Ferial Haffajee The government has slashed the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s (IBA) budget by millions, and the organisation is haemorrhaging skilled staff who are leaving to avoid a troubled merger with the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra). Five departments are without heads and insiders say other essential staff are “looking [for work] or leaving” before […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Northern Province Department of Education staffers welcomed the suspension last week of their Director General, Zachari Chuenyane. Staffers say Chuenyane, suspended by MEC for Education Joe Phaahla, was “incompetent, inefficient and severely lacking in management skills”. Cracks in Chuenyane’s hold on one of the province’s most senior posts began to show four […]

Anton Marshall On stage in Cape Town If it’s very difficult talking to comics about serious issues, it’s hell talking to comics about funny issues. Somewhere in Church Street, central Cape Town, there is a unique little coffee lounge that is called – well, The Coffee Lounge. It is unusual in that one floor above […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga The University of Zululand – one of the hardest hit by government subsidy cuts and student debt – spent more than R1,7-million on curtains in three years. However, university representative Carl de Villiers said this week a preliminary report on the linen spending spree “does not show any criminal activity”. The probe […]

Emeka Nwandiko As South African companies struggle to fill high-flying posts they are increasingly relying on executive recruitment agencies – better known as headhunters – to fill the gap. Crime is the reason most often given for the outflow of mainly white senior executives from South Africa since 1994. The Central Statistical Service notes that […]

A letter from Don Mkhwanazi cites Thabo Mbeki as the “top command” of his black-empowerment bank, reports Mungo Soggot The offices of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and businessman Don Mkhwanazi this week sought to dispel suggestions that Mbeki was closely involved with the Malaysian-backed bank Mkhwanazi chairs. Senior staffers at the bank, including its former […]

Tim Radford meets the Princeton professor whose warning on human genetic engineering has drawn fire from critics but growing acceptance from scientists Watch out for Homo proteus, the species that changes its own shape. Last month Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking told President Bill Clinton – at a millennium lecture at the White House – that […]

Appearance masked disappearance and death in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Nothing was how it seemed. Nigel Fountain reports on the photos that hid dirty deeds One photograph in The Commissar Vanishes is of two men playing chess in the sunshine of Capri. It is April 1908. Alexander Bogdanov, later to found the Soviet Union’s first blood […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi African National Congress politicians have allegedly taken a direct hand in a disciplinary hearing against an SABC journalist. The hearing is threatening relations between junior staffers and senior managers at the SABC, where three trade unions have vowed to act against any victimisation. At the centre of the tensions are allegations that Northern […]

Njongonkulu Ndungane: UBUNTU Last week I was privileged to attend the launch of a new liberation movement: the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign. This movement’s main objective is the liberation of Africa from the chains of debt. The movement calls for Africa to begin the new millennium with a clean slate, free from debt, as a […]