South Africa

I was a bit disappointed by last weeks Suntimes, but this week they make up for it by delivering a fine mix of interesting tales.

 

- Tomorrow is the big day as the rape trial of Jay-Z gets underway in the Johannesburg High Court. Transvaal Judge President Bernard Ngoepe will preside over the trial and the prosecution is expected to call 28 witnesses while the defence's strategy will focus on trying to challenge the credibility of the complainant. There has been speculation that another senior Cabinet minister may also be called as a defence witness.

 

- Nice cluster of stories focusing on the upcoming budget speech, the men behind the economic stats and a bit of history leading up to SA's current economic success. For something a bit off the wall checkout this story on how SA is losing out through not taxing the sex industry.

 

- The cartoon debate rages on in the Suntimes Opinion pages. Check out these thought provoking articles here here and here

 

- This is a shocking story - twelve THOUSAND government officials face prosecution in connection with social grant fraud amounting to millions. This was the finding after work done by SA uber-nerd (an all round good guy) Willie Hofmeyr, head of the Special Investigating Unit probing grants fraud. The state pays out more than R50-billion a year to more than nine million beneficiaries and it is believed that fraud takes a R1.5-billion chunk of this every year.

 

- And finally a big Happy Birthday to the Suntimes. I am looking forward to seeing the paper document its history in the next twelve months and you'll definitely be seeing references to those stories here on Someamoungus. One thing for sure is that for the last 10 years the Suntimes and M&G have been at the forefront of investigative print journalism in SA. Keep it up guys!