The over-achingly  ambitious Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu is standing by an incendiary article she penned criticizing South Africa’s world renowned constitution and black judges.

The article is seen as an opening volley in her bid to win the presidency at the elective congress of ruling African National Congress in December.

Her early appearance over the parapet is entirely in keeping with this 58-year-old member of the iconic Sisulu family’s  desire to lead the ANC and thereby the country.

She has held no fewer than six Cabinet positions, including the defence and foreign ministry portfolios.

Her first bid for the presidency was a decade ago when she was beaten by the incumbent Jacob Zuma.

In 2017 she contested the deputy presidency where she was beaten by the David Mabuza.

Her opinion piece says apartheid was legal, as were the Jim Crow laws in the United States, colonialism and even nazism.

“So does that mean we have the rule of law?” she asks. “And whose law is it anyway?”

She asks how poverty can exist in a judicial system and under a constitution that is admired by the world.

She charges that South Africa is being “mentally colonized by black judges settled with the view and mindset of those who have dispossessed their ancestors.”

Embarrassingly, she is accused of plagiarism for using several hundred words without accreditation from a speech by former British Attorney General Dominic Grieve.

The ANC, of whom Sisulu is a member of the executive committee, has distances itself from her remarks.

The presidency calls the article recklessness of the highest order.

Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele points out that  the constitution of which Sisulu is suddenly so critical was never forced upon her.

Acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo says Sisulu’s article is an insult to judges of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the provincial High Courts.

He strongly disagrees with his submission that the rule of law does not serve the interests of the black majority of South African.

Judges must be prepared to accept  factual criticism and analysis, says Zondo,  but none of this is contained in Sisulu’s article which is simply insulting.

Craig Watt-Pringle the chairman of the General Bar Association says the timing of Sisulu’s piece can be interpreted as an attack on the Zondo Commission into State Capture.

He says President Cyril Ramaphosa must act against a member of his cabinet who has crossed the line.

Her criticism of unspecified judges and unspecified rulings serves to undermine the judiciary and intimidate judges.

Former ANC chief whip, who served a prison sentence for fraud after being appointed to defence review committee by Sisulu accused Zondo of being a cry baby and says judges must get used to being criticized.

Sisulu says she will respond to the criticism in an appropriate forum at an appropriate time.

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Led by their former  Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, South Africans breathed a sigh of relief when President Cyril Ramaphosa scrapped plans to buy a nuclear power plant from Russia that would have been ruinously expensive.

But it is not over.

Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe says this week that South Africa is still in the market for  nuclear energy, provided it can be purchased economically.

This is necessitated by  the financially hamstrung Electricity Supply Commission becoming  a millstone around the exchequer’s neck, by failing to meet its crippling debt burden. 

The Commission, which once sold power to all of South Africa neighbors and produced cheap electricity that was a loadstone to foreign heavy industrial investors,  is now no longer able to meet South Africa’s domestic needs with its pool of aged and poorly maintained coal-fired power stations.

The daily blackouts are proving to be an  deterrent to those very investors the power once attracted.

Mantashe is adamant SouthAfrica will not go for the big bang approach to nuclear energy taken by Jacob Zuma.

The disgraced former President now says ruefully if his nuclear plans had been allowed to come to fruition, South Africa would have been saved the rolling blackouts – known euphemistically as load shedding –  it is now experiencing.

Mantashe offers an altogether more cautious approach:

“It comes back to a resolution we took as a government: not going big bang  to nuclear , but going at a pace and price that the country can afford. Go modular, go at a pace and a price that the country can afford.”

He says the state’s Integrated Resource Plan contains provisions for nuclear energy, but acquiring it will first need approval by government.

The former trade union leader and secretary general of the ruling African National Congress, Mantashe now heads a merged Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

He says South Africa must plan for a new nuclear plant to come on line after 2045.

Until then, the country’s only nuclear plant at Koeberg, outside Cape Town, will have it life extended.

Local business has reacted cooly to this development.

The general belief  is that the promises made to Russia by Zuma were  secured with hefty bribes.

Zuma is facing corruption charges and further evidence of this is expected to come to light before the judicial commission on corruption which is known in South Africa as state capture.

“The fact that we suspected corruption,” says Mantashe of the Russian deal, “ does not mean nuclear energy is irrelevant for South Africa today.”

Whether a search for affordable nuclear energy will once again bring France into the equasion is uncertain.

Mantashe reference to the  use of modular nuclear technology at a pace it can afford – indicates the construction of smaller plants.

Investors warn that nuclear energy production of any size is expensive.

Economic realities – a soaring unemployment rate of more than a third of the workforce out of jobs and youth unemployment exceeding  50% – and sluggish Gross Domestic Product growth will keep  South Africa out of this market for the foreseeable future.

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The envoy was recalled in May in protest against the killing of more than 40 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli security forces.

Palestinian support groups expressed outrage when they learned that South Africa’s Ambassador to Tel Aviv Sisa Ngombane was back in Israel. He would leave as soon as this was done.

The Department of International Relations and co-operation quickly reacted, saying Ngombane had gone to TelAviv to tend to private family business.

It said the reasons for his recall remain relevant and any return would be properly announced.

The South African Government is under pressure to implement the decision taken by the ruling African National Congress last December to downgrade relations with Israel.

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Molewa fell ill while accompanying Ramaphosa to China earlier this month. She died at a Pretoria Hospital, aged 61.

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The ruling African National Congress endorsed President Cyril Ramaphosa remarks that Edna Molewa’s death was a devastating loss. She was Water and Environmental Affairs Minister for eight years.

Opposition parties paid tribute to Molewa’s work protecting the environment and particularly in fighting the poaching of rhino and elephant.

The World Wildlife Fund paid tribute to her significant contribution to safeguarding the environment and noted that on her watch there had been a decline in rhino deaths these past three years.

Five years ago the WWF gave Molewa its highest honour, the Gift To The Earth Award.

Figures released in Friday showed 508 rhinos had been poached nationally between the beginning of the year and end of August, compared with 691 deaths  last year.

Elephants, however, are falling prey to poachers in greater numbers. 58 of the giant beast have been killed for their tusks in the Kruger National Park – South Africa largest game reserve – this year.

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Voting was postponed last night  and will be resumed this morning (Monday) in the bitterly divided contest between businessman and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa and outgoing President Jacob Zuma’s ex-wife Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma remains too close to call.

On the face of it, Cyril Ramaphosa has the support of enough branches of the African National Congress to win the leadership contest comfortably.

Of the 4731 delegates voting,  2941 have been mandated by their branches to support him.

However delegates customarily make personal decisions when in the voting booth.

There are fears some have been bribed.

So Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma cannot being written off.

The delay in agreeing on credentials meant conference got down to the nuts and bolts of voting more than a day late.

Delegates rejected a call to reduce the  the size of the  national executive from 80 to 60.

Similarly they threw out a proposal to increase the size of the party’s top leadership from six to seven.

Conference still has to hear  messages of support from the South African Communist Party and the Congress of  South African Trade Unions who are the ANC’s partners in the so-called triple alliance.

Zuma made withering attacks on these allies in his swan song speech to the conference on Saturday.

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However, he’s dismissed allegations that he dallied with a string of women as a dirty trick campaign to jeopardize his chances of succeeding President Jacob Zuma as leader of the ruling African National Congress.

Cyril Ramaphosa says an affair he had with a doctor in the north eastern province of Limpopo ended eight years ago.

In an interview with the Johannesburg Sunday Times, he says he and his wife have come terms with the matter and remain happily married.

The rival Sunday Independent says after Ramaphosa’s court bid to muzzle it failed, it’s able to claim it has details of alleged relations between Ramaphosa – who is married with children – and about eight women.

It releases  details of three this week and intends exposing information about the other alleged affairs in the future.

Ramaphosa describes claims made about his personal life as an episode that extends far beyond an attempt at political smear.

He says it’s an escalation of a dirty war against those who are working to restore the values, principles and integrity of the African National Congress and society.

Ramaphosa says he find suggestions that he paid money to women with whom he was supposedly in relationships to be deeply disturbing.

He maintains that he and his wife financially assist 54 students, both men and women.

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His grandson is calling on the National Electoral Commission to force the opposition Democratic Alliance to take down an advertisement, using the anti-apartheid icon’s voice,  saying in the current climate Mandela would have voted for them.

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Zwelivilile Mandla Mandela says his grandfather shouldn’t be affiliated with the betrayal of the ANC’s struggle against apartheid.

Mandela’s grandson’s demanding the DA take down an advertisement featuring Madiba’s voice – calling it a gross violation of the electoral code.

He says the ANC is disgusted by what he calls the flagrant abuse of the former president by the DA.

He says throughout his life and until his death, Mandela was a loyal and committed member of the ANC.

Associating him with the DA is an affront  to his history, his choice of party, his legacy and values for which he stood.

If the DA wants to invoke history in its election campaign it should  use the voice of its former and current leaders – adding that this leadership has provided the laager of white privilege since the onset of democracy in 1994.

The DA’s spokesperson Refiloe Ntsekhe says Nelson Mandela belongs to everyone.

The DA is reminding South Africa of what Mandela preached.

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Mmusi Maimane says he may have to give up his ministrations from the pulpit now he has taken on this job of growing the Democratic Alliance which is dishonestly dismissed by the ruling African National Congress as a white party.
Mmusi Maimane will retain the parliamentary leadership of the Democratic Alliance where he earned his spurs confronting President Jacob Zuma.

His first task will be to raise funds for the DA to contest next year’s municipal elections which will be his first acid test as leader.

The DA controls the Western Cape and runs a close second to the ANC in the heartland province of Gauteng.

Maimane says in his inaugural speech at the congress in Port Elizabeth that he leads a party that espouses the principals and diversity cherished by the last Nelson Mandela.

He’s adamant there’s no place for racism and division in the DA.

There will be place for black veteran Wilmot James who opposed him for the post vacated by Helen Zille who led the party for eight years and retains the Western Cape provincial leadership.

Tony Leon, who was DA leader before Zille says Maimane will have to adopt strategies to continue the growth the party that stresses service above the acquisition of private wealth.

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