The Judicial Services Commission this week signalled the end of the old boys’ club on the Bench, writes Mungo Soggot The judiciary was shaken to its roots this week when the commission which regulates appointments to the Bench selected junior black judges for key posts instead of senior white candidates. The Judicial Services Commission sent […]

Wally Mbhele The African National Congress says the credibility of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report will be questioned if the commission continues to refuse to meet the party before it releases its findings. ANC officials are demanding a meeting with the commission to discuss the report’s implications for the party. The commission has […]

Chiara Carter The head of the elite presidential task unit charged with investigating Vito Palazzolo is standing by what he told the Mail & Guardian about an alleged photograph of former minister of foreign affairs Pik Botha in a compromising position. Botha was reported on the weekend to have said he intended suing the M&G […]

Alex Sudheim In 1769, at the tender age of 12, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his first German operetta, Bastien and Bastienne. Although the music is light and fanciful, Mozart’s librettists based their apparently ingenuous tale of pastoral romance on some rather subversive material. FW Weisskern, JH Muller and JA Schachtner retooled the plot of an […]

Virgin South Africa have expressed their desire to sign Fetish. Lauren Shantall charts the band’s rapid rise The first time I saw Fetish, at their second-ever gig, they were decidedly terrible. Now, they’re the first and only local band so far to have been offered a recording contract with the recently formed Virgin South Africa. […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 7.00pm. THREE Swiss women tourists leaving the Umfolozi game reserve on Wednesday afternoon were attacked and abducted by five men, and two of them gang-raped. According to KwaZulu-Natal police spokesman, the women, travelling in a hired car, were fired upon 200m from the gate of the reserve around 3pm, forcing […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 9.00pm. POLICE on Thursday revealed evidence that crime in Johannesburg is being reduced and the police force becoming more effective. Nationally, the numbers of cash-in-transit heists and bank robberies dropped nearly 50% in the period January to July 1998 from the same period in 1997. Cash heists were down 57,8% […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Goma | Thursday 7.00pm. REBELS in the Democratic Republic of Congo who this week captured the strategic eastern town of Kindu, are still ready to negotiate with President Laurent Kabila, a spokesman said on Thursday. The rebels’ position on negotiations “has not changed” after their victory in Kindu, said Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday 7.30pm. A MEMBER of the group responsible for the Bronkhorstspruit cash-in-transit heist in July last year was given R50000 of the spoils, even though he did not take part in the robbery itself, the Pretoria High Court heard on Thursday. Jerry Mashigo, who has turned state witness, said that while […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Wednesday 5.00pm. SOUTH African markets bucked an negative day on international markets to end firmer across the board as a long-awaited cut in the repo rate fuelled expectations that an interest rate cut is imminent. Dealers said that although the 25 basis point fall in the repo rate was only a […]