Howard Barrell A Security Council resolution has given South Africa a brief respite from having to make good its various undertakings to provide military support personnel – and perhaps combat troops as well – for the United Nations peace support mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The council has decided to suspend any further […]

The dust is settling after Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel ended the acrimonious Nedcor-Stanbic battle Belinda Beresford In an age where bigger is better, the government has finally put the brakes on the growth in size and power of the “big four” banks. In refusing Nedcor permission to go ahead with an attempted hostile takeover […]

history Ebrahim Harvey LEFT FIELD The recent re-emergence of the white Afrikaner taalstryd movement has generated heated debate in this and other papers. Unfortunately, there are some historical myths about Afrikaans and the “coloured” people it seeks to win over which have been perpetuated and need to be debunked. Much as language is the lifeblood […]

LIBYA has welcomed a decision by the United States government to cease classifying Libya and six other countries as “rogue states”. The United States earlier this week dropped the use of the term “rogue state” from its foreign policy lexicon in favor of the broader categorization “state of concern”. US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher […]

Barry Streek The Royal Dutch/Shell group has allocated R4,5-million to two South African educational programmes concerning energy use over the next three years. This is part of the new Shell Foundation, which has received initial funding of more than R200-million for social and environmental projects relating to energy use throughout the world and which was […]

delays Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Northern Province public service commission has launched a probe into alleged irregularities involving the selection of prescribed textbooks for the province’s schools – irregularities that could lead to serious delays in textbooks reaching pupils. This comes less than a week after Minister of Education Kader Asmal announced the appointment […]

Justin Arenstein Former Mpumalanga premier Mathews Phosa has assembled a rogue’s gallery of disgraced politicians and shady financiers to fund his new R390-million casino hotel development in Maputo. The deal is one of a series involving Phosa and other prominent Mpumalanga figures under investigation by South Africa’s Scorpions unit and police commercial crime teams. Scorpions […]

Paul Kirk A group of United States pollution experts has described the air south of Durban as “toxic soup”, saying that the oil refineries around the city are emitting up to eight times the internationally acceptable amount of benzene. The survey by an American NGO, Communities for a Better Environment, detected a variety of other […]

Ivor Powell South Africa’s plans to send a peacekeeping force to the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo could be scuppered by the refusal of senior army officers to command the force. Military sources said this week that the army had not been able to identify a single experienced field commander of the required rank of […]

Gregory Mthembu-Salter A planned meeting in Johannesburg this week of Burundi’s Hutu rebel Forces pour la dfense de la democratie (FDD) and Forces nationales de liberation (FNL) failed to materialise, prompting fears that neither party will attend peace talks in Arusha, Tanzania, next month. Nevertheless, Nelson Mandela, who has mediated the talks since January, remains […]