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 […]

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 […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga The Vaal Triangle Technikon council this week rubbished a report on the troubled institution commissioned by Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu and announced it will challenge the minister’s intervention in court. The fight between the technikon and the minister was triggered by the council’s decision to discipline rector Aubrey Mokadi, accused of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

`justice’ When hit squads roamed KwaZulu-Natal during the early 1990s, the province’s Attorney General, Tim McNally, developed a reputation for being reluctant to prosecute alleged Inkatha Freedom Party assassins and their police accomplices. McNally’s seemingly ambiguous attitude to prosecution was once again in the public spotlight last week when the attorney general released a press […]