Brett Kebble a member of Thabo Mbeki’s ruling ANC and a key supporter of the recently sacked deputy

Brett Kebble, a member of Thabo Mbeki’s ruling ANC and a key supporter of the recently sacked deputy president Jacob Zuma, was killed on Tuesday evening as he drove his Mercedes through northern Johannesburg’s plush Melrose suburb on his way to dinner at a friend’s house.
The blood-spattered body of the heavy-set businessman was found slumped over the steering wheel of his bullet-riddled car after it smashed into the railing of a bridge. It has become notorious for hidden explosives.Afghan security sources saidthat the bomber may have been an Arab, adding that an al-Qa’ida suicide squad was in Afghanistan.But in an apparent effort to counter those claims, a spokesman for the Taliban, Abdul Latif Hakimi, named the bomber as Sardar Mohammed, who was said to be from Kabul. He said: “More mujahedin suiciders are ready to follow his way and you will witness them doing it in the future.”This has been the bloodiest year for the country since the 2001 war. The blast came outside the main army training centre, and most of the nine dead and 28 wounded were believed to be Afghan soldiers. Indications were that the bombing was modelled on similar attacks in Iraq, where insurgents have repeatedly targeted recruiting centres for Iraqi soldiers and police working alongside US forces.
Yesterday’s bomber rode up to the entrance of the training centre and rammed the convoy of minibuses.”I saw the bodies of badly mutilated soldiers and the buses were on fire,” said Khail Mohammed, a soldier who witnessed the attack.It happened on the Jalalabad road, the main route east out of Kabul that has a major UN compound and several military bases. But eventually they will rise, submerging Harsud’s 700-year history.. A suicide bomber in military uniform rammed his motorcycle into a fleet of buses carrying Afghan army officers in Kabul yesterday – the bloodiest attack in the Afghan capital since the 2001 war.

Meanwhile, amid the ruins of Harsud, the few who stayed on are making legal challenges of their own, demanding that they be paid the full compensation they say they are owed before the town is finally flooded.For most of Harsud, the court’s move has come too late. Usman Bhai gazes from his rooftop across the town he has spent all his life in “That was my school,” he says, pointing at a pile of stones. “And that was the bank I went to every day,” pointing at another. For now, the waters that are lapping in the main streets will not flood the town. Not until it has been paid and a delay of six months has been observed can the flooding proceed. Even on the deadline for them to leave earlier this year, the compensation had still not been given.The court has ordered a delay of one year, and that the compensation be properly monitored this time. Added to this, there were widespread allegations of corruption at the time.Everyone you meet in Harsud tells you about “the 56″ – 56 well-connected local politicians who bribed powerful friends and got paid far more than their land was worth.

Many of the people of Harsud even say they didn’t get the money for their land – because it had been falsely claimed by one of the 56.Now the courts have intervened to protect the inhabitants of the last 91 villages scheduled to be evacuated from receiving similar treatment. The Madhya Pradesh High Court found that the authorities had ignored a requirement to provide compensation to the villagers a full six months before they were forced to move, so they could build new homes and set up a new life, and so they could dispute the amount if they believed it was too little. But they did have to give the people from Harsud one and they didn’t do it.” Many activists have accused the Madhya Pradesh state government and the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), which is in charge of the Narmada project, of deliberately undervaluing the compensation in order to save money.Arundhati Roy has said that the chairman of the NHPC and two former Chief Ministers of Madhya Pradesh are “criminally culpable” and “in any society in which the powerful are accountable, would find themselves in jail”. The government didn’t have to provide them with a livelihood. They have disappeared into the vastness of India, trying to rebuild their lives somewhere new.The new town is a failure.