FRIDAY, 8.30AM THE National Party lost control of Pretoria City Council — once the party’s bastion — when 10 councillors including former mayors Nico Stofberg and Piet Olivier resigned from the party on Thursday. The 10 said they will join Roelf Meyer’s New Movement Process, as they “have now finally come to the conclusion that […]
empowerment fronts’ Black security companies have won contracts amid claims of being fronts for white firms, reports Ann Eveleth RAILWAYS parastatal Spoornet is handing a huge slice of lucrative security work to a company linked to contracts currently under investigation by the Office for Serious Economic Offences (Oseo). Spoornet, a subsidiary of Transnet, said this […]
FRIDAY, 5.00PM THE KwaZulu-Natal midlands town of Richmond was tense late this week as the African National Congress and expelled ANC MP Sifiso Nkabinde square up for a local council election on Sunday. Richmond’s ANC mayor of Andrew Ragavaloo said his wife heard several shots during the day but he said he was reassured by […]
certificates Justin Arenstein THE Northern Province government is investigating allegations that mortuary staff have been taking bribes to change death certificates, and to channel business to specific funeral companies. The provincial health department’s director general, Dr Nicholas Crisp, said this week the investigation is focused on the Pietersburg police forensic mortuary. His colleagues in the […]
ON any scorecard of the death sentence, the late Judge B O’Donovan handed down more death sentences than any of his colleagues. In a three-year period he sent 25 prisoners to be hanged, and in his career he handed down 39 death sentences. On the other hand, one judge, NM McArthur, never sent a single […]
Peta Thornycroft STORIES are emerging about the dying days of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and how South African mercenaries and desperadoes tried to make a quick buck out of the tottering regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. As rebel leader Laurent Kabila’s men prepared their final march on Kinshasa, Mobutu loyalists were in […]
listening The wind-up radio is finally available in SA after being produced for export only, reports Madeleine Wackernagel THE story of the wind-up radio is one of ironies. It took a South African company to realise its potential after its British inventor had no luck selling his idea in the rest of the world, but […]
LOOSE CANNON: Robert Kirby BOTH of my liberal friends have again gone into moral shock. This recent disaffection is no result of conventional stimuli. It has a more specific aetiology than the vaguely defined silts of the apartheid system. These two people are disturbed for very compact reasons. They have been watching and listening to […]
Muting the instruments Previous Grahamstown jazz festivals have usually been followed by one South African musician or another sounding off to the press. In the past, artists have had gripes about pay, conditions and programming. This year, you heard none of that; we can guarantee it. But the post-festival silence doesn’t mean that everything in […]
ATHLETICS:Julian Drew FOR Frits Potgieter it was never a matter of if but rather when he would break into the big time – and that moment arrived somewhat unceremoniously at a low key athletics meeting in Sheffield, England on Tuesday night. Potgieter added more than two metres to his previous personal best of 61.98m in […]