Glenda Daniels While a lower-level employee at the African National Congress headquarters said last week she was looking for another job because she did not get an increase this year and earns only R2 600 after tax, ministers who earn about R40 000 a month got a 10% increase. Top ANC officials such as secretary […]

Out of chaos come international biosafety rules, signed but still to be ratified John Vidal When Professor Howard Atkinson and colleagues at Leeds University genetically modified a potato to be pest- resistant without the use of chemicals, it was decided to test it in Bolivia, one of the world’s poorest and most malnourished countries and […]

THE Pietermaritzburg Regional Court has dismissed a high profile rape case against Johannesburg tycoon Jonty Sandler, who had been accused of raping a security guard at gunpoint in a Drakensburg hotel. Magistrate Fred de Beer threw out the case on the grounds that the evidence presented against Sandler in court this week boiled down to […]

South Africa has the most skewed distribution of income in the world after Brazil Glenda Daniels Wage gaps in South Africa are excessive, the second largest in the world after Brazil, recent research shows. A report by the National Labour and Economic Development Institute (Naledi) shows that wage policy is one of the most contested […]

Victoria Brittain ME AGAINST MY BROTHER: AT WAR IN SOMALIA, SUDAN, AND RWANDA by Scott Peterson (Routledge) ACROSS THE RED RIVER: RWANDA, BURUNDI AND THE HEART OF DARKNESS by Christian Jennings (Orion) T he United Nations’s recent humiliation in Sierra Leone was a disaster almost as inevitable as the UN experience in Somalia a decade […]

Karen Rutter LIFESTYLE People are quick to use the word “charming” when describing Kalk Bay village. Especially people who write for glossy magazines or take tours around the Cape Peninsula. “Picturesque” is another word that pops up, while “quaint” is a firm favourite in the adjective line-up. All of which is quite true when viewing […]

Glenda Daniels A senior official of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has been dismissed for criticising the union’s handling of a strike amid claims by some of his colleagues that he was targeted for being too left wing. Dinga Sikwebu, who has been nominated for the post of general secretary, was […]

The summits have turned into expensive media fests that don’t deliver very much Larry Elliot The good news for United States President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the other G8 leaders is that Okinawa was no Seattle. Holding their annual shindig on a tropical island, converted for a couple of days into […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Pietermaritzburg Regional Court this week dismissed a high-profile rape case against Johannesburg tycoon Jonty Sandler, who had been accused of assaulting a security guard at gunpoint in a Drakensberg hotel. Magistrate Fred de Beer threw out the case on the grounds that the evidence presented against Sandler in court this […]

Duncan Mackay ATHLETICS Though officials must fear having to act as peacemakers to Maurice Greene and Michael Johnson in the United States Olympic squad for Sydney, at least they should not have any problems from their runners for the women’s 800m, where for the first time in history one family will fill all three places. […]