Tshwane's new Democratic Alliance mayor Solly Msimanga pulled out five forensic reports last week and told recently dethroned ANC councillors that some of them will soon be wearing orange jump suits.

In this interview, author of How Long Will South Africa Survive?, RW Johnson, sees the ANC as a party in retreat, with its more militant members seeking to make Joburg and Tshwane ungovernable, just as they did when the National Party was in control. The ANC has become the National Party version 2, with President Zuma astride a giant system of patronage and corruption. His repeated attacks on his finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, who has refused to sign off on SAA's financial statements, speaks volumes about the feud currently underway eating the heart of the ANC. The question is, can Zuma survive till the next presidential election in 2019? 

John Pilger makes a case for indicting journalists on war crimes. From the Guardian to the New York Times, anti-Russian propaganda is at fever pitch. Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton calls Russian president Vladimir Putin the "new Hitler" and she surrounds herself with cold war warriors baying for a confrontation with Russia. Twenty years after the Yugoslav bombing authorised during Bill Clinton's presidency, egged on with cartoonish propaganda from the Western media, a stunning revelation made barely a mention in the esteemed journals that so shrilly called for blood. A report issued this year exonerated former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, who died in 2006, of the war crimes of which he was charged. Most likely, you will not have heard of this. All the more reason to hold accountable the journalists who promote and justify wars now raging from Iraq to Syria.

In a recent article in De Rebus, Advocate Douglas Shaw welcomes some recent changes to rules that allow courts to set reserve prices (but do not compel them). This means properties sold in execution may be sold at closer to market price. Shaw also bemoans the fact that SA's repossession regime is among the most backward in the world. More than 100,000 South Africans have had their lives ruined since the Constitution was enacted some 20 years ago.

The Brexit vote, leading to Britain's exit from the European Union, is likely to trigger similar calls from France, Netherlands and other European countries tethered to a sinking economic union and a dodgy Euro. Bank stocks are already seriously under pressure from weak corporate earnings and economic uncertainty. According to this report from CNBC, banks are now preparing for the worst.

It's now become clear that the Hawks' investigation into Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan's allegedly unlawful behaviour while at SA Revenue Services is part of an internal war being waged within the ANC. Gordhan last week refused to attend a meeting with the Hawks, apparently on the advice of his lawyers who told him the investigation has no basis in law. Gordhan is fighting back, saying over the weekend that he would die to save SA from thieves. Just who the thieves are, Gordhan is not saying - for now.

The mainstream media has thrown its weight behind Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party nominee in the upcoming US presidential election. The "prestitutes" as Paul Craig Roberts calls them are willing to overlook her history of warmongering in Syria and Libya, her crooked dealings in the White House, and her willingness to rent American foreign policy to the highest bidder. How else would the once broke Clintons end up with a personal fortune of $120m? Instead, the media rail against Donald Trump, the Republican nominee who, whatever faults he has, is determined to pull the world back from the brink of nuclear war. 

US academic Walter Williams tells us what is happening on college campuses, and it isn't pretty: safe spaces for every perceived victim, segregation according to race and gender identity in the name of "diversity", and the leeching of political prejudice into biology, physics and history. With this, of course, comes a shut down in free debate and the death of academic discourse. God help the employers who have to deal with this wounded lot when and if they finally graduate. 

You give a piece of legislation a name like the Financial Services Regulation Bill and you know people will yawn and turn the page. Yet buried in this proposed law are some whoppers. We are going to get not one, but two, giant bureaucracies that will cost between R4bn and R6bn a year, paid for of course by the consumer. We are adding layer upon layer of regulation in a fruitless attempt to prevent future financial crises. Nobel laureate George Stigler investigated the economic costs of regulation and came to the conclusion that bureaucracies often end up performing no discernible public good, or what he called regulatory capture.

French economist and philosopher Frederic Bastiat wrote The Law in 1850. It should be required reading for law makers, judges and legal practitioners. Bastiat argues that the law exists in a very narrow sense to protect the individual's body, liberty and property. Beyond that, tyranny beckons. 

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) has become a major thorn in the side of State-Owned Enterprises. It started out by launching SA's most effective consumer boycott of e-tolls in 2013, and has since put SAA and now Eskom in its sights. OUTA is doing the work that public watchdogs and regulators are supposed to do - but don't.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), with the support of smaller parties, is set to appoint mayors for Johannesburg and Pretoria. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party will not join a formal alliance with the DA, but will vote with it on specific issues.

More blacks voted for the Democratic Alliance than did whites, and in a city with just a 15% white population - Nelson Mandela Bay - a white mayor in the form of Athol Trollip is about to take office. The ANC's attempt at racial mobilisation has failed, just as the National Party of old attempted to scare white voters with the "black threat". The ANC's troubles from here will likely multiply, showing how far of course the party of liberation has strayed.

The Constitutional Court declared that the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act was invalid on Thursday last week, citing lack of public participation prior to its promulgation.

The Expropriation Bill, which has been passed by both houses of parliament, grants the government extraordinary powers to expropriate not just property, but any assets, and pay little or no compensation. The wording of the bill uses legal sleight of hand to side-step Constitutional property rights. It pretends to be the "custodian" for the nation, rather than the owners, of the seized assets. And though the Bill is supposed to assist black South Africans, it will likely have the opposite effect, says the Free Market Foundation. 

Asset manager and chartered accountant Sunil Shah didn't read the fine print when signing an agreemernt for the rental of a photocopy machine with a Sasfin-associated finance company. So a machine that was advertised on the internet for R7,500 ended up costing him R15,000 even though he delivered it back to the company after just three months. This is because of loopholes that allow these rental companies to side-step the National Credit Act. BizNews reports on how this happened.

The 2016 local government elections offer a tantalising taste of what is to come in the 2019 presidential elections. The Democratic Alliance has promised it would become the dominant party by 2019, but to do that is a tough ask. The way to achieve this goal is to focus on reorganising Gauteng in the same way it did Cape Town, and create a model of governance that will peel away millions of voters from a decrepid ANC.

Health minister Aaron Motsoaledi loves us so much he wants every South African to live cleaner, healthier lives. He plans to do this through plain packaging of cigarettes, one of the dumbest ideas ever concocted in the name of the nanny state. But government may be exposing itself to potential legal claims for destruction of trademarks, often a company's most valuable asset, while widespread counterfeiting of cigarettes is another likely consequence. And while we're about protecting the lives of South Africans, why not ban motor cars which kills thousands every year?

Given recent statements by two former presidents, Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, one wonders whether these men will vote for the party of Nelson Mandela at all, or whether they wil abstain, or perhaps even vote for the opposition. Motlanthe was recently reported to have said the ANC is engaged in a race to the bottom. Strong words from the former leader of the country.

A new poll by Ipsos shows the ANC losing its dominant position to the Democratic Alliance in next week's local government elections in three major urban centres: Joburg, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth. Cape Town has long since been under DA control. The ANC says its own polls come to a different conclusion. The trend is clear: the ANC will, like Zani-PF in Zimbabwe, from hereon have to rely on the rural vote.  

Half of South Africans between the ages of 18 and 24 are unemployed, not because they do not want to work, but because of labour laws that protect the employed aristocracy and actively discourage companies from hiring anybody new. Eustace Davie, director of the Free Market Foundation, offers a simple and inexpensive way of overcoming this barrier so that the country's youth can get a real taste of employment. 

A recent study of home repossessions puts SA among the worst - if not the worst - in the world. The enthusiasm with which SA banks rush to repossess homes in the event of default is described as "medieval" and cruel. 

Pastor Evan Mawarire has stirred the spirit of protest in Zimbabwe. Riots and protests now seem unstoppable as they spread from the cities to Beit Bridge border posts. The diplomatic community is warning of a possible military coup, and South Africa's shocking and corrupt support for the ruling party in past election frauds may come back to haunt it. Or perhaps this time, it will heed the voice of a young and restless population that has called for Mugabe to leave now, and make way for a change. 

Eight journalists have reportedly been fired by the SABC. This is a further sign of the deradation at the state-owned broadcaster, which is more and more looking like a State broadcaster along the lines of Zimbabwe or North Korea. The Institute of Race Relations looks at what is going on behind the scenes at the SABC board, which lies at the centre of this mess.

Private investogator Paul O'Sullivan says he has been targeted for elimination by Radovan Krejcir, the East European gangster he helped put away. Wherever there is a smell of corruption, O'Sullivan gets on the case and does not hold back. Earlier this yer, while boarding a plane to London with his two daughters, he was arrested by agents of what he says is a corrupt State security machine, and held in a rat-infested Pretoria prison for several days. His latest disclosures are nuclear. SAA chairwoman Dudu Myeni, with no real qualification for the job, has been setting up deals that favour mysterious and wholly unqualified BEE businesses. Paul O'Sullivan talks to Alec Hogg.