10. The Editor's Letter by Chris Burgess in Farmers' Weekly:

Burgess comments that the recent revelation "that only 3% of the country's sewage works are operational" received very little coverage in our national media, and the govt does even less.

"In the North West, as exasperated farmers in Swartruggens and Sannieshof can attest to, there are apparently no fully functional sewage works. Not a single one. In the Free State, 99% don't work. In a country as critically water stressed as South Africa, this should amount to nothing less than a national crisis... livestock carcasses, infected with tapeworm, are turned away at abattoirs after animals drink water with faecal counts way off the charts, polluted water kills hundreds of babies in small-town municipalities, and irrigation farmers wait nervously for their export markets to slam unceremoniously shut."

9. The Mail & Guardian report on how Jacob Zuma is drinking at the last chance saloon within the ANC:

The newspaper quotes an unnamed ANC NEC member as saying: "We first thought it was a private matter. We first thought it was a private matter. But we were surprised that the outcry did not come from white people or foreign media, but from our African constituency. They must vote for us to stay in power and we must listen to them.... We really want the president to zip up and make sure this doesn't happen again. If it does, it's over. We have nothing left to defend his conduct."

8. The Saturday Star's report on R4,7m worth of cars crashing at a VIP wedding reception at the local sports club in Eshowe, KZN:

Tanya Waterworth "The Durban drivers, Romeo Mbambo - a former IFP hitman [convicted of 6 murders] - and... ND Sibiya both escaped injury when they crashed their Lamgorghini Murcielago and Ferrari F430 into each other."According to the newspaper "the bride was the daughter of a local policeman while the groom was a member of the SAPS Royal Protection Unit." An Eshowe resident was quoted as saying: "The cars parked at the club were all big, luxury vehicles - nothing under R500,000, apparently many of them belonging to government officials."

7. The Editor's note by Barney Mthombothi in the Financial Mail on the state of decay in local govt:

"Travelling around the country," he writes "one cannot but be shocked at the state of our towns and cities. The streets are a sorry mess, squalid, with overgrown verges, paint peeling off buildings - a general state of neglect and decay. It's as if nobody is in charge. It is as though since the last apartheid apparatchik was chased out of town nobody has cared to lift a finger even to sweep the place. And with the current obsession with renaming things, one is often even confused as to which town or street one is in."

6. Thabo Mbeki's account, in the Sunday Independent, of the story - from the ANC inside - behind the release of Nelson Mandela:

Mbeki notes that by the late 1980s the National Party government was trapped "between the devil and the dark blue sea" on the issue. "Once the regime came to accept that at some point it would have to release Mandela, it began to worry about what the consequences of this release would be. Essentially, it feared that the release would be a signal to the black oppressed to launch a national uprising targeted at its overthrow."

5. Jan-Jan Joubert's article in Rapport documenting how President Zuma made "een blaps ná die ander" in his state of the nation address:

These extended from thanking Irvin Khoza in his speech (which precipitated giggling in the audience), starting his speech in the wrong place, skipping over paragraphs by mistake, and saying "ABSA" when he meant the DBSA.

4. Gave Davis's analysis in the Weekend Argus of Zuma's address:

Davis writes: "Work on the speech started a fortnight before. Late on Wednesday, its writers were battling to edit it down by half. On Thursday afternoon they were with Zuma in his Tuynhuys studay, fine-tuning it. ‘The president has been very involved in the process', an official said. With so much to celebrate - the marvel of Madiba, the excitement of the World Cup just months away - it was something of a feat to give the speech all the lightness and bounce of a lead boot."

3. The Mail & Guardian report on how drug accused Cheryl Cwele and her minister of state security husband, Siyabonga, remain very much an item:

Reports in other newspapers had suggested the couple were estranged. However, Glynnis Underhill and Niren Tolsi documented extensive evidence of a continuing relationship - including the fact that the couple, along with their children, "enjoyed a two-week Christmas holiday at three luxury resorts in Mozambique last year." The Sunday Times had earlier stated that the "minister and his entourage of bodyguards made a hasty exit after [Sheryl Cwele's] bail application." However, according to the M&G, this was because the minister had 15 minutes "to rush to the bank to withdraw the R100,000 to secure his wife's bail."

2. The lead story in City Press on a national treasury investigation into the Limpopo govt's tender and procurement processes:

Piet Rampedi notes that the probe, conducted in conjunction with the SIU and SARS, "is likely to affect people in high places in the ruling ANC, led in the province by premier Cassel Mathale, a close ally of both Zuma and ANC Youth League president Julius Malema. Malema wields considerable influence in the Limpopo govt."

1. The Sunday Tribune report on the claim that al-Qaeda members have been supplied with fraudulent South African Identity Documents:

Greg Arde and Masood Boomgaard report on the case of Yusuf Omarjee who is currently facing charges over a series of alleged frauds committed using illegal IDs. The newspaper reports that Omarjee's activities "were discovered after police arrested Mohammed Chisty [real name: Goolam Hoosen Muhammed Haniff], who was in cahoots with senior officials at the Department of Home Affairs in selling fraudulent ID documents... Police found [Omarjee's name], along with a list of other clients, in diaries kept by Chisty. Chisty told police that he would often travel to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan where he supplied, among others, al-Qaeda members with fraudulent South African IDs."

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