Yearly Archives: 1999

Shaun Harris TAKING STOCK Falling interest rates are starting to attract potential home owners to the property market again. Many of these people are first-time home buyers, the so-called emerging class precluded from the full property market in the past because of apartheid laws or limited access to finance. Now, it seems that whenever there […]

Marianne Merten Claims that a Calvinia farmer is conducting a reign of terror in the little Northern Cape town with the help of police to keep assault cases out of court are receiving attention from the provincial police commissioner. After residents last month protested about violent assaults of farm and casual workers which, they say, […]

Donald McRae reports how the upcoming welterweight clash between Oscar de la Hoya and Felix Trinidad could save boxing’s credibility When the moment comes on Saturday September 18, at 9pm in the glittering darkness of Las Vegas, it will be easy to remember Sugar Ray Robinson, the greatest fighter there has ever been. The sultry […]

Barry Streek The Film and Publication Board took some “very, very difficult” decisions last year as it cleared a backlog of some 6 000 videos, many of them porn movies, to decide whether adults should be allowed to buy them, says its CEO Dr Nana Makaula. It had to decide, for instance, whether adult choice […]

A Centre for Development and Enterprise report proposes a major reconfiguration of our political landscape, argues Jeremy Cronin ‘Caesar, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, Cromwell … compile a catalogue of the historical events which have culminated in a great ‘heroic personality’,” Antonio Gramsci noted to himself, as he languished in an Italian fascist prison. “Caesarism,” he […]

CD of the week Prior to making Civilised? (Gallo), Squeal had completely ceased to exist as a band – an inevitable conclusion to a year of personnel changes, falling gig attendance and personal turmoil. All that remains of the original Long Pigs is the song-writing core of David Birch (guitar, vocals) and Brett Barnes (bass, […]

Andy Capostagno Springbok preparations It is sad to think that the Currie Cup final has become irrelevant. Once the showpiece of the season and, at least during the isolation years, the pinnacle of many players’ careers, it now just marks the time between the end of the South African season and the beginning of a […]

The Wilgespruit Fellowship Centre, where today’s politicians learned their negotiating skills, is once again involved in finding peaceful alternatives to violence. Jacqui Pile reports While new gun legislation has met with fierce resistance, there is one way of disposing of illegal and excess weapons which is both novel and unlikely to inspire so much antagonism. […]

Mungo Soggot The Department of Public Enterprises is going to extreme lengths to shore up a crumbling deal with a private company to run the ailing state diamond company, Alexkor. The Minister of Public Enterprises is Jeff Radebe, and his wife, Bridget, chairs the private company involved, Nabera. For several months, Nabera has been in […]

Barbara Ludman HONEY, MUD, MAGGOTS AND OTHER MEDICAL MARVELS by Robert and Michele Root- Bernstein (Macmillan) Gout reached epidemic proportions in 18th-century England among those wealthy enough to over-indulge in port. But it wasn’t the port itself that was poisoning them; it was the lead it was picking up from the casks it was stored […]