Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg `Sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson,” reads a note in the programme for the South African premiere of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive, a mesmerising new production that took to the Market Theatre stage last week. It was the “to teach […]

Mungo Soggot The Office of the Auditor General has appointed an oil trading expert from London to probe the government’s sale of about R2- billion worth of oil earlier this year. The government quietly sold off 25-million barrels – the bulk of South Africa’s strategic oil stock – in March and transferred R800-million of the […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Student political organisations at Technikon Witwatersrand have collapsed because they have failed to find roles in the new South Africa. “The leadership here has been weakening because students are not united in dealing with issues which affect them,” said student affairs official Andy Dass. “Student political organisations before the 1994 elections […]

A new computer system will allow the revenue service to harvest more taxes, writes Belinda Beresford The tax collector is quietly setting traps to catch those modest South Africans too shy to reveal their full income. The phone call interrupting supper could be a polite revenue service reminder that your tax return is overdue, or […]

Cameron Duodu: FIRST PERSON Just before President Bill Clinton set off on his March/April tour of Africa that brought him to South Africa, Ghanaian writer Cameron Duodu sent Clinton an open letter, urging Clinton to avail himself of the opportunity offered by the tour to put the Monica Lewinsky affair in its correct perspective. Duodu […]

Cynthia Schoeman Are leaders born or made? What made Mahatma Ghandi a person of adulation to millions, able to lead thousands in protest actions? The debate still rages. But whether leadership is inborn or developed, certainly there are too few natural leaders to meet the demands of companies in today’s fast changing world. Therefore, organisations […]

Hein Marais: A SECOND LOOK Eighteen months ago, questioning the virtues of the free market was tantamount to flashing a membership card of the Flat Earth Society. Today, there’s standing room only on the bandwagon of second thoughts about laissez- faire capitalism. Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, President Nelson Mandela, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, […]

Mail & Guardian reporter South African executives are notoriously reticent about earnings – something that is likely to change as globalisation exposes companies to business environments demanding more transparency. However, the latest survey by FSA-Contact provided a peek at other aspects of the rarefied world of top South African business. More than 98% of CEOs […]

Alex Duval Smith The smouldering remains of Lesotho, a kingdom raped of its constitutional integrity after South Africa’s heavy-handed military intervention, lie as visible proof of the post-apartheid government’s disastrous foreign policy. Political analysts believe that it is chiefly South Africa’s failure, since elections in 1994, to invent a credible role for itself in Africa […]