Mark Swilling The irony was not lost on Minister of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development Valli Moosa when he unveiled the new White Paper on Local Government at a ceremony at the Castle in Cape Town this week. As the fortress that housed South Africa’s first colonial local government, it was a fitting venue to […]

Marion Edmunds Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s copy of the 1998/1999 budget speech was a prize attraction this week at a lavish banquet for South Africa’s top black businesspeople who gathered to toast Manuel and the country’s foremost black entrepreneur, Cyril Ramaphosa. The document – which included some gentle tax cuts for the richest of […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Unique learning centres established in 1995 by Unisa attempted to offer distance-education students some of the advantages of classroom teaching. But three years later, enrolment at one of the primary centres in downtown Johannesburg is on the decline. Students blame rising fees, fear of the city centre and the formal way their […]

Philippa Garson Elmo should expand his cookie-baking skills to include detective work and do some off-set sniffing around, given the brewing controversy around Sesame Street, the pre-school television production in which he stars. Questions are being raised in the United States Congress about whether the R25-million granted by USAid to the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) […]

Belinda Beresford The government is continuing its campaign to ensure that taxes become as unavoidable as death for South Africans with the latest budget, which reduced the overall income tax burden while attacking fringe benefits such as car allowances. The budget saw about R3,7-billion knocked off the income tax burden for South Africans, with the […]

Jeremy Cronin: CROSSFIRE Isn’t it time to get Crossfire cross-firing? I am going to take a few pot shots at my friend and comrade, Pallo Jordan – with whom, on most things, I mostly agree. But first some anecdotal background. At the gold summit at the end of February, I was sitting in a Braamfontein […]

Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele: RIGHT TO REPLY Your article, “Whatever happened to the dream of low-cost housing”, February 20 to 26, was sensational and alarmist. My office has been co-operating with the media in making sure that their information needs are met on time. There is nothing sinister about verifying statistics and maintaining their integrity before releasing […]

Robert McBride was allegedly investigating the highway heists when he was arrested in Mozambique this week. Wally Mbhele and Stefaans Br?mmer report Robert McBride, who was arrested in Mozambique this week for alleged gunrunning, was apparently on a special undercover mission to investigate supply routes feeding the highway heists. Senior African National Congress and government […]

Tony Twine A wise woman once told a class of students attending their first lecture on the subject that economics was nothing more than common sense made difficult. With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, her students can now vouch for this rule, which has turned out to be far more immutable than the […]

Sharon Hammond The mangled skeleton of a young woman who died 1 500 years ago could settle a 20-year argument about when the practice of bartering cattle for women first started in southern Africa. The woman’s remains were discovered outside Nelspruit, in Mpumalanga, after bulldozers excavating a site for the Lowveld’s first large-scale shopping mall […]