Philippa Garson CLASS STRUGGLE Two very different education “stories” dominated the news last week, both encapsulating the bizarre contradictions of this land. The first was the findings of the Curriculum Review committee, which in measured tones discussed its recommendations at a lengthy and fairly highbrow technical briefing. The second was the less palatable and frankly […]
Parks Mankahlana CROSSFIRE On Friday June 2, the Mail & Guardian published what was perhaps intended to be a review of the presidency of Thabo Mbeki. The article had nothing to do with Mbeki’s presidency but was rather a graphic display of the deep personal hatred that Howard Barrell has for Thabo Mbeki, the man. […]
NAWAAL DEANE, Johannesburg | Friday 12.30pm. SOCCER City will set the stage for a thrill-a-minute showdown between arch-rivals Sundowns and Chiefs in the BobSave Super Bowl final on Saturday. The berths for the final were decided following Chiefs’ 3-1 drubbing of Bush Bucks, while Sundowns went through with a 1-0 clincher against AmaZulu. Tradional pre-match […]
Cedric Mayson SPIRIT LEVEL Our children’s shoes lived in the car, put on going to school and kicked off on the way home. That changed when we went into exile and walked the frozen earth of London. But in the spring our youngest scandalised the neighbours by running down the street kaalvoet, saying: “I want […]
Richard Bowker SLAVE TRADES AND AN ARTIST’S NOTEBOOK by Ari Sitas (Deep South) Ari Sitas’s new book, Slave Trades and An Artist’s Notebook, 190 pages long, .consists of just two poems – those of the title. Though geographically specific – the action of each poem takes in a ravaged and destabilised Ethiopia – the historical […]
New research shows that casual labour strips workers of their rights, and causes divisions among workers Glenda Daniels Labour market flexibility impoverishes households and marginalises workers from the workplace, according to recent research. Speaking at a labour seminar at the University of the Witwatersrand, Bridget Kenny, a researcher at the sociology of work unit who […]
Sasol could soon join the great trek that has seen several top South African companies list abroad Belinda Beresford Sasol, the oil and petrochemicals company which was synonymous with countering anti-apartheid sanctions, has outgrown the country of its birth. The industrial weakling that was nurtured to shelter the apartheid regime from the vagaries of international […]
Dale McKinley CROSSFIRE South Africa is a strange place to be if you count yourself as a political activist and/or commentator. It often seems as if this sizeable sector of our population is caught in a linguistic time warp, what with echoes of vain, glorious, nationalist verbiage ringing in our Southern African ears, resistant strains […]
Paul Kirk and Jaspreet Kindra The mayor of KwaNongoma, who was slain this week, had been running a protection racket in which he and his associates allegedly beat residents of the KwaZulu- Natal town if they did not pay him R50 a month. The assassination of mayor Bhekuyise Sikhonde, an Inkatha Freedom Party strongman, instantly […]
MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday 11.45am. SOUTH African cricketers Pieter Strydom and Henry Williams on Friday cast further doubt over Hansie Cronje’s statement that he never approached any other players to affect the outcome of matches for money. Strydom told the King Commssion of inquiry that Cronje approached him before the first Test against […]