Lisa Buckingham The Bank of England has begun a discreet investigation into index tracker investment funds. It is worried that the burgeoning growth of such “passive” stock market vehicles risk destabilising London’s financial markets. A team of senior executives in the bank’s financial stability unit is monitoring the issue amid growing fears that tracker funds […]
Iden Wetherell Frustrated by the refusal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) states to support the embattled governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Angola, Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe has crafted a weapon he hopes will deal a decisive blow to rebel movements in the region. Meeting with presidents Jos Eduardo dos Santos […]
Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week Hate has always been a powerful driving force for movie narratives; whether it’s the supposedly morally correct vigilante hatred of Dirty Harry’s “Feeling lucky Punk?”, Ralph Fiennes diabolically loathsome Krakow Nazi Commandant, Amon Goeth, teetering on the brink of racial madness in Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, or Malcolm McDowell’s […]
Powerful politicians have embarked on a two-pronged strategy to influence the ANC’s selection of the Gauteng premier candidate, writes Wally Mbhele As Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga’s tight grip on his post begins to falter, it appears that his political opponents are winning a battle to remove him from the most powerful provincial office in the […]
Sunday night in front of the box fed up with endless images of bombs, refugees and Nato briefings I did a little channel surfing and came across a lovely little film, called A Month By the Lake, starring Vanessa Redgrave. She plays a spinster looking for romance during an Italian holiday just before World War […]
Last year there was more hype around Josiah Thugwane’s participation in the London Marathon than about the millennium bug. This year, the Olympic champion is downplaying his chances after inadequate preparation, leaving Elana Meyer to carry the burden of South African hopes at one of the world’s top three big city marathons. The 32-year-old Meyer […]
Ian Clayton Some “struggle accounting” was uncovered in the Department of Trade and Industry by Auditor General Henri Kluever when he examined its accounts for a R3,1-million small business conference. The department spent an extra R1,2-million without authorisation over and above the R2-million it received from the Danish government for the second national conference on […]
There’s more to investment clubs than starting a stokvel. Alex Brown explains how to get your savings on the stock exchange `Give me an acorn and the passage of time and I’ll give you an oak tree.” So it is with money – but the problem is that few of us are Zen enough to […]
Charlene Smith The police have arrested a suspect in my rape case. Since then the calls he had been making to me after the rape, two or three times a day, have stopped. During the calls he vowed to return, threatened my life and asked me to put more money into my bank account for […]
A couple of years ago the taste in publishing was for the self-lacerating memoir. Many writers set out to put the raw facts about their lives on the page. Now the game has moved on to memoirs by relatives, friends, former lovers – people with secrets that the subjects of those memoirs might have preferred […]