President Nelson Mandela returned from his gruelling trip to the United States and Canada on Sunday.

Ever been allowed into a movie for free and been allowed to drink beer and talk when you want to? Jean Barker visited Cape Town’s BioCafe Beers are R3, entrance is free, and everyone is at the BioCafe on Wednesday evenings long before the short film screening starts, chatting and drinking. The chatting and drinking […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dakar | Friday 7.00pm. THE United States has airlifted former warlord and now fugitive Roosevelt Johnson out of Liberia on Friday to end a week-long standoff that began when he sought refuge inside the American Embassy in Monrovia. One helicopter swooped down on a small landing pad at the back of the sprawling […]

tirades Howard Barrel’s Over a Barrel column (September 18 to 24) was a tirade, without an ounce of sober and investigative journalistic skill. According to Barrell, the workers who embark on strikes are mad and “stupid beyond belief”. According to him, the present international and domestic economic climate should deter those who “willy- nilly” down […]

Robert Potts SIMPLICITY by Edward de Bono (Viking) Edward de Bono’s many, many books include Conflicts: A Better Way to Solve Them; Handbook for the Positive Revolution; How To Be More Interesting; and Teach Yourself to Think. These seem to have sold extremely well, both to human beings and also to (the apparent target audience) […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]