Yearly Archives: 1999

Do annual government budgets really matter? A great fuss invariably accompanies them and they attract a degree of examination which seems quite disproportionate for what they usually turn out to be. In fact, the annual budget is really little more than a household accounting of how much money will be needed to pay for the […]

Marianne Merten More than 200 people have heeded a Western Cape African National Congress call for members of the public to join the police reservists. Bright yellow posters calling for volunteers went up throughout Cape Town recently after the party pledged to National Commissioner George Fivaz that it would recruit 500 new volunteers by April […]

Emeka Nwandiko Black employees at Gauteng’s Department of Finance have rallied around a white colleague who was dismissed for making a racist remark, saying her sacking was “apartheid in reverse”. Bets Enslin was dismissed last Friday after she was brought before a disciplinary tribunal for an incident last December. It is alleged that Enslin jokingly […]

Mungo Soggot The company accused of paying a R1-million bribe for a Gauteng gambling licence, Tsogo Sun, is fighting a court order instructing the Mpumalanga gambling board to hand over tapes of deliberations which gave Tsogo a licence in Witbank. In a judgment that raises questions about the gambling booard’s conduct, Judge Brian Southwood ordered […]

market Mail & Guardian reporter The Mail & Guardian’s circulation grew by 6% between the last six months of 1997 and the last six months of 1998, as quality niche publications bucked the trend of declining newspaper circulations throughout the country. According to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures, the M&G sold an average […]

Jakes Gerwel shuns publicity, but Rhodes University’s new chancellor played a key role in the Lockerbie agreement, writes Chiara Carter It is a long way from Somerset East to Tripoli and almost as far a distance, metaphorically, from the “home of the left” University of the Western Cape (UWC) to the liberal portals of Rhodes […]

Ferial Haffajee Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel again displayed his linguistic dexterity this week. It has become a Trevor trademark to deliver bits of the annual budget in at least three languages. His fluent Xhosa brought the house down and the minister clearly loved playing to the gallery. In his three years in office Manuel […]

BRITAIN, Norway, Mali and Togo have offered to host peace talks between rebels and the government in Sierra Leone where fighting this year has claimed up to 5000 lives. Widespread atrocities such as crude amputations and immolation have been attributed to the rebels.Britain, Sierra Leone’s former colonial power, has said the two sides could use […]

>From parallel parking to Ponte, Stephen Hobbs’s exhibition puts a new spin on living in Johannesburg, writes Chris Roper Arriving at the opening of Stephen Hobbs’ current exhibition, Torque of the Town, normally unflappable Capetonians are confronted with a scene of disjunctive strangeness. All the road markings in Bree Street have been painted out. Even […]