Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Student Representative Council (SRC) leaders have boarded the gravy train at South Africa’s universities and technikons. Some are paid “honorary” salaries, while other benefits include free vehicles, cellphones, housing, meals and trips around the country. SRCs also spend tens of thousands of rands each year on student bashes. And at one […]

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 […]

Mail & Guardian reporter Apart from pornography, keeping up with the news, and monitoring the latest on Zippergate, the Internet can also provide a playground for a budding George Soros. Local and international financial service websites are rapidly expanding. Their offerings range from basic financial information to trading a portfolio on the Web. Internationally people […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kimberly | Friday, 8.00pm. GRIQUAS showed a sensational first-half score run in which they scored six tries, and then went on to notch up a definite 64-7 win over Mpumalanga Pumas in their Bankfin Currie Cup rugby match at the Absa Park stadium on Friday. Griquas led 36-0 at halftime. It was man […]

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 […]

y So Craig Williamson wishes he was James Bond and a generation of aspirant psychos model themselves on Hannibal Lecter. Maggie Davey listened to American theorist Mark Seltzer on the concept of a `wound culture’ Did Craig Williamson really have to reassure us that spying for the apartheid government was no James Bond fantasy? You […]

Peter Dickson More than R300-million in taxpayers’ money is owed in unauthorised, outstanding loans to senior civil servants in the Eastern Cape. This disclosure comes a week after provincial speaker Gugile Nkwinti suspended two officials who had cashed in more than R300 000 in air tickets for members of the legislature without authorisation. The legislature’s […]

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 […]

Howard Barrell Over a Barrel We South Africans may have scored something of a first this week in the annals of foreign policy-making. We may well be the only country ever to complete what appears to be a full-scale somersault in foreign policy and to invade a neighbouring state while our president, deputy president, foreign […]