News you should know tonight: Top 5 stories you may have missed on July 16, 2025
Good evening, IOL News family!
It's Wednesday, July 16, 2025, and it's time for a wrap of the biggest headlines making waves in South Africa and beyond. Don't forget to join the IOL WhatsApp Channel to stay in tune, informed, and in the know.
Hlophe to Ramaphosa: 'A President broken beyond repair, your couch swallowed millions, you claim to fight corruption?'
MK Party deputy president and MP John Hlophe launched a scathing attack on President Cyril Ramaphosa in Parliament on Wednesday, calling him a 'President broken beyond repair' and accusing him of hypocrisy over the Phala Phala scandal. To read on, click here.
Ramaphosa says GNU was formed to fix unemployment, crime, and corruption in SA
President Cyril Ramaphosa claims the Government of National Unity (GNU) was formed with challenges in mind, including unemployment, rampant crime, poverty, corruption, and restoring the trust of the people, despite the ANC having lost its majority in the May 2024 general elections. To read on, click here.
ANC and DA condemn MK Party's chaos over Division of Revenue Bill
The African National Congress (ANC) in KwaZulu-Natal has criticised the MK Party for its handling and ultimate rejection of the Division of Revenue (DORA) Bill, which was passed during a special sitting of the KZN Legislature on Tuesday. To read on, click here.
'Choose your emojis carefully': Workplaces urged to establish emoji use policies
Companies can no longer afford to ignore the use of emojis in the workplace, and should take steps to update their social media policies. To read on, click here.
ARVs in the water: Department of Health calls for serious action
The Department of Health believes that while the discovery of antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) in the country's tap water and rivers means those needing them are taking them, there is a need for stakeholders who clean our water to be more responsible. To read on, click here.
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The Citizen
3 hours ago
- The Citizen
SA's police serve ANC insiders, not the people: Here's how it happened
The late national police commissioner Jackie Selebi was an ANC insider. After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, there was significant optimism about police reform in the country. Impressive steps were taken to bring the South African Police Service (Saps) under civilian control and to create a service responsive to calls for assistance from the public. During the apartheid period, South Africa's police worked to preserve the political order and pursue political opponents. It did not focus on dealing with crime. This is why the achievements of the 1990s are so important. For the first time, black South Africans could call upon officers to respond to personal emergencies. This period also saw a drop in crime levels. However, this promising early transformation was interrupted. The appointment of Jackie Selebi as national police commissioner in 2000 heralded a new era. Selebi was an African National Congress (ANC) insider. The ANC originated as a liberation movement and has governed the country since 1994. Selebi had served as the head of the ANC's Youth League in the 1980s, when it was banned. In 1987 he was appointed to the organisation's national executive committee, its highest decision-making organ. His appointment as police commissioner was the start of significant change in the purpose of policing. It marked the end of the focus on civilian control of the police force and prosecuting authorities. As an ANC insider, Selebi led efforts to establish party control over the police. ALSO READ: Madlanga inquiry: Mkhwanazi first to be consulted This politicisation gained momentum over the next two decades. In the early years it was exemplified by the suspension of the head of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), Advocate Vusi Pikoli, by then president Thabo Mbeki, amid corruption allegations against Selebi himself. Other telling developments ensued. The Scorpions were disbanded in 2009 by acting president Kgalema Motlanthe. The unit's job was to pursue high-profile cases against senior ANC politicians (among others). The police became increasingly entangled in the ANC's internal political conflicts. At the same time the office of the national police commissioner experienced high turnover due to intense political manoeuvring. Between 2009 and 2022, there were seven national commissioners. Recent developments have once again brought the intermingling of police work and power battles in the ANC to the fore. In early July 2025, Lieutenant General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi, the commissioner of police in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, made some startling claims. He called a press conference and, wearing camouflage uniform, he implicated the minister of police, Senzo Mchunu, together with the deputy national commissioner for crime detection, in a scheme to close down investigations into political assassinations in the province. President Cyril Ramaphosa rushed back from a meeting of the Brics countries in Brazil to attend to the matter. He announced that the police minister had been placed on leave with immediate effect. He also announced a judicial inquiry into the allegations. I have conducted research into South Africa's security apparatus over the last decade. Based on this work, and new research forthcoming in the Journal of Southern African Studies done with Jelena Vidojevic, co-founder of the New South Institute, it is clear that elite contestation in the ANC is intensifying. In other words, the ability of internal party structures to manage gatekeeping is declining. Many of the people involved are indifferent or even hostile to South Africa's democratic and constitutional order. As the ability of some political elites to access state resources through the party declines, some are linked with organised criminal networks. Organised crime has been on the edges of South African politics. It now risks taking a more central role. In this environment, the police service will often be the thin (blue) line between multiparty contestation according to constitutional rules and the criminalisation of politics in South Africa. The shift Large organisational changes within the police vividly illustrate this shift away from its core function. The Visible Policing programme was meant to meant to deter crime through patrols, checkpoints and roadblocks. But, instead, there was a steady decline in resource allocation. Employee numbers dropped between 2015 and 2021. Detective services and crime intelligence also experienced such declines. Conversely, employee numbers in the Protection and Security Services programme, responsible for providing bodyguards to politicians, increased sharply between 2014 and 2016. Evidence heard by the commission of inquiry into state capture suggested that some officers and budgets in the service were even used to supply President Jacob Zuma and other politicians with what amounted to a private militia. READ MORE: Police investigate allegations of Basotho military-style training camps in South Africa This reorientation of resources coincided with a rise in crime across the country, a decline in arrests by 24.5%, and a drop in the police's efficacy in solving crimes. Furthermore, a politicised police leadership effectively stopped policing various categories of crime. This was particularly true of offences like fraud, corruption, and certain types of theft, and particularly when politically connected persons were involved. The state capture commission heard extensive evidence about the failure of the police to pursue politically sensitive investigations. Investigations into senior officials were frequently frustrated or impeded, and cases at state-owned enterprises were abandoned. This shows how police resources were actively redirected as weapons of elite competition, pursuing political enemies and protecting allies within the ruling party. Mkhwanazi's claims, if substantiated, suggest that this political policing remains entrenched. What now? Ramaphosa has announced the appointment of Firoz Cachalia as the acting minister of police. Cachalia, a well regarded legal academic, served as ANC minister for community safety. Between 2019 and 2022 he was part of the ANC's national executive committee. His appointment raises serious questions. If the core problem with the police is that it has become embroiled in ANC internal politics, having an ANC insider head the ministry of police (even if only on an acting basis) threatens only to compound the problem. Moreover, South Africans have already witnessed a long and expensive judicial inquiry into state capture. And despite extensive evidence of police failure to pursue politically sensitive investigations, nothing concrete has come of it. READ MORE: Ramaphosa says Madlanga commission mustn't take more than one year How likely is it that this new initiative will be any different, especially if those investigating it and presiding over key institutions are themselves ANC insiders? To depoliticise the police service and redirect its attention and activities towards crime and emergencies, a crucial first step is to reconsider the appointment processes for the national police commissioner and other top managers. Under the current system the president has sole discretion. This bakes party-political considerations into the decision-making process. Without structural changes, genuine democratic policing will remain an elusive ideal. In 2024/25 the murder rate in South Africa stood at 42 per 100,000, among the highest in the world and close to levels not seen since the early 2000s. At the very least, the minister of police must not be an ANC insider. Democratic renewal in South Africa requires bringing the police firmly under parliamentary control. This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.
eNCA
4 hours ago
- eNCA
ANC won't do away with B-BBEE
GERMISTON - The African National Congress insists Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment is here to stay. It says while BEE implementation is under review, there is no intention to abandon the policy. READ | Discussing BBBEE redress policies effect on the economy The ANC NEC is meeting in Germiston, four months after its last meeting. The Committee also resolved to continue efforts to mend relations between Pretoria and Washington. eNCA's Moloko Moloto reports.
IOL News
4 hours ago
- IOL News
'Propaganda masquerading as strategic realism'
Palestinian children clamour for a meal at a charity kitchen in the Mawasi area of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. Image: AFP Ziyad Motala There is a certain predictability in the Sunday Times' editorial arc of late, an increasingly tired soliloquy in praise of empire, veiled in the language of pragmatism and national interest. But even by its declining standards, the paper's recent conduct reveals something altogether more disquieting: an abdication of journalistic integrity in favour of ideological alignment with Zionist hasbara and Washington's punitive caprice. For months, the Sunday Times stonewalled a public inquiry, refusing to disclose that its columnist, S'thembiso Msomi, had taken a trip to Israel and written an article in April 2025, a reverent portrayal of Israeli resilience masquerading as impartial analysis, which was funded by the South African Jewish Board of Deputies. This silence was not inadvertent. It was calculated. Only this past Sunday, after a formal complaint was lodged with the Press Council, did the paper grudgingly acknowledge this inconvenient fact. The admission came in the form of a subdued notice buried deep within the paper, accompanied by the usual euphemisms of 'clarification' and 'apology.' One suspects the intent was plain: to bury the admission and hope the public would move on, none the wiser. This is no minor infraction. The Press Code is unambiguous: publications must disclose when a third party finances the cost of news gathering. Failure to do so compromises not only the perceived neutrality of the journalist but the editorial independence of the publication itself. The Sunday Times, one of South Africa's prominent newspapers, violated this basic tenet of ethical journalism and only confessed months later when cornered. But Msomi's subsidised propaganda piece is merely the tip of a much larger ideological iceberg. For some time now, the Sunday Times has become a dependable sanctuary for pro-Israel apologetics and the exculpation of American imperial tantrums. William Gumede's April 27 supplication for normalisation with Israel was not just intellectually lazy; it was ideologically revealing. That his organisation, Democracy Works, has itself been the recipient of funding from several dubious foreign entities raises questions about whether we are reading South African analysis or something concocted in the backrooms of Tel Aviv and Washington, D.C. Not to be outdone, David Bruce, in a piece on July 18, urged the ANC to 're-engage' with Israel, as though genocide were a minor irritant to be filed under diplomatic collateral. This week, Richard Gumede once again joined the chorus with a patronising lecture about South Africa's 'anti-American' posture, couched, of course, in the language of concern for ordinary South Africans. He argues that the ANC's refusal to grovel before Donald Trump's grotesque 'America first' foreign policy is somehow an affront to rational diplomacy. It is a line of reasoning so bankrupt, so wilfully ahistorical, that one wonders whether Gumede has mistaken State Department press releases for political philosophy. To Gumede, the refusal to embrace the punitive actions taken by the United States against its adversaries, China, Russia, and Iran, is symptomatic of ideological recklessness. That these are states with whom South Africa has longstanding economic and strategic ties is brushed aside. That they are themselves frequent targets of American hostility for daring to act independently of Washington's diktats is of no concern. And that Donald Trump's America is perhaps the least principled, most corrupt and least coherent United States government in recent memory is something Gumede conveniently omits. Let us be clear. No state, regardless of its alliances or ideological pretensions, should enjoy impunity for violating international law or trampling on human rights. Those who commit war crimes or persecute their people must be held accountable without exception. Yet to invoke China, Russia or Iran as stock villains to deflect from the horrors in Gaza is not only evasive, it is intellectually bankrupt. Any person possessed of even modest moral clarity can see what is unfolding there: a sustained campaign of collective punishment, bolstered by the silence and acquiescence of the self-styled democratic West. Only a fool believes the United States has a principled interest in human rights. The historical record is unambiguous. So long as the foreign despot salutes the American flag and pledges fealty to Washington, tyranny becomes tolerable, and repression conveniently overlooked. It is particularly rich that Gumede offers up corruption as one of the United States' primary concerns with South Africa. One must ask: Is this the same United States whose president auctioned off foreign policy to the highest bidder, made his inaugural visits to the gilded palaces of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and returned with real estate contracts for his family? Is this the America whose transactional foreign policy includes deals with murderers and autocrats in exchange for arms deals and hotel licences? If so, Gumede's invocation of corruption is not just misguided. It is obscene. Equally revealing as what the Sunday Times chooses to publish is what it deliberately leaves out. While major newspapers across the globe devoted front pages this Sunday to the deepening famine in Gaza, where Israel stands credibly accused of weaponising starvation against a besieged population, the Sunday Times offered not a single article on the subject. Instead, readers were served yet another polemic lamenting South Africa's supposed diplomatic 'missteps' for refusing to placate the unplacatable. At the very moment when two respected Israeli human rights organisations, B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, joined the growing international consensus that Israel is committing genocide, the Sunday Times chose to publish yet another piece dismissing South Africa's ICJ application as nothing more than political 'lawfare.' This posture is part of a broader pattern of editorial capture. In an earlier column by Rowan Polovin on May 18, the Sunday Times provided a platform for the chair of the South African Zionist Federation to distort history, sanitise Israeli apartheid, and peddle neocolonial binaries between the "West" and global irrelevance. Polovin's article was not journalism. It was propaganda masquerading as strategic realism, replete with the ugliest strands of ethnic chauvinism and settler-colonial nostalgia. This is not journalism. It is ideological mimicry. The Sunday Times' descent into apologetics for Zionist repression and American belligerence reflects a broader pattern among certain elite opinion-shapers in South Africa. They dress up subservience and Israeli apartheid as realism, and fealty to empire as prudence. But the effect is the same: the slow domestication of South African political discourse in service of foreign powers whose only consistent principle is the ruthless preservation of their interests. In an age when facts are politicised and justice is routinely subverted, affectations of neutrality serve only to mask complicity. The Sunday Times has not simply abdicated its duty to inform. It has aligned itself with the architects of obfuscation, giving comfort to power, to oppression, and Israeli apartheid, something unimaginable in a democratic South Africa bending to the whims of Donald Trump. * Ziyad Motala, Professor of Law, Howard Law School ** The views expressed in this article are necessarily those of The African, IOL or Independent Media.
