You know, I really would like to like Mr Zuma, our new president. I would, truly. As a proud ANC voter since 1994, I became so dismayed with Thabo Mbeki in his second term and began view him with a mixture of distaste and pity.

His paranoid, autocratic style of leadership did so much to damage our democracy — and we’re living with the consequences today: our health system is in a shambles because of Mbeki’s cronyism as he protected Manto Tshabalala-Msimang as health minister and fired Nosizwe Madlala-Routledge for acting on her conscious on the Frere Hospital investigation broken by the Daily Dispatch. (Compare, for instance, this to the fact that Barbara Hogan could speak out of turn on the Dalai Lama saga recently and still retain her job after she apologised). The dismantling of the Scorpions and now the discrediting of the NPA can be laid at Mbeki’s door as he sought to meddle — or at least created the climate for others to meddle to curry favour — where he should not have.

The corruption charges hanging over Jacob Zuma’s head are in the past as far as I’m concerned — that’s done and dusted. It’s time to move on and I do hope that Mr Zuma is as wily a political operator as I think he is.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

1. The Judicial Service Commission hearing into allegations by Constitutional Court judges that Cape Judge President John Hlophe tried to influence them in a court proceeding regarding ANC president Jacob Zuma continues today. Hlophe didn’t attend yesterday’s hearing and his legal team staged a dramatic walkout. Quite unprecedented stuff going on here. Click here to read The Times story about yesterday’s preceedings. Today Justices Bess Nkabinde and Chris Jafta are testifying so that will be fascinating.

2. IOL has a story saying former Scorpions head Leonard McCarthy has hit back over the spy tapes saga, saying it wasn’t him but Scorpions director Thanda Mngwengwe and NPA boss Mokotedi Mpshe who decided to prosecute Jacob Zuma in 2007. Read the story here.

3. The Competition Commission has singled out four companies and two industry associations for closer scrutiny in an investigation into anticompetitive practices in the pelagic fishing industry. Pelagic fish include herring, mackerel and sardines. The companies include Oceana and Premier Fishing. Read the Business Day story here.

4. And there are a couple of fun stories at News24 now that we’re all gatvol of the Zuma saga. Click here to read a fun little story about an unnamed (female) ANC councillor and an ID (female) supporter getting into a fight at a party in a Northern Cape dorpie, resulting in part of an ear actually being bitten off.

5. Also on News24, a story to lift the spirits of the squeezed middle class: the number of auctions at the top end of the property market is  on the rise as more wealthy SA homeowners struggle to keep up their bond payments. Ag shame, skatties, having to downgear from Constantia to Bergvliet. Click here to read the story.

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1. Packing for Perth or just another day in South Africa? Today it’s all about analysing the NPA’s decision to drop the charges against ANC president Jacob Zuma. One of the best comes Tim Cohen who wrote in the Daily Dispatch that the NPA decision shows us that the dream of South Africa having a special claim to the moral highground is dead.

We can claim no special place, no special rights, no special privileges. We are no longer miracle workers, just another grubby participant in the carnival of global politics, subject to base desires, enduring of haughty leaders, ever hopeful of finding just one decent person to carry our banner. Never before has the true nature of the South African State been so obvious, so plainly laid open to public view and so revealing for what it is. Much as we pretend otherwise, the hard truth is we live in a quasi-totalitarian State. And the rules that apply to single-party dominant States apply to us, too, though we pretend they don’t.

Read the full piece here.

2. Veteran investigative hack Sam Sole at the Mail & Guardian has an excellent, insightful piece on the tangled web around the arms deal involving Schabir Shaik and Zuma’s alleged role in it. Was Zuma Shaik’s puppet or a mercenary trying to squeeze as much money as he could out his old struggle buddy? It is well worth a read. Click here.

3. Senior Counsel Paul Hoffman says that the acting NPA head Mokotedi Mpshe’s concession that the prosecution team, led by Billy Downer, remains of the view that any decision in the matter ought to go court has laid the door wide open to civil litigation — including an urgent application for an order interdicting Zuma from accepting nomination for the presidency.

The fundamental error in his reasoning is that he is unable to point to any prejudice in the legal (as against political) sense that Zuma can possibly claim to have suffered as a consequence of being charged after the ANC’s Polokwane conference rather than before it. The subsidiary decision to withdraw charges against Thint (the arms dealer in question) highlights the fallacy in the reasoning of the NPA. Thint was obviously not a candidate at Polokwane and the two-week difference in timing of the arraignment of both accused is therefore neither here nor there .

Read the full piece here.

4. DA leader Helen Zille says on her Facebook page that party “is now finalising its plan to take the matter further through the legal system“.

5. A senior NPA official told The Times’s that the NPA is, in fact, going to prosecute former Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy and former NPA boss Bulelani Ngcuka for violating sections of the NPA Act — rather than recommending an inquiry as indicated by Mpshe. Read the story here. And to throw my two cents in here, suspended police commissioner Jackie Selebi could now escape trial for corruption and defeating the ends of justice on the same basis as Zuma (because there was a political conspiracy against him) after being referred to in the transcripts of tapped phone conversation between Ngcuka and McCarthy. If you’ve forgotten what that’s about, click here to read the charge sheet at Financial Mail’s website.

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Don’t forget it. This is what ANC President Jacob Zuma was charged with (courtesy of Paddy Harper at the Sunday Times. Read the full story here):

One of racketeering, two of corruption, 12 of fraud and one of money laundering, with alternatives including tax evasion.

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Popularity: 4% [?]

The National Prosecuting Authority are between the devil and deep blue when it comes ANC president Jacob Zuma. If they drop the corruption, racketeering, tax evasion and fraud charges against him, they will be accused of sacrificing their independence and subverting the rule of law. If they press on, the Zuma camp will accuse them of being part of a continuing political conspiracy against him.

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Popularity: 7% [?]

1. Louis Theroux, eat your heart out. Check out this weird IOL story about an enraged man allegedly threatening to blow up his fiancee while brandishing a bazooka in the Firkin Fun Pub in Pretoria at the weekend. And because this is South Africa, the source of the bazooka is totally bizarre. This is what one of cops who nabbed the Centurion man had to say:

“There would have been some serious collateral damage. He probably would have destroyed half the block,” he said.

The policeman said the man had apparently got the device for a Halloween party in 2008, and had apparently forgotten to return it to the person he borrowed it from.

“At this stage we are trying to establish where the weapon came from, especially as it is not a grenade launcher that is used by the South African National Defence Force,” he said.

Read the full story here.

2. The National Prosecuting Authority are still deliberating whether the corruption and racketeering charges against ANC president Jacob Zuma should be dropped after a marathon session yesterday. An announcement is expected today. Read The Times story here.

3. However, IOL is bucking the trend among the news websites and not leading with the Zuma story. Instead they’re leading with an interesting story about a Joburg taxi tycoon accused of running a mafia-style operation, intimidating drivers and influencing police investigations. It’s a tad dodgy legally and, frankly, I’m surprised The Star has named the taxi boss though the Gauteng Transport Department confirmed it is investgating the accusations. The taxi boss, however, should have been given more space to comment and higher up in the story.  Read it here.

4. The Appeal  Court will deliver its judgment today on the dispute between Western Cape Judge President John Hlophe and 13 judges of the Constitutional Court. Read the Business Day story here.

5. The SABC’s failure to pay suppliers on time is hitting the bottom line of  independent production companies so they have formed the TV Industry Coalition to help with the national  broadcaster’s turnaround strategy. Read the Business Day story here.

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1. Eskom is likely to apply for a 34% increase in electricity tariffs this year, says Business Day, far below the expected 88%. Read the story here.

2. Business Day also says that the NPA is expected to drop all charges against ANC president Jacob Zuma today that include corruption and racketeeing arising from the 2005 fraud and corrpution conviction of his former financial adviser Schabir Shaik. Click here.

3. And, yes, it does seem so as The Star reports that Zuma’s legal team missed a March 27 deadline to hand in documents to the Constitutional Court about the case. This, says the paper, could be because they already knew the charges would be dropped. Curious to say the least considering the NPA’s decision is only supposed to be communicated to Zuma’s lawyers today. Read The Star story here.

4. East Coast Radio says four million light bulbs were switched off during Saturday night’s Earth Hour, according to Eskom. Click here. I must admit I forgot as I was tucking into sesame chicken and a Johnny Walker Blue in a Chinese restaurant at the time.

5. Madonna continues her Mia Farrow streak in Malawi and was in court today in the capital, Lilongwe, to adopt a second Malawian child. Read the Hello story here.

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1. The lawyer for the three doctors who treated Jacob Zuma’s former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, says they did not sign documents recommending medical parole for Shaik. Read the story at The Times here.

2. Top Durban businessmen have been linked to a child prostitution ring, reports The Witness. There’s no names yet but they have been charged so all will be revealed when they enter their pleas in court. Read the story on News24 here.

3. President Kgalema Motlanthe has (through his spokesman) made the silliest statement of his short presidency: that the government did not want the Dalai Lama to divert attention away from the peace conference he was meant to attend in SA. The less said about this the better. This is topped only in gross hypocrasy by the Chinese government itself. Read this recently posted piece on a Chinese government website about the Dalai Lama (that he’s been striving to send Tibetans back into serfdom). Click here.

4. The SA government has launched a kids website today, says it’s news agency BuaNews. There’s no link to the website from Bua but the Minister in the Presidency, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, said:

As a caring nation, we have an obligation to teach our children about their country and national identity. We can only do that by ensuring that children understand the national symbols.

“We also deemed it important that our children should be afforded an opportunity to understand the responsibilities of the Presidency.

Ahem, ANC president Jacob Zuma needs to do a little surfing of the site, methinks. Read the BuaNews story here.

5. South African businessman Maxim Krok is courting the media to sell his Sandhurst residence in Joburg for R25-million, says MoneyWeb, after spending a record price (R180-million) for an Australian mansion. Read the story here.

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Feeling gloomy about being South African and about the country’s future? Well, here’s an interesting blog on Thought Leader by Dr Vusi Gumede, chief policy analyst in the Presidency’s Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services.

He says surveys show that this is not a product of our apartheid past but that a serious dent to how South Africans feel about the country set in at about 2005/2006. He writes of a recent Afrobarometer survey:

The death of democrasy

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Popularity: 30% [?]

1. Former Springbok star Joost van der Westhuizen has decided not to press ahead with legal action over a sex and drugs video allegedly featuring him in a starring role, reports Beeld. He had planned to file charges of extortion and defamation and sue Heat magazine and Rapport newspaper for their reporting on the video. Read the News24 story here.

2. Making legal history, the Supreme Court of Appeal will hear an application today by the judges of the Constitutional Court who are appealing against an earlier ruling in favour of the Cape Judge President John Hlophe. The Constitutional Court judges want a high court ruling overturned that found that they infringed on Hlophe’s right to dignity by making public an allegation that he attempted to interfere in a judgment involving ANC president Jacob Zuma. Read The Times story here.

3. Rhema Ministries, the church that recently hosted ANC president Jacob Zuma at a service in Joburg, has announced an income of “slightly above R100-million” for the past year, mostly from “tithes and offerings” from its 40 000 congregants. Read the story on M&G’s website here.

4. A Department of Trade and Industry-led team is looking into a three-pronged plan to rescue the car industry, says Business Day, including tax adjustments to stimulate demand for cars. Read the story here.

5. There will probably be an interest-rate cut of at least one percentage point, to be announced on Tuesday. Yippee! And economists say there are more to come this year. Read the News24 story here.

Popularity: 24% [?]