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=Evidence in Schabir Shaik's= fraud and corruption trial revealed where some of the money for President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla home came from, Beeld reported on Wednesday. According to the newspaper, Shaik, Zuma's former financial adviser, asked French weapons manufacturers for bribes, reportedly to help Zuma fund the development of his home. During Shaik's trial, which ended in 2005, KPMG's forensic auditor Jan van der Walt testified that money was obtained from various third party sources to help Zuma pay a R1.3 million bill for a “cultural village”. According to other testimony, Bohlabela Wheels, a subsidiary of Nora Fakude-Nkuma from Mpumalanga, made payments amounting to R140 000 to the company charged with construction at Nkandla. Further evidence revealed that businessman Vivian Reddy stood surety for the sum of R400 000, which reportedly enabled Zuma to get a R900 000 housing loan from FNB.

=During Shaik's= trial in the Durban High Court, it emerged that Reddy was also responsible for payment of the loan, and that he made payments during 2003 and 2004. According to testimony an FNB housing loan official reportedly said in an internal e-mail: “I'm convinced that the appropriate authorities will help us bend the rules slightly.” Presidential spokesman Mac Maharaj declined to comment. While the Presidency said on Tuesday that it will produce evidence that Zuma has a bond for Nkandla, though not to the media, it would neither confirm nor deny that it was with FNB. “We have noted requests for proof of the evidence of a mortgage bond for the first phase of the Nkandla residence as mentioned [by Zuma] in the National Assembly last week “The evidence will be readily made available to an authorised agency or institution empowered by the law of the land. It is not being released to media to respect the privacy of the president as well as customer-institution confidentiality,” said Maharaj. He said the Presidency had noted reports implying that Zuma may have misled the National Assembly when he said he had a mortgage bond on his residence in =Nkandla. = “We reaffirm that President Zuma does indeed have a bond on the residence with one of the national banks and he is still paying it off monthly. We urge the media to respect the agencies that are investigating the various aspects of the security enhancements…,” said Maharaj. Zuma said while answering questions in the National Assembly last week relating to the government’s reported spending of almost R250m on security measures at Nkandla that he paid for his home himself, and was still paying off the bond. Without confirming Zuma was a client, FNB Home Loans CEO Jan Kleynhans said on Tuesday bonds on tribal land were offered only in exceptional circumstances. FNB was unable to confirm the specifics of a client’s personal banking matters. Kleynhans said the bank did not grant home loans to individual applicants for housing developments that were done on tribal land. “Legally, people who currently live on land owned by a tribal authority have no claim to ownership of the land. Only on reasonable grounds does the bank grant such loans which are not traditionally bonded [mortgage loans] and where there is an adequate form of security on the loan,” said Kleynhans. He said these loans were reviewed “on a case-by-case basis and granted based on low risk and minimal exposure to the bank”. Meanwhile, Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa confirmed in a written reply to a parliamentary question that the Nkandla residence was declared a national key point on August 4, 2010. Political Bureau, Sapa

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footage by Lonmin security cameras of events on August 16 when 34 miners lost their lives during confrontations with the police will be shown to the Marikana Commission of Inquiry in Rustenburg today. Yesterday, the evidence-leading team, led by advocate Mbuyiseli Madlanga, requested to screen video footage captured between August 9 and 16 before the commission. The August 10 and 11 video scenes were significantly different from those of the previous day. On those two days, the protesters had brought their traditional weapons with them. Some were dancing ecstatically and waving the weapons.

On August 12, the footage showed the protesters running off after setting fire to Lonmin mine vehicles, with security guards inside.

Footage of August 14 showed the discovery of a body, only identified as "Mr. Twala". The hacked man was a mine supervisor.

The defence in the Marikana inquiry is expected to cross-examine police witness, brigadier Petrus Breytenbach today on video footage shown by evidence leaders.

Yesterday, the Marikana commission heard that a police officer was shot dead on August 13 by miners during an unprotected wage strike. The footage also showed senior officers trying to persuade miners to hand in their weapons.

MUT's amazing twins The areas of study are just about the only major difference between the Ximba twins, Aphiwe and Simphiwe, from Umlazi's J section. Aphiwe is doing civil engineering, while Simphiwe is doing survey engineering. Everything else is the same for the identical 19-year old sisters; clothing and shoe sizes; the silver tooth bridges, which Aphiwe said help make them look even more similar; she used to have a gap that made them different. They both play softball. The thought of studying at different universities would have been a disaster for the sisters. "I feel incomplete if Simphiwe is not around. I can't even talk But we rarely pause to consider what such relentless technological progress might mean for our lives as citizens, and for the work of our government. At the core of the information revolution is an explosion of networked computing power, and the great promise of that revolution is therefore the promise of networked information processing. It is the promise not so much of doing more as of knowing more — of turning vast quantities of raw data and diffuse knowledge into manageable, usable, and focused expertise and understanding.

We have grown accustomed to the notion that this is simply how modern government works. But the technological developments of the past few decades now allow for a very different approach to public policy — for rooting social decision-making in greater knowledge about which policies have worked and which have not, for focused expertise applied in real time to judge the meaning of events as they occur, and for better projections and predictions built on a more dynamic analysis of data