1. Best quote of the week award goes to 79-year-old retired East London judge, Colin White, who just got his masters in history from Rhodes, graduating with his grand-daughter. He told the Daily Dispatch:

You’ve got to have something other than your bladder to get you up in the morning.

Read the full story here.

2. The Times reports that British newspaper The Guardian is in discussion with ANC president Jacob Zuma’s lawyers about apologising for a column they ran calling Zuma (among other things) a ‘‘polygamous, leopard skin-draped Zulu boss’’ and ‘‘unschooled former terrorist, communist sympathiser and rabble-rouser’’. Read the story here.

3. IOL’s Baybnet has a fun little election sidebar story on the various politicans’ favourite dishes. The UDM’s leader, Bantu Holomisa, for instance, goes moggy for a Thai dish, fish in coconut sauce. Read the story here.

4. The three doctors whose opinions helped convicted fraudster Schabir Shaik get medical parole will know today if they will be investigated formally by the Health Professions Council of SA.

5. A key figure in the Fidentia saga, Steve Goodwin, has been convicted of fraud, corruption and money laundering. Read the story at The Times here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

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.

Popularity: 8% [?]

1. Fire raged across Devil’s Peak in Cape Town last night, with people being evacuated from city suburbs such as Vredehoek and University Estate. The fire started at Rhodes Memorial above Rondebosch and De Waal Drive is closed to traffic this morning. Yikes. What a traffic jam on Main Road! Check out these amazing pics taken at 1am at 2Oceans Vibe blog.

2. There’s speculation that the National Prosecuting Authority will drop corruption charges against ANC president Jacob Zuma. Read The Times story here. Zuma is scheduled to appear in court in August.

3. Clive Derby-Lewis, who was convicted in of the 1993 murder of ANC leader Chris Hani,  has had his application for parole turned down by the High Court.

4.Eskom is to seek permission for a  significant increase from the power regulator when it applies for a tariff increase in a few weeks time. The tariff hike will take effect from April  but we don’t  yet know what the increase will be. Read the MoneyWeb story here.

5. And the South African Guild of Motoring Journalists has announced the winner of the annual Car of the Year competition. It’s the  Honda Accord 2.4i Executive. Read the News24 story here.

Popularity: 4% [?]

1. The Times reports that government sources say that Intelligence Minister Siyabonga Cwele was to meet President Kgalema Motlanthe last night to ‘‘provide him with an explanation” of what’s potting following the Sunday Times story saying that the minister’s wife is being investigated for trafficking cocaine between South America and South Africa. Read the full story here.

2. Schabir Shaik, Jacob Zuma’s former financial adviser who was jailed in 2005 for fraud and corruption, made an offer of R10-million for a swanky plek in Morningside in Durban one week before he was paroled. It also happens to be a stone’s throw away from the official Durban resident of the state president. Looks like Shaik was pretty sure (10 million bucks worth!) that he had a “get out of jail free” card. You have to subscribe to the M&G to see the story online. Click here to do that and you get one week free.

3. Meanwhile, back at the ranch Zuma says South Africans are being big meanies about Shaik’s health, waiting for him to die now that we’ve been told by Correctional Services that he’s in the final stages of terminal illness.

“You can’t say so many officials, all the way up to the minister, were all corrupt and dishonest and wanted to smuggle a prisoner out, it can’t be,” Zuma said.

Famous last words? Read the story on News24 here.

4. There has been a 56% rise in the number of missing police dockets over the past year, it emerged in Parliament. In 2005/6, 382 were lost or stolen; 427 in 2007/8 and in 2008/9 668 dockets went up in a puff of smoke. Ever wondered how easy it is get to a police docket vanished but you’re persecuted by traffic and library fines? You’re not working the system properly, people.

5. And maybe , just maybe, there’s light at the end of the tunnel for hacks (and readers) as there is a change of guard at the Evil Empire. Tony O’Reilly is handing over the reins of the Independent newspaper group to his son. They’re denying this will means a sell-off papers but we can only hope. In South Africa the Irishman owns both Cape Town daily broadsheets, both Durban daily broadhseets, The Star in Joburg and the Pretoria News. Most South African hacks have watched in dismay as these papers have fallen in quality in the past 15 years as cost cutting rules the day. Read Business Report’s story here.

Popularity: 6% [?]

1. SA Airways boss Khaya Ngqula has been sacked by the board a few weeks after a report on allegations of corruption was handed to it and the public enterprises minister. The main allegation is that a R1.5 billion catering deal SAA is doing with a consortium is a conflict of interest. One of the consortium partners, Vusi Sithole, is also a business partner of Nqcula’s wife.

2. President Kgalema Motlanthe said in a question to him at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange that he will consider an investigation into the medical parole from prison of Schabir Shaik, the former financial adviser of ANC president Jacob Zuma.

3. Still on Mr Shaik, a cardiologist at one of the country’s academic hospitals told The Times that Shaik’s condition was “nothing exceptional” after analysing a report about his health signed by the state cardiologist, Professor DP Naidoo. Naidoo told the Sunday Times he had discharged Shaik from hospital four months before he got parole. The doctor later said he was misquoted. Read the full story here, which also gives an account of the interview Sunday times journalist Megan Power did with Naidoo.

4. News24 says that an affidavit by a dead policeman that implicates the presidency, National Intelligence Agency and the National Police Commissioner’s Office in an alleged conspiracy was handed in to the Bloemfontein High Court by the defence for IT consultant Mzwendoda Kunene at his murder trial. Kunene, who is accused of murdering Ballito estate agent Lynne Hume in 2007, was one of three accused in the hoax e-mail case that implicated ANC members in a conspiracy against Jacob Zuma. Hume’s murder was allegedly the result of Kunene planning to make her as a defence witness in the e-mail case. Read the full story here.

5. The Pretoria High Court is expected to decided before the end of the week if Clive Derby-Lewis, who masterminded the murder of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani in 1993, can get parole after serving 15 years of his life term.

Popularity: 7% [?]

My, my, my. Turns out Schabir Shaik, the former financial adviser to ANC president Jacob Zuma, got parole in the nick of time. Two enterprising hacks at The Star have been digging around in the vaults of our law makers and have spotted that in a few weeks a change in the law will kick in that will  give the inspecting judge of prisons the power to refer such parole decisions  for review.

Schabir Shaik, Zuma's corrupt pal

The correctional services minister Ngconde Balfour has said he sees no need for a review of Shaik’s parole  (he is meant to be in the final stages of terminal illness though all the South African public knows about his health is that he has high blood pressure). Serendipitous? I think not.

But curiouser and curiouser. The Star also reports that Justice Minister Enver Surty said in response to questions in Parliament that he believes the public has a right to know the grounds on which Shaik was released (but this had to be balanced with an individual’s right to privacy.) That’s an interesting statement coming from Surty, who was appointed after the Zuma-led coup against Mbeki last year. Why would he bite the hand that feeds him? Read The Star story here.

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