10. Jacob Dlamini's column in Business Day on recent academic research showing how the notorious 1913 Land Act did not, as is commonly assumed, place an absolute bar on black land purchases outside of the native reserves:
Dlamini cites a recent academic article by Harvey Feinberg and Andre Horn which noted: "between 1913 and 1936... [black] Africans bought about 3200 farms and lots outside of native areas." Black South Africans could apply for exemptions from the Act, and according to the authors, "between 1913 and 1924, under the governments of Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, there were 302 exemptions granted, amounting to 35% of the total. Between 1924 and 1936, when JB Hertzog was in power, there were 565 exemptions granted, amounting to 65% of the total."
9. The Carte Blanche story on the dumping of police dockets from the Burgersfort police station:
The programme reported that year two former high ranking police officers, Charles Bosch and Daryl Els, stumbled across thirty three dockets in a black bag in a road just outside of Burgersfort. "The cases in these dockets [were] related to armed robberies, attempted murder and kidnapping between 2005 and 2007." Carte Blanche managed to track down and interviewed two victims of violent crimes - whose dockets were contained in the bundle - Kgomotso Mehlape and Wayne Farmer. Mehlape's store had been robbed, while Farmer had been abducted by two armed men at an ATM. "They bundled him back into the boot of the car and drove around for four hours, waiting for midnight, so that he could withdraw the maximum amount from his bank account. And then they let him go."
8. The report in Die Burger on how the ANC government, having spent billions of dollars on purchasing hugely expensive Hawks and Gripens for the South Air Force, has not bothered to allocate enough money to allow pilots to train and fly on them:
Pieter du Toit writes that according to an Auditor General's report the use of the Gripen fighter jets will have to be kept to a minimum and those trainee fighter pilots - on the Hawk program -will have to be satisfied with half the required flight hours. Together the Gripens will be allocated 550 hours flying time this year. In 2011-2012 and the year after 250 hours, hopelessly insufficient by European and American standards.