The golden Audi was a giveaway clue.

Jack Lundin discovers that a repeat rental scamster in Randburg is none other than Zimbabwe’s notorious “Cabs Billionaire” … so beware!

Mathias (Matt) Ndlovu, the gentleman squatter with the golden Audi, is at it again, driving yet another landlord to bankrupcy. But, it now transpires, he is no ordinary scamster: he is a man with a billion-dollar history.

It was breathtaking for the sheer amount – Z$432 billion. That’s how much maverick Zimbabwean financial consultant Ndlovu was alleged to have siphoned from the coffers of Central African Building Society (Cabs), Zimbabwe’s biggest building society.

R4.6-billion Orthotouch class action claim set for court hearing.

Just as thousands of investors in a property syndicate prepare for a class action in May to try to claw back R4.6 billion from a company called Orthotouch, a new challenge faces the investors: without notice to them, the company last month obtained a high court order ratifying a new plan – to delay payment to shareholders of their capital investment for 10 years.

Stellenbosch attorneys Theron & Partners, acting for the investors’ property syndication companies, Highveld Syndications (HS), have by now assembled over 7,000 of 18,000 investors, in a class action group, the Highveld Syndication Action Group (HSAG). A court date has been set for 19 May in the South Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg.

Nature buffs unearth dark secrets of dodgy property deals

The Bendor Extension 100 Integrated Housing Development Project on the outskirts of Polokwane has been hailed by Limpopo’s provincial government as a “ground-breaking” housing initiative.

But on closer inspection it looks more like a groundbreaking profiteering initiative; one that will cost the public tens of millions – quite apart from causing the extinction of the rare bullfrogs still found in an adjacent wetland.

It was on a visit to the local vlei that members of the Polokwane Frog Watch group discovered something a lot bigger than the rare frog they were looking for. And so frightening was their discovery that, ever since, Polokwane Frog Watch has functioned rather like a secret society.

Some trustees rewarded themselves generously – and illegitimately.

Hermanus, a town much favoured by retirees, has plenty of retirement options. Possibly the best known of these is a retirement village called Kidbrooke Place. But for as long as anyone can remember, it’s been mired in controversy – chiefly because trustee and manager, Norman Walton, has increasingly come to see Kidbrooke Place as his personal fiefdom.

The controversy came to a head in the Western Cape High Court on 25 March this year when Judge Binns-Ward delivered his judgment in the case of Kidbrooke Place Management Association and another v Norman Anthony Walton and others

Nobody’s home at South African home appliance manufacturer Defy, when customers call to complain after defective ovens are delivered — four times in a row!

My wife needs a new oven so we go to Hirsch’s, nice crowd to do business with, and being patriotic (local-is-lekker and the way we all should go), we purchase a Defy double oven. Just over R8,800, not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. The day of delivery arrives and we have the electrician waiting to install it. Once in place, he opens the door – and to my wife’s horror she finds the powder coating all chipped.

Hirsch’s rises to the occasion and promises another unit the next day, together with an installer. Guess what: this unit, too, has damaged powder coating. By the time we get to the fourth unit, my wife is asked to come to Hirsch’s to quality inspect the unit before delivery. She has now become a quality control specialist on behalf of Defy? She does not have much else to do on a Sunday morning.

The official okay for West Coast deep-sea phosphate mining has put South Africa's entire fishing industry at risk. Environmentalists describe the move as "reckless, greedy and stupid".

Against all expert advice and international best practice and with close to zero public scrutiny, the Department of Mineral Resources (DMR) has given the go-ahead for phosphate prospectors to drill holes all over the West Coast’s most sensitive marine habitats and richest fishing grounds. This has provoked a storm of protest – not just from environmentalists but from the entire commercial fishing industry and even fellow cadres in other departments.

Offshore phosphate mining would be a world-first for South Africa. No other government has been reckless, greedy or stupid enough to allow the large-scale destruction of its marine ecosystem by mining companies chasing a fast-buck from the global fertiliser squeeze.

Unfortunately, in South Africa, the department responsible for encouraging the mining industry is the same one that gets the final say on whether the environment can withstand the inevitable assault.

Sorry to harp on about the hapless Prime Minister again but there is no other story in this crazy country at the moment. He’s eaten a whole raw onion, peel and all, in public; a display of machismo when he visited an onion farm in Tasmania. Even the farmer was surprised. Also since the last issue of Noseweek, he’s called the way Aboriginal people live in remote communities/outstations a “lifestyle choice” which governments can no longer afford to fund via infrastructure and other benefits. It is forced removals Australian style, with plans to effectively “close down” 150 remote communities. It was “not the job of taxpayers to fund lifestyle choices”, said Tony Abbott.

Voters in Western Sydney have dubbed Abbott “incompetent, an international embarrassment and a fool” in a focus group. As a commentator in The Guardian Australia pointed out, the tragedy is that Abbott’s quirks are being made manifest on the Australian psyche: “Abbott has been able to make Australia a little more like himself: a bit more self-involved, a bit more threatening, a bit more masculinist, a bit more difficult for outsiders to understand, a bit creepier, a bit more weird.”