its owner, veteran journalist Elsa Wessels. The Angolan-based South African businessman Johannes Breed and his Mossel Bay company Afro Fishing applied for the interdict early in December last year.

Here’s a fun idea: if you do a headstand tonight and look towards the east, you can see Betelgeuse (colloquially pronounced Beetlejuice, like the 1988 Tim Burton comedy-horror classic), the left shoulder of the Orion constellation. The star glows red, is fairly bright and if its recent behaviour is anything to go by, it might explode tonight... or in half a million years.

Piet struts the streets of Germiston barefoot and with his shirt open, except for one button near the bottom which he closes up lopsided. This is the way he held sway over the beaches of Margate back in the day. Today, at 50, the strawberry blonde mane is gone, as is the gold tooth he lost in a bet, but his intelligence and cunning linguistics remain as ready to do service as when bevvies of beach beauties kept him maintained in exchange for a taste of his skilful tongue.