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Springboks captain Siya Kolisi on Thursday told President Cyril Ramaphosa that the country needs to use its diversity a bit more, as he described it as a powerful force in working towards fulfilling the South African dream, as the beloved sports team kicked off its trophy tour from the Unions Buildings, in Pretoria.

The Springboks recently won their fourth Rugby World Cup in France, and will embark on a countrywide tour.

Addressing supporters at the Union Buildings, Kolisi said the Springboks were grateful for the support they received from Ramaphosa and from all South Africans, during the World Cup tournament.

"We as a team, we chose to dedicate this World Cup to you because you are the reason we are where we are today. The way that you don't give up, your resilient spirit and how hard you work and the things that you must go through to be where you are in life. The other countries can't understand. Your support really kept us going. We wanted to show you that diversity is our strength in South Africa," said Kolisi.

Addressing Ramaphosa, Kolisi said diversity could be used to South Africa's advantage in Parliament.

"We want to be the servants of South Africa playing rugby and be as best ambassadors as we can. We thank you for your support and we thank you for your love and we hope the celebrations don't end this week. This unity that we see continues going forward," added Kolisi.

Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Zizi Kodwa said former President Nelson Mandela identified sport as a symbol of national identity and national unity.

The Springboks win had demonstrated the unique power of sport in building a nation, he added.

Ramaphosa pointed out the Springboks' record-breaking fourth win of the Rugby World Cup and said the team had lifted the spirits of the entire nation and "you filled us with pride".

"South Africans were on tenterhooks on Saturday night and you lifted their spirits as you won the cup and brought it back home. You have united the people of South Africa, the words 'Amabhokobhoko', 'Go, Bokke' are being shouted from rooftops by black, white, young and old, urban and rural dwellers, in all our national languages including the most recent national language, the Sign language," the President said.

He added that the Springboks' win was being seen as a win for Africa, by other heads of State on the African continent.

He thanked the Springboks for uplifting the spirit of South Africans and added that "even in our midst with our many challenges, there is always room for optimism and hope".

It's official. Kholeka Gcaleka is the new Public Protector.

Her seven-year term starts on Wednesday.

The Presidency announced on Wednesday morning that President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed Gcaleka, the former Deputy Public Protector who took on the role of acting Public Protector since June last year.

"The president wishes advocate Gcaleka well in her position and trusts that she will serve the people of South Africa with honour and dedication," the Presidency said in a statement.

Ramaphosa didn't have a choice in the matter after the National Assembly approved an Ad Hoc Committee to Select a Public Protector recommendation for Gcaleka's appointment with a narrow margin after a heated debate.

The nomination received just four votes more than the required threshold of 240, with the ANC, IFP, AIC, NFP, GOOD party, and Al Jamah-ah supporting her appointment.

These parties described Gcaleka as the best candidate during the interviews, arguing that she demonstrated that she has the qualities required of a Public Protector.

But the DA, EFF, FF Plus, ACDP and ATM called into question her independence - a requirement for the Public Protector, given her previous ANC Youth League membership, the fact that she worked as an advisor for former minister Malusi Gigaba and her report on Phala Phala, which exonerated Ramaphosa.

The term of Gcaleka's predecessor, Busisiwe Mkhwebane, ended on 14 October. Mkhwebane, however, was suspended by Ramaphosa in June last year ahead of an inquiry into her fitness for office.

After an arduous process, with Mkhwebane and her legal team filibustering, the inquiry found Mkhwebane incompetent and guilty of misconduct, and recommended her removal. The required two-thirds majority of the National Assembly voted in support of her removal on 11 September, and she became the first head of a Chapter 9 institution to be removed.

She has since joined the EFF and now represents the party in the House that removed her. Also, she will serve on the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services, which oversees the Public Protector.

During Gcaleka's time as acting Public Protector, the office released a report clearing Ramaphosa of wrongdoing in the Phala Phala matter, which proved to be a source of opposition parties' objection to her appointment.

Gcaleka started her career as a prosecutor at the National Prosecuting Authority and later became an advisor for Gigaba while he was the Minister of Home Affairs. Thereafter, she became an advisor to Senzo Mchunu when he was the Minister of Public Service and Administration.

African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Fikile Mbalula noted on Wednesday that the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) must help the nation accelerate the resolution of the energy crisis to end loadshedding.

Mbalula was addressing the media ahead of the MTBPS, where he said the party wanted the ANC-run government to continue to improve Eskom's performance, reduce loadshedding and enhance energy security.

He highlighted that this could be achieved by investing in renewable energy and promoting energy efficiency.

"Boldly mobilise social partners around economic reconstruction and recovery to increase job creation, investment and empowerment," he added.

He noted that government must accelerate plans to restructure Eskom and roll out new electricity generation capacity as quickly as possible.

"It is necessary to mobilise finance for expanded investment in the national electricity grid and support local government in developing new funding models for electricity," he said.

Mbalula explained that government must work with businesses, labour and civil society to promote inclusive growth and development and added that it must also improve the delivery of essential services and maintain infrastructure.

He also noted that it was critical to support Transnet as it maintained its network, prioritised rolling stock repairs, and improved operational efficiencies in ports, pipelines and freight rail.

The ANC called for continued reforms to improve the performance of the country's rail, port, and logistics sectors.

"These sectors are currently holding back economic growth and threatening employment," Mbalula highlighted.

He said government must support Transnet to promote international trade, exports, economic growth and job creation.

"The government must prioritise the maintenance and expansion of critical infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, ports and airports, to support economic growth and development," he said.

The ANC wanted government to take immediate action and prioritise the needs of the people to ensure that the country consolidated the gains of democracy and created a better life for all.

PUBLIC PROTECTOR APPOINTMENT

Meanwhile, the ANC welcomed the appointment of a new Public Protector for the stability and the strengthening of Chapter 9 Institutions.

The Presidency announced on Wednesday that President Cyril Ramaphosa had appointed Kholeka Gcaleka, the former Deputy Public Protector who took on the role of acting Public Protector since June last year.

"We wish advocate Kholeka Gcaleka well and to really bring back the status of that office and do what is necessary without fear of favour, hold public representatives and everyone else accountable and take her decisions in relation to what is expected from her and her office in protecting the interest of the public," said Mbalula.

Treasury has been forced to make painful revisions to the latest Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, which updates government's spending plans over the next three years, after its expectations in the February Budget turned out to be over-optimistic.

Government now expects to earn almost R57-billion less in taxes than it previously forecast. Much lower commodity prices (due in part to a Chinese demand) hit mining profits, while loadshedding, Transnet's woes and weak local growth also weighed on other tax income.

Treasury also didn't fully budget for a 7.5% public sector wage hike, which has added billions to government spending this year. Some 55 000 civil servants now earn more than R1-million a year.

Concerns about South Africa's economic and fiscal outlook - along with its greylisting, its controversial relationship with Russia and much higher interest rates across the world - have pushed higher the cost of government borrowing. Investors are now demanding much higher interest rates from SA: government's weighted cost of borrowing has increased from 8.3% in February to 9.5% in October.

This has increased debt service costs by R52-billion above the budgeted amount. Out of every R5 collected in tax, R1 is now being paid to lenders. Government is now spending more on paying debt that on basic education or on health. Debt-services costs are expected to grow by almost 9% per year.

Government debt is now expected to peak at almost 78% of GDP - from a previous forecast of 73% - by 2025/26 - much higher than in most emerging markets.

In response, the medium-term budget set out a number of interventions:

Tax hike ahead

Treasury is budgeting for a R15-billion tax increase in the February Budget. It has not yet been confirmed what shape it will take - whether it will be a VAT or income tax hike (or a combination), for example.

Spending cuts

Treasury has already cut budgets for housing and other services in this year, and has warned that government budget spending may be reduced by more than R120-billion over the next two years.

Spending increases on social development (+2.6%), health (+3.1%), and learning and culture (+3.5%) will be below inflation in this period.

In the civil service, some positions will be frozen and head counts in "non-critical areas" will be reduced, Treasury officials told News24.

Big plans to shrink the state

In line with President Cyril Ramaphosa's pledge in the State of the Nation address earlier this year, government departments and agencies will be reduced and merged, Treasury said, while "outdated and unproductive programmes" will be cut.

More details will be announced at the February Budget.

New rules and a new Treasury agency for private investment

Treasury announced that it will change regulations and municipal legislation to make it easier for private companies and international finance institutions to invest in South African infrastructure projects, also on a local level. Private investment in electricity transmission infrastructure and upgrades to railway lines, among other projects, will be fast-tracked, said Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana.

The details will be announced in February, but officials say the changes will make it simpler for large international funders, like the so-called Brics Bank, to allocate money for specific, ring-fenced projects. New mechanisms through which private-sector investors and multilateral institutions can co-invest with government for selected infrastructure projects will be created.

A new support agency will also be established in Treasury to manage a pipeline of projects.

R350 grant lives on

The Covid-19 social relief of distress grant will be extended for another year until March 2025 at a cost of R34-billion, "while government considers social security policy reforms and a funding model", Treasury said. It also announced that social grants will see inflation-linked increases in 2024/25 and 2025/26.

Stricter Eskom debt relief

In February, Treasury announced that...

Removed Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, who has since become an Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) MP, will serve on the committee to which she once had to account, and that will oversee her successor Kholeka Gcaleka.

According to Parliament's Announcements, Tablings and Committee Reports (ATC), Mkhwebane will join the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services.

Mkhwebane blamed Gcaleka for withdrawing funding her legal representation. At the time the perennially cash-strapped Office of the Public Protector said they could not continue to fund Mkhwebane's burgeoning legal costs, which in the end was more than R30-million.

Also serving on this committee is ANC MP Qubudile Dyantyi, who chaired the Section 194 Committee, which found Mkhwebane incompetent and guilty of misconduct and recommended her removal to the National Assembly, which adopted it with the required two-thirds majority.

Also on the committee is Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Glynnis Breytenbach, who opposed Mkhwebane's appointment in 2016 and whom Mkhwebane sued for calling her - a former State Security Agency (SAA) analyst - a spy.

On two occasions during the protracted inquiry, Mkhwebane unsuccessfully applied for Dyantyi's recusal as chairperson.

In September last year, Mkhwebane brought an application for Dyantyi's recusal, along with an application for the recusal of DA MP Kevin Mileham. She claimed that Dyantyi had been biased against her and her legal team, and had allowed the process to be procedurally unfair.

Dyantyi refused to recuse himself.

"I do so in the belief that the Public Protector has failed to establish any grounds upon which it can be said that I am biased or that my conduct may give rise to an apprehension of bias," he stated.

Mkhwebane wanted Mileham to recuse himself because the motion that led to the impeachment proceedings was moved by his wife, DA MP Natasha Mazzone, in her capacity as DA chief whip at the time.

Even though the motion was adopted by the National Assembly - thus becoming a motion of the National Assembly - Mkhwebane and her legal team continue to refer to it as the "Mazzone motion" and refer to Mazzone as the "complainant".

Mileham, too, refused to recuse himself.

Mkhwebane subsequently challenged their decisions in court, but the Western Cape High Court dismissed her application. She appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal and took to Twitter to raise funds for this litigation.

On 12 July, Mkhwebane filed her formal application for his recusal, compiled by her counsel, advocate Dali Mpofu SC, and his juniors, advocates Bright Shabalala and Hangwi Matlhape, a day before the Constitutional Court upheld her suspension by President Cyril Ramaphosa and dismissed her challenge to the impeachment proceedings.

Mkhwebane refused to brief her counsel for anything other than the recusal application at a time when Mkhwebane was engaged in a war of attrition with the Section 194 Committee and used delays in appointing her legal representation to filibuster the inquiry.

Mkhwebane's application has its genesis in allegations by her husband, David Skosana, that the late ANC MP Tina Joemat-Pettersson solicited bribes of R200 000 each for herself, Dyantyi and ANC chief whip Pemmy Majodina.

Dyantyi and Majodina have publicly denied the allegations. Joemat-Pettersson died on 5 June. Her death is the subject of an inquest. Skosana opened a complaint with the police, while Mkhwebane did so with Parliament's ethics committee.

Mkhwebane also complained to the ethics committee about National Assembly Speaker Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, because she turned down a "legitimate meeting request by a whistleblower" - Mkhwebane - and made herself an accomplice to the contraventions that Mkhwebane referred to in respect of the MPs she accused of corruption.

The Joint Committee on Ethics and Members' Interests found Mkhwebane's allegations were unfounded.

Mkhwebane provided WhatsApp messages purportedly between Joemat-Pettersson and Skosana...

The government splashed out more than R100-million on hosting the recently held 15th Brics Summit.

It's already been revealed that R75-million was spent on policing and security for the summit, bringing the cumulative amount spent on the three-day event to nearly R180-million.

Democratic Alliance MP Emma Louise Powell posed a written parliamentary question to International Relations Minister Naledi Pandor about the cost of hosting the summit.

Pandor responded that the expenditure incurred by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) to host the summit was R104 350 405.79.

Pandor added that Dirco did not contribute financially to the hosting of the Brics Parliamentary Forum.

In a statement, Louise-Powell said the three-day summit had cost the South African taxpayer no less than R180-million.

"This grotesque expenditure is a kick in the teeth for ordinary South Africans who have been left to fend for themselves in a country with one of the highest crime and unemployment rates in the world," she said.

"These millions, spent on a talkshop, could have been spent on addressing the crippling cost of living crisis that South Africans are currently battling," she added.

Given the absence of a single Brics trade agreement, Louise-Powell said it was doubtful that South Africa stood to derive any tangible economic benefit from the alliance.

"Conversely, South Africa's alignment within the expanding Brics bloc - which now includes theocratic dictatorships such as Iran - may come to jeopardise existing relationships with our biggest trading partners in the West," she said.

"In recent years, roughly 77% of foreign direct investment (FDI) into South Africa came from three main Western markets. The ANC will of course, not admit this because it is not in their political interests to do so."

According to Police Minister Bheki Cele, more than 5 000 officers were deployed and 700 vehicles utilised for the summit.

Cele was also responding to a written parliamentary question from the DA on policing costs for the event.

"A total number of 5 234 SA Police Service (SAPS) members were deployed during the summit and a total number of 726 SAPS vehicles were utilised. An amount of approximately R75 000 000 was spent. There was no additional security with regards to the summit," Cele said earlier this month.

A key representative body of South Africa's Jewish community and the Department International Relations and Cooperation are at war, trading allegations of misinformation and accusations of hate speech.

On Tuesday morning, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) hit back at a statement issued by the department on Monday, accusing the government of anti-Semitism.

The department had accused the SAJBD of helping to create an environment conducive to the slaughter of Palestinians, in response to what it said was fake news and libel spread by its deputy head, Zev Krengel.

Krengel had spread false allegations about the nature of Hamas atrocities, "disinformation [that] is part of the arsenal of dehumanisation tactics used to justify a 'by any means necessary' approach to dealing with Hamas, which has resulted in the huge casualties we see today", said the department.

Accusing Krengel of lying "is an age-old anti-Semitic trope implying that Jews cannot be trusted", responded the SAJBD.

The SAJBD was "out of step with the views of most South Africans and people across the world", said the department, including "scores of Jewish people in South Africa" who have called for a ceasefire in Gaza and war crimes investigations.

International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor "refers to a tiny, fringe minority of Jews, who she alludes to as the 'good Jews'," said the SAJBD, "just as the apartheid South African government paraded a minority of Black South Africans who supported their Bantustan system".

It added it believed Pandor supported Hamas, which she denied.

South Africa's Jewish population has more than halved since the 1970s, but is still ranked as the 12th largest among the Jewish diaspora, and the SAJBD has long, actively sought to engage with the government and oppose what it considers a too-close relationship with organisations such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and South African Jews for a Free Palestine.

Half a dozen political and social commenters were unable or unwilling to comment about the relationship between the South Africa Jewish community and the government; there was such a lack of empathy and logic amid the Israel-Hamas war that rational analysis was impossible, one said.

Asked about the long-term relationship between the government and Jewish South Africans, political commentator and University of Johannesburg researcher Steven Friedman said the SAJBD was not a legitimate voice for the community.

"The SAJBD does not represent me and many other Jews who reject Israeli human rights abuses.

"It is not clear who it does represent because it is not elected directly by the Jewish community and has rejected efforts to make it directly elected."

Friction, said Friedman, was not between the government and the Jewish community, but with "uncritical supporters of the Israeli state who claim to speak for all Jews but don't".

"… It's important to emphasise that hope is only a beginning; it's not a substitute for action, only a basis for it. 'Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,' said James Baldwin. Hope gets you there; work gets you through. "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today,' said Malcolm X. And there is a long history of methods, heroes, visionaries, heroines, victories - and, of course, failures. But the victories matter, and remembering them matters too. 'We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope,' said Martin Luther King Jr."- Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark. Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, 2016 p. xviii

Apart from there needing to be a viable direction and plan to set the country on the road to reconstructing our democratic life, who can be relied on to do this, to ensure that whatever may be agreed on between distinct interested parties will be implemented? In my view, elections are not the route to go for this. The ANC may be in a terminal crisis. The death of a party can happen very quickly. If the ANC were to lose control of the levers of state, and other vehicles for patronage, it may not hold together and it no longer has a shared political consciousness to evoke enduring loyalty. Its leaders and followers could desert and move in more than one direction.

To address the way forward requires a state of mind which I will elaborate on, but also an alliance of forces which I can only outline in a limited way.

By a state of mind I mean that which I referred to in the previous article, the question of hope as we look around us in an atmosphere of despair, disillusionment, and all sorts of disengagement from South African politics. See earlier articles.

To activate hope we need to ask ourselves, within this dire situation, what are the areas of uncertainty that may be turned into emancipatory possibilities? Those who do not want change always emphasise that there is no alternative to the present or that continuity or unchangeability is inevitable, even though in present-day South Africa that may be less viable than in more stable societies with less glaring inequalities, violence and corruption.

Hope does not work with certainties, forecasting possibilities and outcomes in a specific, detailed manner. It is the human element that is required to turn possibilities into realities, and it operates in terrains that may change along the way towards one's destination. The elements of hope may seem to be manifested in very limited glimmers of possibility - but that is how some great movements in history, including the defeat of apartheid, were initiated (here I am referring mainly to moments like the immediate period after the banning of the ANC and PAC in 1960).

Is the continued poverty of the oppressed people of South Africa, a certainty with which we have to live, that is, an unalterable fact of life? What are the factors that can be built on to remedy this? Is there any sign of organisation that can be developed or aspects of our history or that of other countries that we can draw on to give us confidence and hope that we can draw on as we act to achieve change?

One sign of stirrings that disrupt the sense of inevitability of suffering are the various cooperative ventures that have stepped in to do what the state ought to perform. What the biggest one, Gift of the Givers does is already replicated by smaller efforts in all provinces and that can be expanded.

But the space for hope goes beyond poverty relief and can also find spaces for action in our own immediate environments, where faced by neglect by government, many neighbourhood or civic initiatives have taken on cleaning their areas and fixing potholes and other activities that make homes safer and more attractive places to inhabit.

Are we doomed to be led by people who have no intention of performing duties in regard to the public that they are legally bound to do? Is this the way of...

We are living in a time when every second analyst or academic or forecaster advances a plan as to how we can extricate ourselves from the present crisis in South Africa. Most are unconvincing because the problems we face are complex and unsusceptible to quick solutions. But that does not mean that change is impossible to achieve, even if the possibilities are not immediately visible.

It is hard to know how to be constructive in this situation. We are confronted by what looks like state collapse and disintegration, not merely a crisis of the state, not merely a systemic crisis, but a systemic crisis that may lead to or is already on the way to the disintegration of the state of South Africa. This is evident, among other ways, in the collapse of a range of structures, institutions, services, many of whose existence and relatively effective functioning we took for granted only 10 or 15 years ago.

The ANC has played a significant role in bringing us to the present situation. Paradoxically, it was the leading force inaugurating democracy, but now it has been the leading force in its destruction, which coincides with signs of the implosion of the organisation itself.

What is a marked feature of the present period is the absence of serious debate. Ideology and the significance of ideology has been diminished or absent. And there is not a serious conversation among the people of South Africa on the way forward.

In the period of colonialism and apartheid there was continual advancement of ideas and debate. There were ideas generated on the side of the oppressors to justify what they were doing and to find new ways of providing a rationale for the continued domination of the majority of the people.

On the side of the oppressed, the ANC and its allies did have good thinkers. When we consider the evaluations on the side of the oppressed people of South Africa, especially in the ANC and the South African Communist Party, it was a long-standing debate over how one analysed and characterised the South African social order. From that analysis, we considered the potential routes for extricating South Africans from that situation that was demeaning for the majority of the population.

These were not the only participants in debates on South Africa's future under apartheid. There were a range of actors who had their own, distinct way of blunting the power of majority rule or on the other hand, overcoming what they saw as the limitations of the left project of the ANC and its allies, with a view to achieving socialism.

Those debates raged over many decades, with periods of straight repression, with limited peaceful opposition to the banning of organisations and illegal discussions and pamphlets and journals. These debates raised a series of options for addressing the crisis on the side of the oppressed.

There was a similar debate and advancement of ideas, some of which, like that of the oppressed, drew on ideas from other countries - in the case of the oppressed, drawing on ideas from former socialist countries, from other countries of the South, or what was then called the developing or third world countries.

And on the side of the apartheid regime drawing on assistance for security and ideas for thwarting democracy from right-wing governments and thinkers. Among those that provided military cooperation were Pinochet's fascist Chile and what has now been characterised as apartheid Israel.

So, it's quite a new thing to have politics in South Africa without political debate and political discussion, or in a sense, to have politics that has very little content.

When people draw up ideas for saving coalition government, they don't really advance ideas, unifying ideas for these potential coalition partners. Partly this is because there is no real basis for unity between them. Partly, however, there is a commonality and that commonality may be the absence of ideological expression on the part of most potential partners, paradoxically, apart from a p...

The price of both grades of unleaded petrol (93 and 95) will be lowered by R1.78 a litre on Wednesday, while diesel wholesale prices will be cut by between 82c and 85c depending on the sulphur content.

The maximum national retail price of paraffin will fall by R1.30 a litre, but the maximum retail price for LPGAS will be hiked by R1.49 a kilogram.

The average international prices for petrol and diesel decreased during the period under review, the department of mineral resources and energy said in a statement on Monday.

Global crude oil inventories rose because of increased production from non-OPEC producers, while the lifting of sanctions on Venezuela by the US created a "positive outlook" on supply, the department said.

The Israel-Hamas conflict has had a "low impact" on fuel prices so far, "as it has not yet affected flow of crude oil even though it is happening in the oil-rich region of the Middle East," it added.

On Wednesday, Gauteng 95 unleaded petrol will cost R23.90 a litre, the cheapest level since August this year. At the start of the year, a litre 95 unleaded petrol cost R21.40.

The diesel wholesale price in Gauteng will be R24.17 a litre from Wednesday, compared to R21.22 at the start of the year.