Cultural and political analyst Musa Xulu says he does not believe that uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party members are being targeted. This after the party raised its concern over the recent killings of its members.
MK party member, Mxolisi Zungu was gunned down yesterday at Cato Manor in KwaZulu-Natal.
Zungu’s death follows the death of two other MK party members in Katlehong and Ekurhuleni in Gauteng last month.
Xulu says this is pure coincidence.
“Well the MK party has been positioning itself as a victim of all sorts of things. Their stance is that they would like to be seen as a threat to possibly ANC people who would then go out and try to kill them. My own research on the ground has shown that the killing of Mr Zungu had nothing to do with political affiliation at all.”
PODCAST| Interview with Political analyst Musa Xulu on MK party concerned over killings of its members:
The civil society organisation, SA Harvest, says that the incoming government needs to address food insecurity and hunger affecting millions of South Africans.
South Africa faces challenges ranging from high unemployment and poverty; to the energy crisis and rising cost of living.
These negatively affect the security of food, which becomes expensive and inaccessible to many.
The organisation’s CEO and founder, Alan Browde says, “They must create a ministry of food. No matter how absolutely and completely evil they were, the apartheid government had a system which worked in terms of the price control and the distribution of food and the protection of small farmers and the ANC didn’t want to use that. Not only because of the benefactors but because it had been a method of the apartheid government. So yes, we believe that there should be a ministry of food and intervention. You can’t have a pure capitalist system when it comes to food in a developing country, we have to have a type of mixed economy approach.”
PODCAST | SA Harvest calls for the newly elected government to address hunger:
Food security report
According to a Shoprite Food Index report compiled by the World Data Lab, food security report published last year, 49% of the South African population will go to bed hungry by 2025.
However, despite the bleak forecast, the index shows that the incidence of people escaping food insecurity is improving.
In August 2023, food inflation in the country slowed to 8.2% from 10% the previous month.
Provincially, Limpopo will suffer the worst food insecurity in 2025.
“By 2025, World Data Lab forecast 49 % of South Africa population will be living in food scarcity conditions and 21 % of children will be stunted in 2025,” says Jack Gisby from World Data Lab.
79% of children in South Africa are born into poverty, and according to the World Food and Agriculture Organisation, nearly 20 million people across the globe are without food.
Shoprite Group says this is why it sees food insecurity as a crisis as big as the COVID-19 pandemic. The Group says due to this, it seeks to intensify its efforts to reduce hunger in the country through collaborations with different stakeholders.
Business leaders have urged political parties to accept the 2024 election results and work towards forming a stable coalition that puts the country first.
This African National Congress (ANC)has embarked on coalition negotiations with opposition parties after losing its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994.
The ANC’s votes have fallen to just over 40% nationally.
This was followed by the Democratic Alliance (DA) with almost 22%, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK) secured over 14% and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) over 9%.
Voter turnout was 58.61%.
Over 16 million South Africans voted in the 2024 elections.
“We don’t want to see a chaotic coalition, we don’t want to see strained and ineffective decision making, we don’t want to see disunity within the coalition, we don’t want to see a coalition that is going to bring in a failure to implement even the most basic of services. I mean, think about the City of Joburg – eight mayors in two years. It has been absolutely chaotic. Coalitions can work. You just have to make sure that you get partners that will be of the single-minded focus. You need to make sure that the coalition is willing to compromise in favour of the greater good.”
PODCAST | What kind of coalition government does business need?
The United Democratic Movement(UDM) has written to the Electoral Commission to query its formula of allocating seats in the National Assembly.
This after the commission announced which parties will be represented in the seventh National Assembly following Wednesday’s general elections.
The UDM was allocated two seats.
However, the party’s Secretary-General Yongama Zigebe says that according to the number of votes the UDM has received, the party should have four seats.
“It should be four seats if they used the correct quota system, then what would have happened to the two seats of the UDM? But we said to ourselves instead of going out and fighting, let’s rather seek clarity so that they show us exactly how they calculated the seats and make us understand how they did it. However, if we find that there are issues within the calculations because we have mathematicians as well, we are going to request our seats back and it’s going to affect the entire seat allocation for all political parties.”
PODCAST | UDM queries National Assembly seat allocation formula:
VIDEO | Political Analyst Asanda Ngoasheng speaks on the allocation of seats in the National Assembly:
The Labour Party says all it wants is an opportunity to contest next month’s elections.
On Monday, the Electoral Court dismissed the party’s application to review the decision of the Electoral Commission not to reopen the portal for submissions.
The Labour Party’s interim executive member and President of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), Joseph Mathunjwa, says they fulfilled the necessary requirements.
He, however, says they did not meet the deadline because of alleged glitches with the commission’s online portal.
Mathunjwa says, “We have paid their deposit and then we uploaded many of those signatures from different provinces and even nationally. The issue here was those signatures of the list of the people that we put on the list and they just want the original, that’s the only thing. So if the Constitutional Court can say we give Labour Party six hours to conclude what was left, we are ready for them.”
