Yearly Archives: 2000

David Le Page TAKING STOCK As dot.coms scream up the graphs in the United States and Europe, it’s hard for local investors to ignore the lure of the information technology sector. Media stories about the Y2K problem have been replaced by predictions for likely IT developments in the next 20 or 30 years that would […]

John Matshikiza WHO ARE … THE HAINS? ‘Liberal” was a term that was often (and sometimes still is) regarded as a swear word on both sides of the South African political divide. Liberals were either thought of as being the ones who sat on the fence and held back the tide of revolution, or as […]

Bhorat Haroon Minister of Welfare and Development Zola Skweyiya recently announced his department’s intention to pursue the feasibility of setting up a national income grant scheme. There can be no doubt that such a grant system requires serious consideration, to buttress the current suite of social assistance programmes directed at the country’s most indigent. One […]

Brett Morris It was purely by accident that I found Peace in Jo’burg the other day. I was driving along Louis Botha Avenue, on my way to do all sorts of pre-planned Saturday afternoon things, when my clutch cable snapped. I managed to push my car on to a side street amid a barrage of […]

Andrew MuchineripiSoccer The African Cup of Nations quarter-finals showdown between South Africa and Ghana in Kumasi on Sunday brings together teams that can only improve after disastrous endings to their mini-league programmes. I have never been more ashamed of wearing Bafana Bafana colours than in midweek, when even a first-minute goal from Shaun Bartlett could […]

CD of the week One of Johannesburg’s most happening clubs, always packed to capacity, is 206, with its ever-impressive line-up of top musicians on the stage and talented DJs spinning the best acid jazz, drum’n’bass, jungle and the like. Now you can take the party home with the excellent album 206 Mix (Virgin), with its […]

Fiona Macleod Mpumalanga province declared its first internationally protected wetlands on World Wetlands Day on Wednesday. The Verloren Vallei Nature Reserve, 10km north of Dullstroom, is the province’s first proposed Ramsar site. This means it will be recognised internationally as a wetland system of importance, and will be protected against degradation and development. “We started […]

Fiona Macleod Controversial wildlife dealer Riccardo Ghiazza was arrested this week on charges of fraud and falsely obtaining South African citizenship. Ghiazza (46), the man at the centre of the Tuli elephant furore, appeared briefly in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday for allegedly failing to declare he had a drug conviction in Italy when […]

Fiona Macleod The Medical Research Council (MRC) is setting up a new primate unit at Delft in the Western Cape to breed baboons for medical research. The council says it is no longer internationally acceptable to use primates caught in the wild for experimentation, and it is setting up the new unit for “scientific and […]

Peter Dickson Eastern Cape sangoma and self-styled direct royal descendant and chief Nicholas Tilana Gcaleka, who hit world headlines four years ago with his British hunt for the head of 19th-century Xhosa King Hintsa, has taken legal action to retrieve the skull from the University of Cape Town (UCT). But the UCT forensic medicine department’s […]