How tens of millions of rands were siphoned off under the guise of bringing the North Sea Jazz  Festival to Durban.

The hot winds that signal political climate change may, it seems, finally be blowing through the foothills of Kwa-Zulu-Natal.

But before we tell you the exciting news, a recap from nose154 of August 2012: “As, increasingly over time, shady businessmen and other criminal elements in pursuit of government contracts, favours and protection have corrupted South Africa’s politicians and infiltrated its political structures, so the politicians in power and friends in crime have made common cause in undermining the country’s law-enforcement agencies.

“The word is out: to survive in the police or prosecution services you must be either very brave – or bent.

'I first knew there was a problem in my department when I read about it in Noseweek'– minister says.

An inquiry mandated by the Constitutional Court into whether Social Development minister Bathabile Dlamini should be held personally liable for legal fees in the grants crisis, turned up at least one unassailable truth: only after reading Noseweek did Dlamini realise that there was a serious problem with her department’s planning programme.

This admission by Dlamini, (who elected to speak in Zulu through a translator) was made to the inquiry panel headed by retired Judge Bernard Ngoepe at the Office of the Chief Justice in Midrand, Johannesburg

Watch the confession here:

Questions keep rolling in over a succession of dodgy loans involving former KZN premier and his wife.

FORMER KZN premier Dr Zweli Mkhize signed a lucrative lease agreement with a KZN businessman who had given Mkhize’s wife Dr May Mashego two R1-million interest-free loans.

Evidence leaked to Noseweek shows how businessman and property developer Protus Sokhela secured a three-year R10.9m property lease with the provincial Treasury (when Zweli Mkhize was KZN MEC for finance)after having made two payments of exactly R1m each to a company of which his wife May is the sole director. Mkhize became KZN ANC chairperson in mid-2008, around the time the deal was being concluded, and became the province’s premier in 2009. 

Crime author says makers of Oscar Pistorius movie stole his work.

Best-selling South African true crime writer Nick van der Leek has accused the US makers of a television film, Oscar Pistorius: Blade Runner Killer, of “stealing” most of their script from material he has written about the murderer and his victim.

Van der Leek has penned a number of articles and books on the disgraced Paralympian and his relationship with model Reeva Steenkamp, whom Pistorius shot dead on Valentine’s Day in 2013.

Van der Leek is taking on the Disney-owned A&E Networks, along with another Disney subsidiary, Lifetime TV, which aired the movie for the first time in November last year. The credits list Amber Benson as scriptwriter of the film, which was produced by Eric Tomosunas and Swirl Films.

Last year Noseweek speculated (nose205) that the SA National Road Agency Limited (Sanral) planned to forge ahead with the construction of two mega bridges so that the fiercely contested multi-billion-rand N2 Wild Coast toll road becomes a fait accompli before the matter gets to court.

Well, it looks like that’s exactly the case. Sanral contractors have already started building approach roads to the site of the Mtentu mega-bridge on the toll road – in breach of the environmental authorisation for the project.

After the summer hols in Cape Town, it’s back to the land of the “lounge room”. Other than a diabolical new government plan for Australia to become a top global arms exporter (almost AU $4 bil ...