23 November 2017

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) welcomes the appointment of an experienced police officer as the new national commissioner. Lt-General Khehla Sithole has a difficult task ahead of him to professionalise the South African Police Service (SAPS) and tackle serious violent crime that is plaguing the country at the moment.

Sithole has the kind of track record that should be required of national police commissioner candidates, and currently there are no allegations that suggest he lacks the integrity, skills or expertise for the powerful post of SAPS National Commissioner.

Join us for Speak your #ArtOut at 6pm on 12 December, at Parktown Boy’s High School, Johannesburg.

"It doesn’t matter whether they’re fake or not,” the White House told the world when Trump tweeted videos from the far-right group Britain First.  “The threat is real.”

Suddenly, truth has ceased to matter. We are living in an Orwellian dystopia.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the UK hurtles towards a ruinous Brexit that nobody really wanted. “I think,” said Vote Leave’s Michael Gove, “that people in this country have had enough of experts.” He knew he could count on a roar of approval for this absurd statement. He was right.

The dirty business of the CEO of mining company Resgen includes environmental pillage, theft and paedophilia.

Resource Generation Ltd (Resgen), a company listed both in Australia and on the JSE, is currently seeking to raise funds to develop the controversial Boikarabelo open-cast coal mine in the Waterberg region. The project is to be undertaken by its BEE-compliant local subsidiary, Ledjadja Coal.

Various NGOs have been desperately campaigning to stop coal mining there, as it threatens to permanently poison the water supply to huge swathes of already drought-stricken South Africa. Besides its impact on human settlements and agriculture, it could destroy the Kruger National Park.

No surprise: in keeping with the culture of the Zuma era, Resgen’s single biggest shareholder is the government-controlled Public Inves­t­ment Corporation.

In October the Resgen Board issued a statement announcing that, “given the current state of negotiations with proposed financiers”, it has deemed it in the best interests of the company to extend the employment contract of its CEO,  Rob Lowe, for at least a further 12 months. His contract provides for a large salary and a very good success bonus.

Who is Rob Lowe? Where have we come across his name before?

Billionaire Douw Steyn’s 1Life Insurance is tricking pensioners into paying their social grant money into policies they neither need, want, nor can afford.

Every month insurance billionaire Douw Steyn’s 1Life snatches R110 in funeral insurance premiums from the social grants of each of 190,300 – mostly impoverished – South Africans. This captured monthly revenue delivers a guaranteed R250m-plus annual income, that pours, year after year, into the magnate’s corporate coffers.

Pensioner Mrs Sanna Marinana 73, and her disabled 40-year-old daughter Latitia never wanted their funeral policies with 1Life in the first place. For six years they’d been paying R65 per month each into perfectly good ones with Doves. But 1Life’s agent would brook no argument: “She said she’d been sent by SASSA and all people who get social grants and pensions must take the policy,” recalls Mrs Marinana. “We thought all the people on grants had to do it and we didn’t want to get into trouble by refusing.”

Every month Noseweek advertises its current issue on Facebook.

It’s an entirely automated affair and every advert is “reviewed” by an algorithm, and either approved or disapproved within minutes of its creation.

In nose217 the magazine featured an extract from a recently published book titled Done by eminent BBC journalist Jacques Peretti. In it Peretti describes how the world’s ultra-rich actually identified global inequality as a business opportunity that they planned to exploit – and widen. To them, he reported, it was a gift-horse like no other.

Committed ANC member Bonginkosi Madikizela told Helen Zille he would never join her party. Now he’s the DA leader in the Western Cape. Sue Segar traces an extraordinary political journey.

Some time back in the mid-2000s, bruised by his internal battles with the ANC – his political home since childhood – Bonginkosi Madikizela, spent a couple of hours with DA stalwart Helen Zille.  He came out of that meeting convinced the DA was the party for him.

“She shared with me the DA’s principles and vision. That conversation, and seeing how seriously the DA took service delivery, and the freedom to express your views without censure, was important for me, as I speak my mind,” Madikizela told Noseweek in an interview.

Today, the DA’s newly-elected leader in the Western Cape stands in pole position to become the province’s new premier in 2019. As leader in the only province which the DA currently governs, he’s highly aware of the critical role he plays in the party and in the greater political landscape.

Naturally, Madikizela’s key focus will be on getting the DA to knock the ANC’s national support to below 50 percent in the 2019 poll, and he’s determined to grow the party’s black support base in the Western Cape

There’s more to a rapid transit system than buying buses and building roads – as Limpopo’s capital, and several other South African cities, are discovering.

Joburg has its Rea Vaya Bus Rapid Transit System and Tshwane its A Re Yeng ‘Connecting the Capital’ version  – and so far neither system is quite meeting expectations.

While Rea Vaya has been plagued by bus driver strikes, issues of punctuality and failure to adhere to routes, A Re Yeng is proving significantly more expensive than originally projected. Current opinion is that by the time it becomes fully operational the new bus system will have cost Tshwane double the amount originally projected. This will largely be due to an agreement with taxi operators made by the then ANC municipality (it is now DA-led) to compensate them for loss of earnings on routes designated for A Re Yeng. So far the system has cost the taxpayer more than R2.6bn.

Grim picture. Think of the children.

Our president is embroiled in yet another scandal, some nostalgic folk have been flying the ol’ flag, and very disgruntled students have been throwing poo at the police. There’s a large share of anger going around in South Africa – but who has any left to express on behalf of the country’s hungry children?

South Africa has an overwhelming number of families that go hungry each and every day, yet the statistics in full view of the public seem to produce little more than a whimper in the social discourse out there of people going on and on about what supposedly really matters.

Makarrata is a beautiful word: it means “the coming together after a struggle” and it is what Aboriginal Australians were after at the 2017 National Constitutional Convention in October. The Uluru Statement from the Heart, penned by Indigenous leaders, proposed a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice in Parliament, arguing that the 60,000 year ownership of the soil by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes had “never been ceded or extinguished” and co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown. “How could it be otherwise?