Top 10 stories of the day: Zille for Joburg mayor? Batohi clarifies NPA claims

Here's your daily news update for 8 June 2025. An easy-to-read selection of our top stories.
In today's news update, DA's Helen Zille is considering contesting to become the next Joburg mayor, while Gerda Steyn clinched her fourth Comrades Marathon win.
Additionally, NDPP Shamila Batohi was reportedly summoned to a meeting on Friday.
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ActionSA-ANC slams Zille's plans for Joburg: 'They do not believe in black excellence'
Democratic Alliance (DA) federal chairperson Helen Zille. Picture: Nigel Sibanda
ActionSA leader Herman Mashaba said he is shocked by Helen Zille's dream to become the next mayor of Johannesburg.
The DA's federal council chairperson is considering putting her hand up to become mayor of the City of Johannesburg after next year's local government elections.
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'It changes me': Emotional Gerda Steyn delighted with fourth Comrades win
Gerda Steyn winning the women's race at last year's Comrades Marathon. Picture: Darren Stewart/Gallo Images
Though spectators might have become accustomed to Gerda Steyn winning ultra-marathons, the 35-year-old runner says she still feels an overwhelming sense of emotion when she triumphs in big races.
Steyn picked up her fourth victory at the Comrades Marathon in Durban on Sunday.
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Batohi clarifies NPA infiltration claims to justice minister amid criticism.
National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Shamila Batohi. Picture: Gallo Images / Phill Magakoe
National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Shamila Batohi has come under scrutiny after alleging that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has been 'infiltrated' by rogue elements.
Batohi made the claims during recent interviews this week although she denied any interference from the executive.
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City of Johannesburg councillor allegedly used municipality's BMW X3 for political activities in KZN, says DA
The all-new BMW X3 in X50 guise. Picture: BMW
The DA in Johannesburg is requesting an urgent investigation into the use of a city-owned luxury vehicle by one of the members of the Government of Local Unity (GLU) for party activities.
The party claims that one of the members of the mayoral committee travelled to KwaZulu-Natal last weekend using the City's BMW X3.
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R6.4 billion for Polokwane
Cllr Makoro Mosema John Mpe Executive Mayor of Polokwane Municipality on 25 January 2022 in Polokwane. Photo: Gallo Images/Philip Maeta
The Limpopo's Polokwane municipality has tabled a pro-poor budget of R6.4 billion, but the municipality's dream of becoming a metro is marred by acute water challenges, involving billions of rands.
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Here are five more stories of the day:
Yesterday's News recap
READ HERE: Top 10 stories of the day: Ramaphosa defends BEE | Batohi under fire | Woman awarded R580k after arrest

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IOL News

an hour ago

• IOL News

National Dialogue can become act of self-healing

. Lorenzo Davids is the Executive Director of Urban Issues Consulting. Image: Supplied South Africa should have a national dialogue. It shouldn't cost R700 million. Its outcomes should influence the next three elections if we are serious about it. If we get it right, we should have one every ten years. The problem is that South African politicians and bureaucrats continually devise ways to spend money yet consistently fail to devise methods for determining whether the outcomes of those expenditures have been achieved. In his opposition to the proposed cost of the national dialogue, DA leader John Steenhuisen said the recent elections were South African conversations. The problem with that statement is that South Africa, with 63 million people and 28 million registered voters, only had 16 million people turn up to vote. That's just under 27% of our total population. If we include the demographic capacity for participation, then our elections are essentially a case of the middle and upper classes doing all the talking. The National Dialogue is a call to all South Africans to share their views on the kind of country they wish to live in. During elections, its politicians and party loyalists doing all the talking. Any opposing voices are usually shouted down. Our elections prove that many poor people are too discouraged to vote. But they do have a voice. But the DA leader is right: it still doesn't have to cost R700 million. South Africa has just over 49 million people aged 6 and older. This puts the unit cost at just over R14 per person if we include every citizen aged 6 and up. As someone who has done several conversations with communities across the country, the unit cost can be arrested at R2 per person. How? By allowing these conversations to be organically facilitated by local people over many days in their own geographic spaces. Eliminate catering other than water. Eliminate flying people in to host conversations. Eliminate the need to accommodate people in expensive locations. No one gets paid to serve as a local community facilitator for the national dialogue. Don't print any T-shirts. Allow conversations to take on diverse forms. Allow teachers to host conversations in their classrooms and feed this into the national dialogue feedback depository. Allow companies to hold national dialogue conversations. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Ad loading Allow sports clubs, places of worship, pubs, and shebeens to host conversations. Appoint skilled, locally based, non-aligned community people to facilitate these local conversations. What skills are required? Not to interrogate inputs but to allow for the mature, free flow of conversations and to record it all in a non-judgmental way, and to protect the process. The Eminent Persons Group should prepare is a list of twenty core questions which can be used as conversation starters. Then allow people to talk. Don't judge their input. Just record it. Then thank them for coming. Within five days of every conversation, the community receives a verbatim transcript of all the inputs they have made to the national dialogue for their records. This ensures the integrity of the process. The worst thing that has already happened is that the Eminent Persons Group has been formed without thoroughly exploring the diverse concepts of a national dialogue. Because the default – a room filled with food and important people with t-shirts and security in over-priced facilities – will now dominate their minds. We have the opportunity to establish a dynamic process in which a country engages in conversation with itself as a regular and organic part of its democratic identity. In a country as filled as it is with generational trauma and constant violence, this process could become an act of immense self-healing. This is not an election. It's not a grandstand for public office. Nor is it the opportunity to launch personal attacks on others or to settle community or political scores. The most empowering and non-judgmental conversation starter for the national dialogue is, "If I had it my way, I would …." Cape Argus

IOL News

6 hours ago

• IOL News

Is R700 million for a national dialogue worth it?

Before the government spends R700 million on a(nother) national dialogue, it is reasonable to ask what the dialogue promises to deliver, is this worth more than R700 million and what are the chances the stated objectives will be achieved, ask the author. Before the government spends R700 million on a(nother) national dialogue, it is reasonable to ask what the dialogue promises to deliver, is this worth more than R700 million and what are the chances the stated objectives will be achieved. Dr Oyama Mabandla, a member of the national dialogue preparatory task team, asks us to give the national dialogue a chance, reminding us that '[t]he national dialogue is an attempt to reinvigorate and fix a dangerously adrift democracy. It will involve the entire populace, instead of the self-selecting and incestuous elites, who have been producing one after another failed plan, while the rest of us have been spectators.' But of course it won't involve the entire populace and the outcome will be a big report that no one reads. How can it be anything other than this? Even if you could speak to everyone. What then? Which ideas do you implement and which do you ignore? No member of the task team can do anything other than talk and although conversations matter, you need executive power to change things and you get executive power through lots of votes. The reason we have elections is that you can't involve the whole populace of 63 million people in any dialogue, no matter how important. So we compromise and although they are very far from perfect, elections are the only way we have to get a sense of what citizens want. South Africans didn't decide to give the ANC 40% of the vote in the last election to teach anyone a lesson, as experts love to tell us. A gogo voted for the DA because she believed they would give her grandchildren the best future and a young, first-time voter put their X next to Juju's face because they believe the EFF will give them the best opportunities, but most didn't even do that. Voting is the only opportunity you have to not get the government all the other idiots deserve. It is only in those few minutes in a cubicle where you can actually get something changed. The national dialogue is not even that. You can say as much as you want in conversations and you will be ignored. This is not personal. It is the very heart of how democracy works. No one vote counts for anything unless millions of others agree with you and then that vote really counts. I have no idea why President Cyril Ramaphosa feels like a(nother) national dialogue will yield anything positive (aside from the events' organisers who will no doubt be skimming their 25%) or why borrowing R700m to fund this will yield more in value than the R700m, plus interest, that will be spent. (We currently borrow around R1 billion per day, so the national dialogue is an extra 17 hours or so of borrowing, which somehow doesn't feel that bad. But it is). It's all about social compacting, we are told. But what is this magical phrase loved by many and understood by few? Does Ramaphosa love social compacting more than Trump loves tariffs? Will the national dialogue make more people less poor or will everyone just be R700mn poorer? Social compacting would pop up in masterplans in the Department of Trade Industry and Competition for example, and mostly seemed to mean that a small number of dominant companies could meet with the government, without minutes or recordings, to determine how the rest of the industry should work. It failed even with the full power of government and the largest companies in the country behind it. South Africans, when you ignore the loudest and emptiest vessels, talk with each other just fine (even if that is mostly to complain about the government). The problem is that South Africans are getting poorer and most citizens don't believe the government, irrespective of which party is in charge, can fix that. That is why so many people don't bother voting. The most important first step to economic transformation is to make it easier for more people not to be poor. The three great social ills in South Africa of poverty, unemployment and inequality, leaves out the fourth great ill which is lack of economic freedom. The EFF hijacked this term for their version of communism, but economic freedom allows people to solve their own problems. Not another pile of the Master's Plans, pushed down onto South Africans, but allowing them more freedom to do what they believe is important for them. But the government doesn't trust its own citizens, so you can be "given" a free house shitty house after waiting decades but you can't sell it, because the government doesn't believe you can be trusted with your own money. You wait for decades because with free stuff, the demand always outstrips the supply and no one has an incentive to increase the supply. We know poor people will pay for houses if they can own them, because poor people currently pay for houses they cannot own. Rich people have economic freedom and poor people are not allowed to make their own economic decisions and so remain poor. We have the only national dialogue that matters, which are the conversations which happen in parliament. Have your say and vote and you are part of the dialogue. Spending R700m so you can be told by a(nother) group of people how they can lift you from poverty, as long as you do as you are told, is a terrible idea.

Daily Maverick

8 hours ago

• Daily Maverick

US joining war on Iran creates major political headache for SA

With the world on tenterhooks following the US bombing of Iranian nuclear sites, South African politicians have been notably cautious in articulating their initial positions. By sunset on Sunday, 22 June, as news of the extraordinary US bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities at Israel's behest continued to ricochet globally, barely a single South African politician seemed willing to come out publicly with a position on the matter. Fikile Mbalula. Gayton McKenzie. Herman Mashaba. These are hardly shrinking violets when it comes to making their views known on forums like X — yet on the matter of the Iranian bombing, at the time of writing, there was a deafening silence from them. Neither was there yet an official statement available from either the DA or the ANC, suggesting that SA's two biggest political parties were to some degree agonising over what, exactly, to say. From Parliament's committee on international relations: niks. The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) was mute on Sunday too, and a Daily Maverick query to its spokesperson, Clayson Monyela, went unanswered. Ramaphosa issues mild reprimand of US By mid-afternoon, President Cyril Ramaphosa had grasped the nettle — kind of — and released a statement that said relatively little. 'President Cyril Ramaphosa and the South African government have noted with a great deal of anxiety the entry by the United States of America into the Israel-Iran war,' it read, followed by a weak rebuke of the Trump administration. 'It was South Africa's sincerest hope that President Donald Trump would use his influence and that of the US government to prevail on the parties to pursue a dialogue path in resolving their issues of dispute.' The statement concluded, as is on brand for Ramaphosa, with a call for 'peaceful resolution'. Despite the fact that Tehran and Pretoria enjoy warm diplomatic relations, Ramaphosa's statement revealed the diplomatic egg dance that the situation presents to the South African government. South Africa cannot risk alienating the Trump administration further, with the relationship still on life support from the buildup to the Trump-Ramaphosa Oval Office showdown in late May. The Israel factor is a significant complication The difficulty for Pretoria is that the Iranian strike was overtly carried out at the behest of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump's brief televised announcement, confirming that US fighter jets had targeted multiple nuclear research sites in Iran, ended not only with 'God bless the Middle East' and 'God bless America' but also, specifically, 'God bless Israel' — a closing flourish that left little doubt about whose interests were being prioritised. South Africa has positioned itself internationally as one of the staunchest critics of Israel's conduct, culminating in its landmark International Court of Justice case accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Pretoria has also publicly cut diplomatic ties with Israel, formally downgrading the embassy. In the face of this new regional escalation, it must now consider how to balance that principled commitment with its allegiance to Iran, a fellow BRICS member — while simultaneously avoiding direct confrontation with a still-dominant United States. With that in mind, the silence of the political class on Sunday was, frankly, understandable. BRICS buddies band together? South Africa and Iran have shared membership of BRICS since an invitation was issued to the latter at the 2023 Johannesburg summit. Other BRICS states were less hesitant in responding to the bombing. The Chinese foreign ministry issued an unambiguous condemnation: 'China strongly condemns the U.S. attacks on Iran and bombing of nuclear facilities under the safeguards of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]. The actions of the U.S. seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law, and have exacerbated tensions in the Middle East. China calls on the parties to the conflict, Israel in particular, to reach a ceasefire as soon as possible, ensure the safety of civilians, and start dialogue and negotiation.' Saudi Arabia, whose new BRICS membership sits awkwardly with its often-fraught relationship with Iran, struck a more guarded tone. Its official English-language X account posted: 'The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is following with great concern the developments in the sisterly Islamic Republic of Iran, represented by the targeting of Iranian nuclear facilities by the United States of America.' The United States, meanwhile, was vocally backed by a handful of close allies. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer offered a firm endorsement of the bombing, posting on X: 'Iran's nuclear programme is a grave threat to international security. Iran can never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon and the US has taken action to alleviate that threat.' But from other corners of the West, the reaction was unease rather than celebration. Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, called the bombing a 'clear-cut violation of international law'. UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was 'gravely alarmed' by the use of force by the US. A massively unpopular war Complicating the picture for South Africa is the fact that this conflict is likely to be widely unpopular across the globe — including among Western populations. Comparisons are already being drawn with the disastrous US invasion of Iraq in 2003, and social media suggests a growing generational divide in how such conflicts are understood as the post-World War 2 political consensus crumbles. Young people in particular are questioning why Israel, which has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and possesses undeclared nuclear weapons, is held to a radically different standard than Iran, which remains under international inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This is also a moment when support for Israel is at an all-time low. Tens of thousands of protesters flooded European capitals over the weekend, voicing opposition to the ongoing bombardment of Gaza. In June, a YouGov poll showed support for Israel in Western Europe had sunk to its lowest levels ever recorded. In Germany, France and the UK, only between 13% and 21% of respondents now hold favourable views of Israel, compared to 63% to 70% expressing negative sentiments. As South Africa mulls its response, the stakes are particularly high. The government has sought to portray itself as a champion of the Global South, a defender of international law, and a broker of multipolar diplomacy. The entrance of the United States into open hostilities against Iran, with Israel applauding from the wings, tests every aspect of that narrative. DM