Cape Town mayor takes Ramaphosa and government to ConCourt
City of Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill Lewis has approached the Constitutional Court challenging government and President Cyril Ramaphosa over the Public Procurement Act which he claims will slow down service delivery and undermine the constitutional autonomy of local government.
Hill-Lewis said the challenge in the apex court points out problems which render parliament's adoption of the bill unlawful.
The bill was enacted in July 2024 with the Presidency announcing it complies with the stipulation in the constitution that 'contracting of goods and services by organs of state in all spheres of government must occur in accordance with a system which is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive and cost-effective'.
The Presidency at the time said national legislation must prescribe a framework within which a procurement policy must be implemented.
The bill was intended to address weaknesses in the procurement of goods and services by organs of state that have in the past enabled corruption, including state capture.
Previously, the legislation regulating procurement was said to be fragmented and constraining.
Hill-Lewis pointed out that seven of nine provinces did not have lawful final mandates to vote on the bill in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP). He added there were inadequate public participation timeframes and notice periods by provinces and the NCOP.
There was also incorrect information in reports considered by the NCOP and National Assembly and the Assembly failed to consult on changes to chapter 4, did not consider all public comments and failed to comply with the rules for introducing a bill.
'We believe this [act] should be invalidated due to fatal shortcomings in public participation and parliament's procedures. Beyond these issues, it is vital that any new consideration of the [act] takes into account the huge red tape burden it will place on local government and the unconstitutional interference it permits in municipalities.
'At a local level, we often have to procure fast to respond to urgent water, sanitation, electrical, waste and environmental issues. This [act] impedes the ability to respond swiftly to local needs by introducing more red tape to complicate procurements. This inefficiency will have a direct effect on service delivery to residents.'
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Mail & Guardian
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Journalist and writer Gavin Evans When I meet Gavin Evans on a Friday morning, it's to talk about his memoir Son of a Preacher Man, which he's visiting South Africa to promote. But I'm more interested in hearing what it was like to report for the Mail & Guardian in the dying days of apartheid. Evans was one of the first reporters hired by the paper. It was the mid-Eighties, and Evans had just started his career in Gqeberha, then known as Port Elizabeth. 'My journalism career started at the Eastern Province Herald in '84,' he recalls. 'There was a company then called South African Associated Newspapers. They had a three-month programme and all the new journalists went through it. After that, you started at places like the Eastern Province Herald or the Post. I was on the Herald.' Evans' journey would soon take him to the Rand Daily Mail, Business Day and eventually the pioneering Weekly Mail, which would later become the Mail & Guardian. 'I knew Anton Harber because he'd also been at the Rand Daily Mail,' Evans explains. 'Irwin Manoim was there too, and Clive Cope was around. They were the three who set it up. I went along to the opening meeting and came up with story ideas. Initially, I was freelancing while working for the SAN Transvaal News Bureau. But then Anton offered me a job.' For Evans, joining the Weekly Mail was more than just a career move, it was a leap into a newsroom that operated with a shared spirit of purpose. Gavin Evans' father Bruce's consecration in 1975 'It was a wonderful working environment,' he says. 'Everyone got paid the same, from editors to everyone else. I don't know about the cleaning staff, but for all the journalists, it was the same salary. It was a brave decision but it worked for a while.' At the Weekly Mail, Evans carved out a distinctive voice. 'Initially, I was doing politics,' he says, 'but I knew a lot about boxing. So, I said, 'You guys need a boxing correspondent!' I wrote about boxing in a different way. The other boxing correspondents were white guys who didn't know any of the black boxers. I did. I had access nobody else had.' His work soon drew the attention of the Sunday Times, which asked him to be their boxing correspondent too. Evans also became the mysterious voice behind the Weekly Mail's satirical gossip column. 'No one was told except for a few people in the know who the writer behind it was,' he explains. 'We were poking fun at government people, and writing it in a tone of naivety, but of course it was all about exposing them. John Perlman did it before me, and then I was the writer of the column for probably the longest stretch — at least two years.' The era was dangerous for journalists willing to speak truth to power. Evans recalls the paper's investigative spirit, which led to the exposure of the so-called 'third force' — the apartheid state's clandestine efforts to foment violence. 'We broke the story of the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), the state's assassination group,' he says. 'Military intelligence was funding Inkatha to hack people to death on the trains. We broke that story too.' Evans' investigations and his political activity with the ANC and SACP made him a target. In the late Eighties, he says, the CCB hired 'Peaches' Gordon, a killer from a notorious Cape Town gang, to assassinate him. 'His instructions were to stab me to death and steal my watch and wallet to make it look like a straight robbery,' Evans says evenly. 'But I was in hiding at the time. The ANC had said to me, 'You must go into hiding.' I stayed in 18 different houses in six months — all in Johannesburg. I'd move and move and move. He followed me to five houses but each time I'd already left weeks before.' Even the killer's ruse of offering sensitive documents, something that had once yielded a groundbreaking story for Evans, couldn't lure him out. 'He phoned me and said, 'I'm a comrade. I've got documents for you about the state. Can you meet me?' But there was something about him that didn't ring true. So I didn't turn up. It turned out to be my life he was after.' By the end of the Eighties, the Weekly Mail, along with international partners, had exposed the third force's operations. In the aftermath, the government scrambled to contain the fallout. A family portrait of Joan, Bruce, Michael and Gavin from 1965 'They set up a tame judge, Justice Harms, and the Harms Commission to investigate,' Evans says. 'They admitted all the failed assassinations, including mine. Peaches Gordon was arrested and gave a full statement, including in my case. Then they released him, but he was later killed by the CCB with a bullet to the back of his head.' Evans had a complicated relationship with his father, who was a man of peace, but also of contradictions. In Son of a Preacher Man, he grapples with these paradoxes — his father's fervent faith and quiet complicity, his support for his son's political defiance and his own hand in shaping a world where violence was a constant threat. 'I never even looked at my earlier book when I wrote this one,' Evans tells me. 'I wanted it to be fresh.' Son of a Preacher Man delves far deeper than his memoir, Dancing Shoes is Dead, which mingled his love for boxing with glimpses of his life. Here, the focus is squarely on the fracture between father and son, a rift that began one night when Evans was 14 and his father beat him with his fists — a rift that only healed decades later, after an exchange of letters. Listening to Evans recount his early years as a journalist in South Africa, it's clear that the violence of the state — detentions, beatings, tyre-slashings — took a toll on him. 'I thought none of this affected me,' he says. 'But it did. I was having dreams of being buried alive or escaping. I became more aggressive.' These traumas burrowed deep into his psyche, manifesting in ways he didn't recognise until much later. Yet even in the darkness, there were moments of almost cinematic defiance. Evans recalls the day security police barged into his house, threatening him over military service. 'They said, 'Either you cooperate, or the military police will arrest you at work.' I told them, 'Get the fuck out of my house!'' The next day, his motorbike's tyres were slashed. But in a surprising twist, his father quietly intervened. Using his weight as a bishop, he wrote to the authorities, arguing that his son deserved a delay in conscription. Evans only discovered this act of paternal protection after his father's death, when he stumbled upon the letters in a box of papers. 'It made me cry,' he says softly. 'We'd always had a bit of distance, but I never told him I was proud of him too.' That fragile reconciliation came just before his father's final decline. Diagnosed with motor neurone disease, he had less than a year to live. Evans speaks of those last months with a tenderness that cuts through the decades of conflict: 'We had our reckoning, and then it was gone.' If there's a thread running through Evans' life, it's the question of what it means to stand firm when the world seems determined to push you down. In South Africa, that meant working for the M&G during its tumultuous early years — reporting from a newsroom in Braamfontein, trading stories and dodging censorship, feeling invincible in his twenties, even as he was detained and assaulted by the state. Gavin Evans' last amateur fight in 1982 — a knock-out win. 'You think it's not affecting you,' he says. 'But it does. It seeps in.' After moving to England in the early Nineties, Evans continued to write and teach. Son of a Preacher Man is his ninth non-fiction book, and today he lectures first-year and postgraduate journalism students at Birkbeck, University of London. Evans, now 65, speaks of his family. 'I've got two daughters, Tessa and Caitlyn, both of whom appear in the book. Towards the end, there's a chapter about Tessa and her husband Ciaran and their son, Ferdi. 'The final chapter is all about Ferdi. You know, the book's about fathers and sons, and now it's also about grandfathers and grandsons, because I spend a lot of time with Ferdi. I adore him. He's three and three-quarters, and if you ask him how old he is, that's what he'll tell you — three and three-quarters.' These personal milestones deepened his understanding of the legacy of fatherhood, both in the book and in life. Reflecting on his days as a young journalist in South Africa and his complex relationship with his father, Evans sees his own journey as a testament to resilience and the redemptive power of storytelling. As he guides the next generation of journalists, he remains mindful of the lessons of the past and the bright promise of those still to come.
Eyewitness News
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Thulani Khumalo is alive, despite claims a Somali syndicate killed him
Thulani Khumalo is a South African entrepreneur who operates a spaza shop from his home in Vosloorus. (Facebook) Thulani Khumalo is a South African entrepreneur who operates a spaza shop from his home in Vosloorus. On 3 May last year, Khumalo took to both social and news media to share that his life was in danger, accusing foreign spaza shop owners of attempting to kill him. Around the time of his outcry, accounts known for perpetrating an anti-immigrant narrative online twisted his outcry to proclaim him dead, alleging that he was killed by 'a syndicate of Somalians'. However, as our investigators found, Khumalo is alive, well and 'shocked' at the news of his death, despite doing nothing to dispel the rumours. When Thulani Khumalo took to social media to share how threats were being made on his life, allegedly by foreign spaza shop owners who saw his business as competition, he never imagined that his story would be manipulated to make it seem like he had been killed by 'Somali syndicates' — at least that is what he says. In early May last year, Khumalo shared a message on Facebook, stating that he was being 'hunted down' by a man hired to kill him, all because he tried to be a South African spaza shop owner. Prior to this, Khumalo had posted about how he was trying to Khumalo's message drew widespread support from government officials and the broader public. Political parties, he said, offered him 'protection in terms of security, telling me they would tell the police to patrol this area regularly'. 'They also offered me funding, for example, the MK party, but this never materialised; it was only for that day. Political parties that visited were the ActionSA and the ANC from Ekurhuleni.' The message became popular on X, with some accounts alleging that Khumalo had been killed. Among these are the @Isephara and @joy_zelda accounts, which both stated at different times of the year that Khumalo had been killed by a 'syndicate of Somalians', once on 3 May, about an hour after he claimed that he was being hunted down, and another in August. Both these X accounts regularly post content with anti-foreigner sentiment. Between May and August, Khumalo was interviewed by The X post from the @ISephara account, Khumalo's initial Facebook post and the claim made in August 2024 by @joy_zelda can all be seen here: Speaking to investigative journalist Tabelo Timse, Khumalo alleges that the threats began around March and April last year. This is noteworthy because in March, he posted a picture of himself in what appears to be his spaza shop, including the words ' 'It started when I saw foreign shop owners casually walking up and down the street daily. Some will approach me to ask how much I am willing to sell this shop [for] or how much rent I want. When I refused [to sell or rent], I noticed people hiding down the street at the second school gate,' he said. Khumalo's shop is run out of his garage in a residential area. Hence, in order to verify the threats that he alleges, it would be important to understand the general foot traffic on that street. He added, 'This one time, I saw three guys hiding. Later, I noticed they were walking up the street, so I went inside the house. These three guys robbed someone who looked similar to me — I think I was the target. So, during the robbery, one robber was shot in the foot and he is the one who said they were looking for me. I don't know what happened to that guy.' However, relaying a similar incident to the City Press in June 2024, he claimed that it was his friend who was mistaken for him and shot in the leg. Khumalo says he went to the police but was told to provide proof of the threats before a case could be opened. He never appears to have provided such proof. Khumalo says he had no idea that the threats on Facebook would go viral, despite stating, 'Vosloorus, please make this trend …' He added that he had to deactivate his social media accounts when allegations of his death surfaced. 'I, and those close to me, including my family, never posted anything about my death. We were all shocked when we saw this account posting and my younger brother replied to those posts that I was alive and that this was fake news. But this person just went on and on about my death, even asking for donations,' he said. Khumalo still uses the same Facebook account from which he claimed that he was being hunted down and he has not taken the initiative to clarify the false narrative about his death. He says he sees 'no need' to clarify that he is alive because people can see that he is active on social media. 'This fake news about my death is also putting my life in danger because I am now exposed.' In a country where anti-immigrant sentiment is rife and xenophobic attacks continue to be perpetrated, it is important to clarify when misinformation is being generated and spread, even if the clarification favours a perceived 'enemy'. Khumalo has not been killed by so-called Somalian syndicates. Just as he feared for his safety, he also compromised the safety of competing entrepreneurs, who may have had nothing to do with the threats or his 'death'. Khumalo has missed multiple opportunities to come clean and dispel the rumours about his death — the first when he was interviewed by news media a month after his viral post, and the second which presents itself every time he logs in and posts on his account. Despite not explicitly setting the record straight, criminality against Khumalo cannot be condoned, and we hope that he finds proof to take legal action against those allegedly making threats against his life and business. Tabelo Timse is a freelance journalist and media consultant and a former investigative journalist at the amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism. Yossabel Chetty is a Researcher at the .
