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@Fred
The politicians ARE doing what they are supposed to do... THIEVING (tho we'd like to keep that down to just oxygen)
by Dodo

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17 August 2010 00:32

They shoot stars, don't they?

Johannesburg, Africa’s money epicenter, remains as ever a wild and dangerous mining encampment.

On a Sunday in March 1886, so the likely legend goes, an Australian gold prospector, George Harrison, discovered an outcrop hosting gold, just to the west of what is now the CBD in Johannesburg. He later sold his claim for a relative pittance, no doubt ignorant that he had stumbled onto the world's biggest gold fields, a geological structure of pretty proportions.

The modern, broader, Johannesburg has been cited as the world's largest manmade forest; the early encampment was little more than a scrappy chaos of soft dwellings perched on a treeless, uninhabited, temperate plateau, vulnerable to grimy dust storms. Some of the world's heaviest lightning storms kept trees at bay. From discovery, it was within years that, in gold rush tradition, Johannesburg hosted dozens of wild bordellos, bookmakers and savage, but often elegant, saloons.

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03 August 2010 02:13

How tender are the tenders?

The ANC’s discussion paper on tenderpreneurs will not be put out to tender.

So, who's backing the "tenderpreneurs" to win this one? Stanley Uys, the well known political commentator, reckons that recent proposals made known by the ANC, the ruling party, could see, among many other undesirables, the building of a "protective barrier" around "the whole corrupt tender process".

Uys argues that the ANC is launching "a double barrelled attack on the South African press". These barrels are, of course, "The Protection of Information Bill" and a statutory "Media Appeals Tribunal". While few, so far at least, have described the proposed barrels as fascist, for now it is probably more useful to note that the ANC has fully succumbed to tendernitis; the moral equivalent of snapping both cruciate ligaments at once.

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21 July 2010 14:04

Flying on trash from the fast lane

Fresh from the rotten trail of Khaya Ngqula, that model citizen.

JOHANNESBURG - News that South African Airways, the national carrier, is suing an ex-CEO, Khaya Ngqula, for R31m, and may sue for a further R147m, raises the faint possibility that the great man's career as CEO of the Industrial Development Corporation could be extracted from the junkyard.

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15 July 2010 16:16

Sleaze sludge cakes rain down

The country's public tender system is bleeding at every extremity.

JOHANNESBURG - So-called "tenderpreneurs" are one of the main forces of evil pushing South Africa into ruination, as any casual walk into the public domain shows. Pam Yako, director general (DG) of the water affairs ministry, was placed on (fully paid, naturally), special leave by her minister, Buyelwa Patience Sonjica, on July 21 2009. This week the auditor-general released a raft of findings, not least that water affairs awarded an IT contract worth R180m that was extended "on numerous occasions" to 49 months.

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02 June 2010 23:05

Dr Doolittle's waka waka

Julius Malema’s big fat swaggering watch vs The (wily) Public Protector.

News from South Africa's Public Protector is that its investigation into tenders awarded to the innocuously-named SGL Engineering Projects could be finalised by June 28. Far less innocuous is that SGL has been connected, directly and indirectly, to Julius Malema who, at the latest count, was still president of the ANC Youth League.

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