Bathabile Dlamini refuses to sign for urgent message from Post Office

One might have thought that after the social-grants catastrophe earlier this year, Social Development Minister Bathabile Dlamini would have learnt a lesson. Not a bit of it. This week she was back in parliament as MPs heard that any sign of the Post Office taking over social grants was as remote as ever. Dlamini was her usual self — obstructive and unco-operative — as CEO Mark Barnes tried to explain that the Post Office was indeed in a position to handle the grants. Despite the efforts of Standing Committee on Public Accounts chairman Themba Godi to force a consensus, MPs appeared to get no closer to a deal.

In parliament, President Jacob Zuma, referring to himself in the third person, insisted that he was not in office to review books, even if that book, by Jacques Pauw, stopped a few letters short of actually calling him a gangster.

In Port Elizabeth, Christopher Panayiotou was found guilty of murdering his wife, Jayde, in April 2015. That the verdict came down on his 31st birthday seemed sweet justice indeed.