For Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I’m Thabi Shomolekae.

Making headlines: Political parties lay criminal charges against Nzimande, NSFAS board chair; Joburg mayor snubs water activists once again; And, ANC presses for unity, takes aim at Zuma's MK Party after Mbalula cops to Nkandla lie

Political parties lay criminal charges against Nzimande

The Democratic Alliance and ActionSA have laid criminal charges against Minister of Higher Education, Science and Technology Dr Blade Nzimande, for his alleged role in defrauding the National Student Financial Aid Scheme through kickbacks paid to him, NSFAS board chairperson Ernest Khoza, and the South African Communist Party.

Last week, non-profit civil rights organisation the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse said it had voice recordings containing “damning allegations about a patronage network in the Department of Higher Education, implicating Nzimande, Khoza, and several others”.

The organisation alleged that Nzimande and Khoza were involved in the fraudulent scheme coordinated by corrupt tenderpreneurs to loot NSFAS through irregular contracts.

On Monday, Nzimande rejected the allegations in a media briefing, vowing to take legal action. He said he would voluntarily subject himself to the African National Congress’s ethics and integrity bodies.

NSFAS board chair; Joburg mayor snubs water activists once again

A group of water experts want to help Johannesburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda solve the city's ongoing water crisis, but first they have to get him to meet with them.

The Johannesburg Water Crisis Committee said Gwamanda snubbed them for a second time after he cancelled a rescheduled meeting over water outages in the city at the last minute.

And while Gwamanda plays hide-and-seek with the committee, Johannesburg residents have suffered water outages in parts of the city every day for the past two months.

Committee leader Farah Domingo said a meeting with city leaders had been scheduled for 13 December but after 18:00 on 12 December, the meeting was cancelled.

Gwamanda, however, said it was his intention to continue working with the residents through the committee to find a lasting solution to the water outages.

And, ANC presses for unity, takes aim at Zuma's MK Party after Mbalula cops to Nkandla lie

Hours after African National Congress secretary-general Fikile Mbalula exposed his party's great lie about former ANC president Jacob Zuma's Nkandla fire pool, the recurring theme from party leaders was to take shots at Zuma.

Mbalula revealed one of the worst-kept secrets in ANC history: what the party called a fire pool in the R240-million Nkandla scandal was, in fact, a simple swimming pool.

In a shocking move from a former ANC president, Zuma backed the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, without resigning as a member of the ANC, and a few weeks after he was elected as the KwaZulu-Natal chairperson of the ANC's alliance partner, the SA National Civic Organisation.

In the first video posted on Sunday evening, Mbalula said, the ANC went to Parliament and opened an ad hoc committee and said a swimming pool is a fire pool.

He added that people lost their careers because of the Nkandla scandal.

That’s a roundup of news making headlines today

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