Cedric Mayson Spirit Level The Salvation Army is full of red tape. Being responsible for the lives and money of other people it has systems and procedures to be followed like any huge bureaucratic organisation. But Major Lena Jwili ignored it all when a young girl arrived at her home behind Baragwanath taxi rank in […]

Jaspreet Kindra The acting Minister of Intelligence, Penuell Maduna, has denied the existence of an investigation into an alleged plot to replace President Thabo Mbeki with Cyril Ramaphosa, the former secretary general of the African National Congress. In a separate comment, the Inspector General of Intelligence, Fazel Randera, questioned whether it would have been appropriate […]

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing into the crash was biased, crude and ignored the maxims of balance and fair play, writes Robert Kirby That the transcript of the secret Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings into the Helderberg accident has been kept from public view comes as no surprise. What is far more surprising […]

Thami Mazwai One understands Cosatu supremo Zwelinzima Vavi’s overriding passion for the welfare and well-being of workers. After all, fighting for workers is his profession as well as his bread and butter. But is he not being a bit myopic? There is no point in protecting rights if these result in investor wariness and the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and REUTERS, Johannesburg | Friday JOHNNIC Communications, which is preparing to bid for South Africa’s second fixed-line telephone licence, has raised R3.8bn from a rights offer to consolidate control of acquisitions and eliminate debt. The offer, which was 78.78% subscribed, saw more than R800m rand raised from minority shareholders, with the balance being […]

Glenda Daniels For the first time in South Africa domestic workers will be given accredited training once a new research project about to be undertaken by the Ministry of Labour gets under way next week. The Department of Labour is doing research after it was approached by the South African Domestic Workers’ Union to upgrade […]

Three separate stories in the news this week are worth tying together. The first is the case of Mosoko Rampuru (37), who was allegedly murdered in Sasolburg by being dragged behind a truck. His white employer has been charged with the killing. If the charge is substantiated and the employer is held to be mad, […]

Playwright and former exile Anthony Akerman’s career is symptomatic of the ruptures apartheid visited on us all Guy Willoughby Anthony Akerman’s latest play, Comrades Arms – a racy farce about an ex-leftie political exile reduced to running a bed- and-breakfast on the Garden Route – opens at the Wits Theatre this week after a rousing […]

Howard Barrell OVERABARREL Britain’s campaign to seize the Falklands Islands back from Argentina in 1982 provided the backdrop for a delightfully executed deception against a South African journalist. For a number of years, the journalist, who shall remain nameless, had maintained a fruitful (though proper) relationship with a locally based British diplomat who was not […]

New laws are soon to be introduced that will overhaul the billion-rand fishing industry Marianne Merten In an effort to root out widespread corruption and fraud in the fishing industry, Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) has launched one of the most decisive recent policy reviews and adopted “a carrot and stick” approach. It is understood […]