Yearly Archives: 1999

THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange wants the laws regulating financial markets changed to allow it to merge with the country’s bonds and futures exchanges, its representatives told Parliament on Thursday. Addressing the finance committee, JSE legal counsel Nicky Newton-King said the merger will make for increased efficiency and lowered costs, making the new exchange internationally competitive.

FOREIGN exchange operations are to start operating on a daily basis in Nigeria from next month to cope with rising demand, the country’s central bank (CBN) said on Friday. CBN spokesperson Tony Ede said that demand at the Automated Foreign Exchange Market in Abuja, the official market for foreign exchange in Nigeria, continued to rise […]

society My colleague Mungo Soggot’s glib call for a total ban on guns (“What’s the hold-up on banning guns?” January 29 to February 4 and preceding editorial “Ban guns, build jails, fire Sydney”) is as useful as a call to ban malaria. The fact is that guns are not so much a problem in themselves […]

Fiona Macleod A Pretoria businessman is suing conservation authorities for about R7- million after he discovered that buffalo he bought at a public auction are infected with a disease that is fatal to cattle. At least 150 cattle have died in the past two weeks at a farm in Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal, where the buffalo are […]

Jonathan Jones on an unlikely affair between Kenneth Tynan and Louise Brooks – and the widow who told their story in a screenplay Martin Scorsese is best known for his films about the violently deranged and delusional, about boxing, vigilantism and the mafia. Now he is set to tackle a story about a British theatre […]

offer Howard Barrell Heavy pressure from Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila’s military allies lies behind his statement on Wednesday that he is ready to open peace talks and sign a ceasefire with rebels. But security analysts and the rebels remain doubtful about Kabila’s seriousness in the search for peace in the war-ravaged Central […]

Y2K is getting steadily closer. Donna Block investigated how it may affect your money Three-hundred-and-thirty days and counting. The millennium bug is upon us and no doubt you’ve heard the horror stories that could begin at the stroke of midnight on December 31 1999. Unable to cope with the year 2000, computer programs go crazy […]

Patrick Smith Former South African president FW de Klerk presided over a Cabinet meeting in March 1993 that gave Cape businessman Vito Palazzolo a residence permit, although at the time he was the subject of an Italian extradition warrant. The respected magazine Africa Confidential will report this week that in September 1993, De Klerk’s government […]

A friend with zero tolerance of nonsense points out that not a shred of credible evidence has yet been produced to support the view that a group of militant Muslims is responsible for the spate of evidently politically motivated bomb attacks in the Western Cape. He is right. The only support comes from inference drawn […]

Chiara Carter A Cape Town bus company employee is asking the Labour Court to find that he has been paid less than a white colleague because he is black – a case which, if successful, is likely to set a precedent for challenging discrimination in the workplace. Michael Louw, a buyer for Golden Arrow Bus […]