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 […]

Ferial Haffajee Here’s the dream: industrial development zones (IDZ) will bring prosperity to some of the country’s poorest areas, where new industries will fuel the renaissance of the economy as exports grow. An advanced labour relations system will solve disputes in record time as thousands of workers will be trained to service new industries. Here’s […]

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 […]

David Beresford One of the former stars of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s investigative team, Piers Pigou, this week delivered a savage critique of the inquiry, charging it with having failed lamentably in its task of uncovering the “truth” about human rights violations during the apartheid era. Pigou, who will long be remembered for his […]

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 […]

The Durban Designer Emporium’s first exhibition installation was a facelift for fashion and performance art, writes Suzy Bell `Durban’s sub-culture needs to be tickled, then scratched,” hissed the chick with a live goldfish swishing about her liquid handbag. The blood still hasn’t quite drained from the flush of it all, but the gouges, at least, […]

Andy Capostagno Rugby Not that last year’s Super 12 left South African teams with any reasons for complacency, but if anyone thought that the new regional system was a fast track to success they had better think again. Two- thirds of the way through the 1998 Super 12 and there are three South African teams […]

If the South African classical concert scene were truly Eurocentric, it would feature a lot more African music. That paradox is largely ignored in the confused debate around the future of our culture. While European concert halls currently offer hospitality to serialists, tonalists, aleatorists, minimalists, African composers and jazzmen all, the defenders of the classical […]

The South African petroleum industry was thrown into confusion in March 1997 when Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna threatened to “re-regulate the entire industry”. He accused multinationals operating in South Africa of maintaining a stranglehold on the domestic industry without contributing to black empowerment or the economy as a whole. Recently, black empowerment […]

The editor of Zimbabwe’s main daily newspaper, a nephew of President Robert Mugabe, collapsed in his office and died of a heart attack on Tuesday. Charles Chikerema (59) an avowed Stalinist who criticised white Zimbabweans through the state-controlled press, died after serving only nine weeks as the editor of the Herald newspaper. It was the […]