Former KwaZulu-Natal Hawks boss, Johan Booysen, will present himself to authorities at the Durban High Court on Friday to face renewed racketeering charges. He will be re-joining 27 other members of the Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit in the dock with whom he was originally charged in 2012.

This comes after the National Prosecuting Authority has announced that its new head, Shaun Abrahams, decided to reinstate charges that were withdrawn two years ago.

The state alleges that Booysen, together with 27 members of the Cato Manor Organised Crime Unit, acted like a hit squad by killing several suspects rather than bringing them to book. The state previously said in the indictment that Booysen had either directed these acts or that he ought to have known what was going on.

Booysen successfully challenged the racketeering charge against him in a court application in 2014.

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Minister of Economic Development Ebrahim Patel says government has invested over R290-billion in job creation through infrastructure. He was addressing Parliament during the State of the Nation Debate.

Patel outlined some of the outcomes of government’s nine-point-plan.

“This is how we implement the NDP and the nine-point-plan announced last year. The creation of jobs through infrastructure, we invested R290 billion as a nation for the past calendar year, more than R1-billion every working day. The money helped us to build 160 new schools, to provide new higher education housing accommodation for an additional 3100 students. “

Courtesy: SABC

Cape Town – The ANC in the Western Cape has condemned the violence that broke out during student protests at UCT on Tuesday night, and the damage done to busts and pictures that depicted white people.

Spokesperson Yonelo Diko said that while the students’ issues were legitimate and needed attention, being violent was not the way to go about it achieving anything.

He visited the campus because the party was worried about what was happening after the protests culminated in Vice Chancellor Max Price’s office being petrol bombed and the pictures were burnt.

Price was not in the office at the time the petrol bomb gutted the room, leaving black walls and windows.

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Cape Town – “I am not a madam, I do not run brothels,” Cope MP Deirdre Carter quipped on Wednesday, when objecting to the term used by the ANC’s chief whip.

The second day of the State of the Nation address debate started off with a bang, after Carter insisted that she not be called a “madam”.

ANC chief whip, Stone Sizani, referred to her as “Madam Carter” while raising a point of order.

A riled Carter called for Sizani to withdraw the comment, as she had “not run any brothels” in her life.

“It is not honourable, it is someone who runs a brothel,” she said.

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Parliament – Speaker Baleka Mbete on Wednesday said she had asked Parliament’s rules committee to look into the scathing criticism Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema’s levelled at President Jacob Zuma in the debate on the State of the Nation Address.

Mbete told the National Assembly she would stand by her ruling that Malema’s remarks would be expunged from the official record of the first day of the debate on Tuesday and added she had also referred it to the “rules committee for perusing”.

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