The army will not intervene in the violence outside the ANC's headquarters in central Johannesburg, Defence and Military Veterans Minister Lindiwe Sisulu said in Cape Town on Tuesday.

"That is a matter for the police," Sisulu told journalists.

"We defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the country. That matter we will not entertain at the moment.

"If it is the burning of T-shirts, that is a police matter. And I am certain the police are perfectly competent to will deal with it."

Supporters of ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema pelted the police and journalists with rocks and burned T-shirts with the image of President Jacob Zuma outside Luthuli House on Tuesday morning, where Malema and other ANCYL leaders were due to face a disciplinary hearing.

National youth service

Sisulu said that had plans for a national youth service gone ahead, the riots outside of Luthuli House would "not be happening".

"No it (the national youth service) didn't happen sadly. What we did was try and solicit the support of national executives of various political parties and churches, so we could get the buy-in of the youth into this programme.

"We had anticipated that by now we would have trained about 2 000, and I could assure you this would not be happening if this had gone forward."

The plan was for the service to train young men and women in among others, personal discipline, civic education, patriotism and the necessity of volunteering.

The department, Sisulu said, was "unfortunately" interdicted from going ahead with the plan by civil rights group AfriForum.

"We had to stop until the case was over. The case was thrown out of court and sadly the country has lost out on the opportunity which we could have utilised. However, we still want to appeal to all youth to respond to this.

"It is not a political programme. It is across the board. It is not a boot camp. It works. It is a hard slop, but it works."

AfriForum had argued the SA National Defence Force wanted to use the service to train ANCYL Youth League and Young Communist League members.

The FW de Klerk Foundation has taken note of Mr. Malema's remarks regarding former President De Klerk. They are so silly that they hardly merit comment.

However, Malema’s bombastic outbursts on a wide range of other topics from nationalisation to Botswana - and the inexplicable failure of the ANC leadership to call him to account - cannot be ignored.

Malema and the ANCYL have become a serious embarrassment to South Africa.  They are beginning to undermine international confidence in our economy; they are damaging relations with one of the most progressive and democratic states in Africa; and they are eroding the inter-community reconciliation that President Mandela worked so hard to promote.

The behaviour of Malema and his colleagues must presumably also to an acute embarrassment to many principled and disciplined members of the ANC.  They must be painfully aware that Malema’s self-aggrandisement, his irresponsible outbursts and his undisguised lack of respect for the ANC leadership  have no place in the traditions that the ANC has developed over the past 100 years.

Johannesburg - Nationalisation is going to happen; it is just the manner in which it will be implemented that needs to be decided, Cosatu said on Thursday.

"If you say business needs certainty to make investments ... this is the certainty you need to have, that what is being discussed now is models," Cosatu economist Chris Malikane said at a debate on nationalisation.

He said the task team established by the ANC to examine nationalisation was not looking at the feasibility of the policy, but exploring the most appropriate model to implement.

Cosatu had encouraged the ANC Youth League to place nationalisation firmly on the agenda, he said.

Malikane said all the parties represented at the last ANC national executive committee meeting supported nationalisation.

If the ANC task team produced a study that looked only at the feasibility of nationalisation, it would be rejected outright, he said.

Nationalisation referred to state ownership of all means of production including mines, banks and mineral wealth. Compensation would be paid, but not for land.

"We'll have to compensate in the interests of the public, but not in a way that will cripple the South African state... there has to be a balance."

He said land was a natural asset that should be owned by the state and used by farmers, and that no compensation should be given for land.

Johannesburg - The remains of a baby who was eaten by a pig was found along a river bank in Taung, North West police said on Monday.

The pig was found feeding on the baby along the Kolong River in the Ranstad Village in Taung on Monday afternoon, said Lieutenant Colonel Lesego Metsi.

"According to the owner of the pig when he approached the animal he noticed that it was eating something and he could see blood all over its mouth.

"When he reached the pig the only thing he could find was the tiny left arm, the thigh and remaining half-eaten piece of a skull," he said.

Police were searching for the mother of the child. She was likely to be charged with concealment of death.

However, Metsi said it was unclear whether the newborn baby was dead or alive when it was dumped alongside the river.

Johannesburg - The South African government has agreed to lend R2.5bn to Swaziland, Reserve Bank spokesperson Hlengani Mathebula said on Wednesday.

"This is a mutual agreement between the two governments and the South African Reserve Bank is the facilitating mechanism for the grant," Mathebula told Reuters, confirming reports in the Times of Swaziland newspaper.

South Africa agreed to lend Swaziland, Africa’s third-largest sugar producer, 2.5 billion rand ($368 million) to help its neighbor plug a budget shortfall, said Hlengani Mathebula, spokesman for South Africa’s central bank.

The South African Reserve Bank will facilitate the payment, Mathebula said in a phone interview today from Pretoria, the capital. Central Bank of Swaziland Governor Martin Dlamini said by phone from Mbabane the “matter has not been finalized.”

Swaziland, a landlocked country of 1.2 million people bordering South Africa and Mozambique, raised taxes and cut state spending after losing a third of its revenue when the global economic crisis reduced trade and slashed income from a regional customs union that includes South Africa. The African Development Bank wanted the government to cut salaries to access a loan from the lender.

South Africa’s National Treasury will hold a news conference today on the loan, it said in an e-mailed statement. Labor unions in Swaziland and South Africa oppose a bailout that doesn’t have conditions to force Swaziland, sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarchy, to introduce political reforms. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to break up anti-government riots in April.

Safe Peg

A potential South African aid package may also include balance-of-payments support to boost reserves, Swaziland’s central bank Governor Martin Dlamini said June 29. This would help it maintain its currency’s peg with the rand. The central bank transferred money from its reserves to help the government meet its obligations, according to Dlamini.

The Swazi currency, the lilangeni, is pegged one-to-one with the rand, which was 0.3 percent weaker at 6.7838 per dollar as of 11:10 a.m. in Johannesburg.

The average yield on 182-day Treasury Bills jumped to 6.446 percent at a July 27 auction by Swaziland’s central bank from an average yield of 5.8 percent on Jan. 20. The equivalent notes by South Africa’s central bank were 5.72 percent on July 29.

"It is certainly ironic that the editor of City Press intends suing Mr. Eric Miyeni for libel when the entire Naspers group, to which City Press belongs, has for a long time specialised in vilifying and heaping calumny on especially Afrikaner dissidents critical of the corrupt and violent dystopia that South Africa has become," said Dr. Dan Roodt, leader of PRAAG.

Roodt castigated the South African media for what he terms "their natural instinct for propaganda, half-truths and conceptual smuttiness". PRAAG feels that local media have always been either in the pocket of the mining houses or the British Empire or some exterior force or power. "That is why at various critical moments in the past, the South African media could romanticise ANC terror and the necklacing of civilians, but now react with shocked dismay at the use of a necklace metaphor about one of their own," Roodt said. "The SA media's adulation for Winnie Mandela and her statement that the country would be liberated through the use of matches, petrol and the infamous necklace, is certainly at odds with their sudden concern over so-called 'hate speech'. When Nelson Mandela called for killing all whites in front of the hammer and sickle, it was considered an expression of reconciliation and tolerance by the hacks in front of their computer screens. Why then pick on Eric Miyeni? Or has liberation gone out of fashion?"

PRAAG called on the Naspers group and City Press to cease their hypocrisy and allow columnists to speak their mind. "What Mr. Eric Miyeni said, is less extreme in its consequences than Naspers's almost genocidal propaganda campaign against the Afrikaner, calling for the disappearance or assimilation of an entire nation in the name of a racial obsession based on colouredness rather than blackness. City Press and its monopolistic owner's campaign against Miyeni are merely a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Or coloured."

Dr. Roodt has often been smeared by various Naspers columnists and letter writers, accusing him of being "a Hitler" for his defense of literary Afrikaans and calling him a "racist" for pointing out the high crime rate among young males of certain ethnic groups in South Africa. Also, he has "dared to criticise the Goebbels of Naspers, Dr. Leopold Scholtz, who has consistently been calling for the biological assimilation of Afrikaners by coloureds, in a programme of racial eugenics apparently espoused by the multinational media group".

"My advice to Ferial Haffajee is, to paraphrase Sylvia Plath, every woman loves a terrorist, at least in South Africa. You have made your bed, now lie in it," Roodt said.

PRAAG would rather that opinions like those Eric Miyeni be heard than be suppressed. "If Naspers may hate the Afrikaner and vilify us on a daily basis, why may Mr. Miyeni not dislike the proverbial white capitalists and their pseudo-black lackeys?" the organisation asked.

Editor's note: The original column by Eric Miyeni has been removed from The Sowetan's website where it was first published. As background to the above story and in defence of free speech, we republish it here:

Haffajee does it for white masters

Eric Miyeni

Bloemfontein - A Free State farmer was buried in a shallow grave after being attacked on his Reitz farm on Monday, said Free State police.

Sergeant Mmako Mophireng said police were alerted by his son when he became suspicious after a stranger answered one of his telephone calls to his parent's home.

Police arrived to find two women tied up, but no sign of the farmer.

It was in a search of the farmyard that they discovered the shallow grave in which the farmer's body was buried.

Mophireng said two people had since been arrested at an informal settlement in Reitz. One of them apparently worked on the farm a few days ago.

He said the two women were taken to the Bethlehem hospital.

Johannesburg - The ANC Youth League welcomed the ANC in Limpopo’s support for the nationalisation of mines and other sectors of the economy on Monday.

"As an ANC resolution at the level of a PGC [provincial general council], we believe that this gives more inspiration to economic freedom fighters to continue with struggles for economic freedom in our lifetime," spokesperson Floyd Shivambu said in a statement.

He was reacting to the outcome Limpopo ANC's PGC held over the weekend.

Shivambu said the decision on whether mines should be placed in state hands would be taken by ANC structures "and not any other grouping or task team as some had sought to suggest".

The ANC's national general council last year directed its national executive committee to form a task team to probe the viability of nationalisation and the state playing a greater role in key sectors of the economy.

The Limpopo ANC called for ANCYL president Julius Malema to be treated fairly, after questions over the source of his money were raised in various newspapers.

The Limpopo PGC expressed its support for the nationalisation of mines.

"We also support the nationalisation of mines and other strategic economic sectors as one of the necessary conditions for social ownership and control of our economy," ANC Limpopo secretary Joe Maswanganyi said in a statement.

Shivambu also welcomed the support of Mpumalanga's Nkangala region.

"We call on all provinces and regions of the ANC going to their respective RGCs [regional general councils] and PGCs to take official resolutions on nationalisation of mines and other strategic sectors of the economy," he said.

The league was "inspired" by support from ANC structures of policy decisions taken at its recent national conference. At the gathering in June the ANCYL resolved that mines and banks should be nationalised and that land should be expropriated without compensation.

Malawi's president has lashed out at anti-government demonstrators as two days of protests have left at least 10 people dead in unprecedented levels of unrest in the southern African country.

Reports from Agence France-Presse have put the number of deaths at 18.

Hospital officials and activists said on Thursday the victims had been shot with live ammunition, and that at least 44 others in the northern city of Mzuzu alone were being treated for gunshot wounds.

President Bingu wa Mutharika vowed to "ensure peace using any measure I can think of" as protesters gathered for a second day in the impoverished state roiled by fuel shortages and price hikes.

"If you break shops and banks will you have fuel? You demonstrated yesterday and throughout the night until today, but is there fuel today because of the demonstrations?" he asked.

"I think God will do something to help us, will bless us, because these people are not being led by God, they are being led by Satan," the president said.

Mutharika first came to power in a 2004 election, and he was re-elected in May 2009. The state has enjoyed relative peace and stability in the past decade but tensions have been growing this year over worsening fuel shortages. High unemployment alongside a deteriorating economic situation also threaten to reverse development gains made in the early years of Mutharika's presidency.

On Wednesday, protesters attacked businesses belonging to the president's political allies. Looters in the capital of Lilongwe had targeted shops belonging to ruling party officials, witnesses said.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said eight journalists were beaten by police during Wednesday's protests, and a female radio reporter was seriously wounded.

Amnesty researcher Simeon Mawanza said the president's regime is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissenting voices.

"The tension there won't die down just because of yesterday's events," he said. "It could intensify, as people died at the hands of police."

The situation was tense but calm on Thursday amid a heavy military and police deployment on the streets in the country's two main cities.

Tim Hughes, a political analyst at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said the unrest is wholly uncharacteristic of Malawi.

"Certainly since democracy in 1994 -- while there's been sporadic outbursts of inter-party violence -- there's never been a violent protest like this on the streets," he said.

"This form of public protest, taking on the state, expressing this degree of frustration -- it's a new phenomenon," he said.

Hughes believes the wave of protests is spurred by a sharp decline in the Malawian economy.

"Global factors have kicked in," he said. "The country is now running short of scarce foreign exchange, and imports such as fuel are limited."

Foreign donors are also now becoming sceptical and cautious of a possible democratic reversal in the country, resulting in the severing of diplomatic ties, and a cut back in aid, Hughes added.

Former ruler Britain already has indefinitely suspended aid to the country, citing concerns about economic management and a crackdown on human rights.

On Thursday, Britain's Minister for Africa, Henry Bellingham, said the situation was "worrying" and appealed to Mutharika to rein in security forces and loyalists.

"The ongoing violence and reprisals by elements connected to President Mutharika's Democratic Progressive Party underline the concern that the UK has expressed about the state of democratic governance and human rights in Malawi," he said in a statement. "The rights of free assembly and expression guaranteed under the Malawian Constitution must be respected. The UK utterly condemns the threatening behaviour of machete-wielding DPP activists and the violent attacks on demonstrators and the media."

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon also expressed concern.

"He is saddened by the loss of life and reiterates his call for all differences to be resolved through peaceful means," UN spokesperson Martin Nesirky said in New York.

Elections are not due again in Malawi until 2014, and Mutharika is barred from seeking a third term.

Mutharika, a 77-year-old former World Bank economist, had won widespread praise from international institutions and donor governments for pushing through economic reforms and clamping down on corruption. But he also has alienated many former allies including his predecessor, whom he accused of plotting to assassinate him.

Malawi, which gained independence from Britain in 1964, is among the world's least developed nations and UNAids estimates there are 920 000 people living with HIV/AIDS here.

Madonna, who has adopted two children from the country and plans to build schools there, said on Wednesday she hoped Malawi would find a peaceful way out of its troubles.

"I am deeply concerned about the violence today in Malawi, especially the devastating impact on Malawi's children," the star said. "Malawi must find a peaceful solution to these problems that allows donors to have confidence that their money will be used efficiently."

Pretoria - A witness watched as schoolgirl Masego Kgomo was mutilated, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria heard on Thursday.

Albert "Nono" Mathebula was testifying in the trial of Brian Mangwale, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering and raping the 10-year-old Masego and selling her body parts for muti.

Mathebula was initially also arrested in connection with Kgomo's murder.

He testified on Thursday that he was smoking dagga with friends on the night of December 31 2009 when Mangwale arrived in a car with a man named Jan, a woman in sangoma's clothing and a young child.

He and two of his friends accompanied them to a sangoma's house in Soshanguve.

Mathebula went inside with the woman, who carried the child. His friends stayed in the car.

He told the court that he and Mangwale were given cooldrink which contained something that made him feel dizzy, out of control and hear voices in his head.

"On entering, we found initiates. They were dressed in sangoma clothing," Mathebula testified.

"... The lady came in with a cloth. The child was not crying. It appeared she was also made to eat or drink something. When Jan cut her open, she did not scream.

"... I did not see the other parts. I only saw the internal organs. When she was cut open I looked so I could see what it is inside a woman's body.

"Jan continued to cut open the child. When they were removing the organs I vomited," he said.

Mathebula said the child's body was later put into the car boot and he and his friends were dropped off at a party.

"My friends asked me what happened with the child. I did not tell them. I was afraid," he said.

Mangwale’s trial was previously postponed for judgment, but Judge Billy Mothle called Mathebula and two other witnesses to shed more light on the killing.\

The other witnesses, a magistrate and a senior policeman, testified that Mangwale made confessions and a pointing-out to them in March last year about the alleged murder and mutilation of another young girl.

They said Mangwale told them how the girl was lured into their car and taken to bushes near a river, where a sangoma called Jan Maleka cut out her tongue and cut off both her breasts before removing her womb.

The sangoma took the body parts with him when they left the child's body behind in the bushes.

Mangwale told them he was paid R4 500 for the job.

They said Mangwale showed no signs of having been tortured or forced to make the statement and told them he wanted to clear his conscience.

Mangwale has claimed that he was tortured by the police and was forced to confess to Kgomo's murder and that of another young girl, which he could not have committed as he was in jail at the time.

A number of confessions, in which he has given different versions of the murder, have been admitted as evidence against him.

Mothle criticised the State and police for the way in which the case had been presented, saying it had been left up to him to go and find the witnesses.

He said it was clear that a number of people had been involved in the murder and he wanted to know why the others had not been charged.

Prosecutor MJ Makgwatha said the only evidence against other possible perpetrators was contained in Mangwale’s confessions, which could not be used as evidence against them.

Other accused might still be charged if new evidence emerged, but it was possible that they might never be brought to justice.

She said the State did not want to call any of the alleged accomplices as witnesses because the national prosecuting authority was not prepared to offer them indemnity from prosecution.

The trial was postponed to August 8 for possible new witnesses, failing which Judge Mothle would give judgment.