The South African Law Commission is reviewing the marriage Act to develop legislation to protect domestic partnerships, whether same- sex relationships or heterosexual cohabitation. While its report will only be out in July, another report looking at the sharing of pension benefits after a relationship has ended is due soon. The pension-benefits discussion paper will […]
At 82, Penelope Fitzgerald is the first non- American to win a United States national critics’ prize. She spoke to Peter Lennon There was something patronising about the pleasure with which the British media reported how modest and surprised Penelope Fitzgerald, aged 82, was at winning the American National Book Critics’ Circle fiction award, the […]
Although smart cards are set to turn public transactions with government into a one-stop shop, they do smack of big brotherdom, writes David Shapshak Smart cards – credit card-sized micro- computers – are set to revolutionise the way government delivers services to the public. But it will be a few years before the multi- purpose […]
Irwin Manoim In the paranoid final years of the PW Botha regime, the government had two tasks. The first was to suppress dissent; the second was to pretend there was no dissent. The latter, perhaps the more difficult task, fell to Stoffel Botha, former minister of home affairs, who died this week aged 67. It […]
WEDNESDAY, 12.30AM: FORMER Civil Co-operation Bureau operative Ferdi Barnard shrugged off any personal involvement in the 1989 murder of Wits academic David Webster in the Pretoria High Court on Tuesday, admitting, however, that the CCB could have been involved, and that some of his CCB colleagues may have taken part in the murder. A lucid […]
TUESDAY, 8.30AM: TWO candidates face off for the vacant seat of Western Cape Premier Hernus Kriel, who resigned on Monday. Health MEC Peter Marais, an outspoken hardliner, is the leading coloured National Party leader and the likely choice to hold the vital coloured vote in the next election. Rival candidate Gerald Morkel is the Community […]
TUESDAY, 5.00PM: NIGERIA, which has just replaced planned presidential elections with a referendum, has been criticised for the move by the United Kingdom and the United States. The elections for a civilian president were cancelled after all five authorised political parties nominated military ruler General Sani Abacha as their candidate. Now Nigerian will have two […]
TUESDAY, 10.30AM: A SOMALI faction leader negotiating the release of 10 kidnapped foreign aid workers, including South African pilot Robbie Burt, says the talks are “encouraging”. “We cannot promise their freedom, but the negotiations are encouraging. No more threats will be made to kill them and negotiations will be carried out in an orderly manner,” […]
TUESDAY, 12.15PM: APARTHEID dirty tricks operative Ferdi Barnard on Monday denied in the Pretoria High Court that he killed anti-apartheid activist Dr David Webster in 1989. Barnard, who faces 34 charges, ranging from murder and attempted murder to intimidation and fraud, did however admit to monitoring former activist and present Justice Minister Dullah Omar for […]
TUESDAY, 12.00NOON: ARCHBISHOP Trevor Huddleston, the Anglican priest who spoke up for the poor of Sophiatown in the 1940s and 1950s, then became leader of the international Anti-Apartheid Movement, has died in London, aged 84. Huddleston’s book Naught For Your Comfort played a key role in alerting the world to apartheid during the mid-1950s. Posted […]