transparency

The Committee of Citizens, a NGO, has challenged former Task Force on Corruption chairperson, Max Nkole, to deny that he had written letters to the Republican vice-president asking that the case involving former president, Frederick Chiluba, be dropped.

The organisation’s executive director, Gregory Chifire, says that Nkole should in the next seven days publicly admit that he had written several letters to the vice-president asking that Chiluba's case be dropped because of lack of evidence.

The humanitarian group Amnesty International (AI) has slammed Tripoli's treatment of African migrants on the eve of a historic visit to Italy by Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

The organisation points out that its delegation visited a detention centre in northwestern Libya, where hundreds of non-Libyan citizens, most coming from Eritrea but also from Somalia, Nigeria and Mali, are held in conditions of serious overcrowding.

The South African National Editors Forum (SANEF) has welcomed a High Court ruling that Cape Judge President John Hlophe’s hearing before the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) should be open to the media.

“Media groups and the Freedom of Expression Institute made an urgent application to the court that in the interests of 'open justice' and the fact that the issues were of high public interest, the hearings should be conducted in public,” SANEF said in a  press statement.

The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) wants the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to join its court bid for a review of how Schabir Shaik was released on medical parole.

The coalition says it wrote to Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour almost two weeks ago and asked him to institute a high court review of the grounds on which Shaik was released.

They also want an independent panel of medical experts nominated by the SAHRC and the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons to examine Shaik and submit reports to the court.

Former Minister of Education and Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal, delivered the Helen Joseph Memorial Lecture on 28 October 2008 at the University of Johannesburg. His lecture was entitled ‘Law, morality and ethics in public life in South Africa’.

His address came just days after former African National Congress (ANC) chairperson Mosiuoa Lekota wrote an open letter to the party’s secretary-general, Gwede Mantashe, criticising the newly-elected leadership for forsaking values of the Freedom Charter.