Absa ducked a R16m damages claim on a legal technicality but now faces R250m demands arising from wrongful actions of its predecessor, Volkskas

When wealthy Durbanville farmer Francis Albert Murray Louw senior (known to all as Murray) drew up his will in 1963, he had every reason to believe he owned an extremely valuable piece of land: his 230 hectare farm, Vierlanden, was on the immediate boundary of the already burgeoning town of which he had been mayor for 20 years.

Dream of exclusive community lands far-rightists in the red.

Kleinfontein, poor cousin of the all-white town of Orania, is being torn apart by death threats, litigation, a qualified audit and calls from residents for the place to be put into liquidation. Although Kleinfontein Boerebelange Koöperatief Beperk (KBK), the far-right-wing Afrikaner enclave outside Pretoria, has been riven by internecine squabbling for years, more recently the management’s reaction to “a disgruntled splinter group” calling itself the Kleinfontein Aksie Beweging (KAB), (Kleinfontein Action Movement) has rent the community.

A document leaked to Noseweek suggests intrigue worthy of a John le Carré novel, set in one of apartheid’s last outposts. A KAB member, who asked not to be named, said the document was penned by one of the Kleinfontein directors and that another director, disillusioned with the management, had stolen the document and handed it over to the KAB.

Recent mail strikes are ruining businesses – and could spell The End for the state-run service.

Frustration with the Post Office has reached fever pitch, particularly in the publishing and mail-order businesses that depend on delivery to customers. The entire business-to-business sector is rushing to find alternative means of delivering all over the country. It’s do – or die.

The government doesn’t appear to give a toss about the public’s outrage at the failure of the Post Office’s management to resolve the strike – which has been off and on (mainly on) for the past three years.

After a four-month bout of striking – particularly concentrated in the Johannesburg sorting sites – the cabinet did not even have the matter on its agenda at its bi-weekly meeting in early November. Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe, who briefed the media at parliament, first avoided a question about the strike, then, when pressed, said: “We did not discuss the issue of the Post Office.”

Four little words kicked off Toyota man’s peripatetic lifestyle.

When he was in his twenties, second-hand Toyota car salesman Milden “Milly” Lurie single-handedly scuppered Automark’s multi-million-rand “our dealers never lie” TV commercial.

It was back in 1996 that Automark, Toyota’s used-car division, flighted an ad in which a salesman sails through a polygraph test. “Would you sell your mother-in-law a dud second-hand car?” “Never,” replies the salesman – and the alarm bells stayed silent.

Small, family-run farms are the answer to world hunger. But  the large conglomerates are determined to squeeze them out of existence.

This year’s World Food Day has come and gone – on 17 October – leaving everyone as hungry or overfed as they were the day before. At the latest count, 842 million people were officially malnourished, or one in eight of us. In South Africa, the figure is one in four. And that’s now, while farmers are still able to grow enough food to provide tasty, nutritious, adequate meals for everyone on the planet – if only their produce wasn’t so unequally shared and needlessly wasted.

Feeding everyone is going to become much harder as the population grows, climate change bites and the cost of inputs like clean water and liquid fuels rise.

So Durban’s most widely detested citizen, erstwhile city manager Dr Michael Sutcliffe has agreed to drop his R10,5m defamation suit against the man who replaced him. This was, of course, only if S’bu Sithole conceded that he erred in saying the city council had resolved to recover R1,1 million from Sutcliffe when there had, it transpires, been no such formal resolution. 

The spiralling cost of indemnity insurance could drive doctors from private hospitals.

The soaring costs of private indemnity insurance for medical specialists in the higher-risk specialist fields could, ironically, benefit state patients and improve the professional supervision of junior doctors in public hospitals. The temptation for thinly spread specialists in the public service to treat profitable private patients is about to become much less of a temptation: the cost of indemnity insurance for private practice is now so high, it might exceed private fees earned on the side.

Under-budgeting for mental health is costing SA billions.

Grossly inadequate government spending on mental health – a disease affecting one-in-four South Africans – is costing South Africa 2.2% of its annual GDP, with 230 attempted suicides recorded daily and 48% of people living with HIV/Aids suffering from a mental health condition.

Arsonist firefighter. France lifts deposed Burkino Faso president from flames

Summing up the 27-year rule of Burkinabè ex-President Blaise Compaoré as the opposition gathered on the streets of Ouagadougou, a French political analyst settled for “un pompier pyromane”, a firefighter who is also an arsonist. He explained how Compaoré, with the support of Libya’s Colonel Moammar al Gaddafi, had backed rebellions in neighbouring states and had had ambiguous relations with insurgents in Mali and Niger.

Zambian succession. Competing factions can’t wait to bury the president

zambia’s acting President Guy Scott is finding out just how difficult the management of the governing Patriotic Front (PF)can be. On 3 November he was obliged to reinstate Edgar Lungu, a powerful contender for the PF presidential nomination, just 24 hours after sacking him as PF Secretary General. Scott had moved against Lungu for violating the ban on infighting ahead of Michael Sata’s funeral on 11 November, and had replaced him with the Chipili MP Davies Mwila, who is close to Scott and the former PF Secretary General Wynter Kabimba.

All of Sydney (and Australia) was relieved when 11-year-old Michelle Levy, who had disappeared from her Bondi home in a white party dress, returned two nights later. While thousands had combed the streets, she had spent most of the time reading on the sofa of a benevolent 50-something stranger, and gone shopping with him too.

The questions that raged afterwards: Should an 11-year-old have known better after her fight with her dad over a chocolate bar? Should “the brat” be punished, and somehow be made to pay back every dollar of the money she cost the emergency services? Is running away a cry for attention?