Dozens of paintings, a silver tea set and other items belonging to Nelson Mandela's ex-wife Winnie will be auctioned next week to pay off debts she owes to a South African school.

The sale will happen at the home of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, a polarizing figure who was beloved by many for her role in the anti-apartheid struggle but was also involved in legal troubles over the years, including a kidnapping conviction in the early 1990s.

Madikizela-Mandela collects a salary as a member of parliament, and she is also a member of the national executive committee of the ruling African National Congress, the liberation movement that has led successive governments since the end of white racist rule in 1994.

She defaulted on a $2,150 payment to Abbotts College, which has several high school campuses in South Africa, according to South African media. A relative of Madikizela-Mandela had been studying at Abbotts.

A court ruled against Madikizela-Mandela in 2011. Alan Levy Attorneys, a law firm representing the school system, said the auction will be held Tuesday at her home in the Soweto township of Johannesburg. Items for sale also include tables and chairs, a roomful of books and sculptures.

Madikizela-Mandela married Nelson Mandela in 1958 but then the couple was separated for 27 years while Mandela was imprisoned by South Africa's racist white government. He and Winnie divorced in 1997, during his term as the country's first black president.

Madikizela-Mandela was an anti-apartheid leader in her own right. However, her behavior grew increasingly erratic in the 1980s as crackdowns against her and the ANC grew increasingly intense. She and her former bodyguard unit, known as the Mandela United Football Club, were accused of committing 18 killings and other crimes during this period.

She was convicted of charges including kidnapping in 1991. Initially sentenced to six years in jail, she was ordered to pay a $3,200 fine on appeal.

In March, forensic experts exhumed two skeletons believed to belong to two young activists last seen at her home 24 years ago. No charges have been filed.

A militant South African union said on Sunday that one of its organizers had been shot dead in the platinum belt city of Rustenburg, a potential flashpoint at a time when tensions are running high with job cuts and wage talks looming.

The Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which poached tens of thousands of disgruntled workers last year from the dominant National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), said the unnamed organizer had been killed on Saturday.

"It is obvious his killing is related to his involvement with AMCU in the area," Jimmy Gama, AMCU's national treasurer, told Reuters. "We are sending our officials there to find out more facts."

A police statement said that a 46-year-old man who was "alleged to be the regional organizer of AMCU" had been killed in a Rustenburg tavern on Saturday when an assailant shot him four times with a 9mm pistol.

An AMCU source in Rustenburg told Reuters the organizer had been an activist with the union at platinum producer Lonmin.

Police shot dead 34 striking miners last year at Lonmin's Marikana mine, the most violent single incident stemming from the AMCU-NUM turf war.

Local media reported that the AMCU activist killed on Saturday had been due to give testimony to a government inquiry into last year's police shootings, dubbed the "Marikana Massacre".

More than 50 people were killed in labor-related violence last year amid a wave of wildcat strikes that hit production in the platinum and gold sectors and there are concerns that there could be more unrest after Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) announced job cuts on Friday.

The world's top platinum producer, owned by Anglo American, said it would cut 6,000 mining jobs around Rustenburg. The layoffs were scaled back from the 14,000 initially proposed, as the company seeks to restore profits without provoking a backlash from the government and workers.

However, AMCU activists in the area have signaled that they will "fight" even these job losses and the union is to hold a mass meeting early this week to decide on its response. When the initial plan was unveiled in January, AMCU protests shut several mines for a day.

The union also said it would hold a news briefing on Monday to discuss Saturday's killing.

Forthcoming wage talks in South Africa's mining sector will be among the toughest ever, given inflation, rising worker militancy, shrinking company margins and falling commodity prices.

An overexcited cheetah jumped up from behind a fence and scratched the face of Botswana's President Ian Khama, causing minor injuries, the southern African leader's spokesman said Monday.

It was "a freak accident, not an attack," spokesman Jeff Ramsay told The Associated Press by telephone.

He said Khama did not go to the hospital but saw a doctor who gave him two stitches to his nose for the "minor wounds."

Khama, 60, was asked about it when he appeared at public meetings in southeast Botswana with a plaster on his nose.

The cheetah is part of a menagerie kept by soldiers at the Botswana Defense Force barracks at Mogoditshane in Gaberone, the capital.

Ramsay said Khama went to watch the cheetahs being fed early last week, as he often does. "One of them got excited and jumped up at him" with its claw reaching above the enclosure, Ramsay said. Khama is well over 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall.

"The president was scratched a bit on the nose and elsewhere ... the claw basically grazed his face."

He said it all happened very swiftly, catching the president and his aide by surprise. Cheetahs are the fastest land animals in the world, a vulnerable species with little more than 7,000 adults remaining in Africa and Iran, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Khama's attacker was at the Botswana Defense Force Animal Awareness Park, which the president himself established in 1989 when he was a lieutenant general in command of Botswana's armed forces.

He began the park to teach wild animal behavior to soldiers who were being deployed to fight poachers killing rhinos and elephants. The park, which has been opened to the public and is a favorite outing for school children, now holds lions and leopards, crocodiles and snakes, monkeys, baboons and zebras.

Khama, whose father was the first president of independent Botswana, was elected president in 2008. He's known as a no-nonsense, straight-talking leader who drives himself around. He is known for his criticism of his neighbor, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who was elected in 1980 but has clung to power recently through elections marked by state-sponsored violence and torture to intimidate voters, according to human rights groups. Khama's government has suggested that southern African countries should close their borders with landlocked Zimbabwe to force Mugabe to hold free elections.

More recently, Khama was in the news last month with stringent criticism of Chinese enterprise in his country. In an interview with South Africa's BusinessDay newspaper, Khama said Botswana had had bad experiences with Chinese companies and called their construction work "not the best." He blamed one for chronic power outages in his usually efficient country and said his government is giving special scrutiny to any Chinese contracts.

Khama also complained to BusinessDay about perceived excessive Chinese migration. "We accept China's goods. But they don't have to export their population to sell us those goods," he said. "They will crowd us out."

The South African Teachers Union (Sadtu) handed over their memorandum of demands to the Presidency at the Union Buildings today. Up to 15 000 teachers belonging to the union marched from Marabastad to the Union Buildings as part of their rolling industrial campaign to have Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga and department's director-general Soobrayan sacked.

Cosatu leaders Zwelinzima Vavi and Sdumo Dlamini, respectively secretary general and president, were part of the march. This was their first public show of solidarity for Sadtu's campaign since it started with pickets in February.

Zuma has until mid-May to fire the two from the Department of Basic Education, Sadtu deputy general secretary Nkosana Dolopi told the teachers when reading the union's memorandum. "We're giving Zuma 21 days to respond," Dolopi said – failure to which will lead to the union's national executive committee to "decide to intensify this action to a full-blown industrial strike".

Bernadette Leon, head of Presidential Frontline Service Delivery Monitoring at the Presidency, accepted the memorandum. "The Presidency accepts your memorandum and we'll respond in due course."

Such a strike will throw education in the country's public schools into disarray as about 70% of teachers belong to Sadtu. Even today's march crippled these schools as many were closed and children ordered to return home.

Union demands
The union's chief gripe is that the department withdrew an agreement that would result in 100% remuneration hikes for examination paper markers.

Soobrayan signed the agreement in the chambers in 2011, but the department resisted enforcing it, citing lack of funds. Motshekga went on to withdraw the agreement in February this year, much to the ire of the Cosatu-aligned union. Sadtu started calling for her resignation after this decision.

The matter over the status of the agreement is now before the Labour Court and will be heard in August. "Bobby was not drunk when he signed that agreement. He was not forced or coerced to sign it," Dolopi said.

Cosatu's Dlamini, who is also a member of the ANC national executive committee, called on Zuma to fire Motshekga on his capacity as president of the ruling party and head of state. "We're saying the president of the ANC, the state president who appoints ministers, must recall this minister," he said.

"President we're tired of making this call [for Motshekga's axing] everyday." Zuma must also fire Soobrayan because he appointed him, Dlamini said.

"The education of our children cannot be held to ransom by these two individuals." Motshekga was an obstacle in improving basic education, Dlamini said. "[We're saying to] that minister, Angie Motshekga, we want to move forward in transforming education. She's not fitting the bill."

'Oil onto fire'
Dlamini warned Motshekga against taking action against any of the thousands of teachers who marched. "The minister must even think of that. Already there's fire. Don't pour oil onto fire," he said.

The South African Students Congress (Sasco) and the Young Communist League also turned out to show support for Sadtu. "Away with the dictatorship of the employer, away," Sasco's secretary Themba Masondo howled from the makeshift stage.

Masondo told the teachers Sasco share their gripe that the department undermined them by withdrawing from a collective agreement. "We came to pledge our solidarity with you on behalf of all students in our universities and colleges. We can't stand by when teachers' rights are being violated. Teachers want to be respected in the same way Bobby and Angie want to be respected," he said.