Andy Duffy Pollsmoor prison in the Western Cape has gone on alert following police reports that gangster Rashied Staggie is planning to get into the jail to confront and possibly kill inmate and rival gang leader Jacky Lonte. It is understood that the prison’s management has drawn up plans with the Department of Correctional Services […]

Aspasia Karras While New York will be able to offer its citizens innumerable time-saving services on the World Wide Web by the year 2000, local government in South Africa is far from doing the same. Headway is being made, however, with a government-sponsored project to develop a model for interactive local-government websites. Local government is […]

By Sechaba ka’Nkosi People’s power without the gravy train When the new African National Congress deputy secretary general, Thenjiwe Mtintso, was asked last month what her ambitions in the party were, her answer was simple: “I would like to see our slogan, ‘All power to the people’, implemented in reality.” This may sound mundane, the […]

Marion Edmunds An Israeli conman, posing as a devout Orthodox Jew, has duped Cape Town-based entrepreneurs into investing millions of rands in a fraudulent investment scheme and skipped the country. The SAPS’s Commercial Branch is investigating Shmuel Deri (29), who is alleged to have left about 65 investors, many from Sea Point and Clifton, out […]

Charl Blignaut : Cultural sushi Oysters are not likely to be on the menu at Independent Newspapers functions after a typically off-the-cuff (read foot-in-mouth) remark from Gauteng Newspapers MD Deon du Plessis. The Big Boer, as he is affectionately known among staff, apparently suggested at an Independent meeting held to discuss the future of the […]

Robert Kirby : Loose cannon Granthurst High Security Pre-Release Cellblock North Hampshire January 19 1998 My dear Mr Mandela I have heard that you might well be soon looking for a new political heavy to run one of your richer provinces into the ground. One of your UK talent scouts advised me to apply to […]

Neil Manthorp: Cricket Contradictions are an integral part of cricket. Without them, the game would be baseball … or something. The three-legged finals of the World Series, beginning on Friday at the MCG between South Africa and Australia, have been preceded by the strangest contradiction of the tour so far. It is this: 1 Hansie […]

Lesley : Cowling Material While the country is warming up to the Year of Science and Technology, the science councils are still in the dark about their funding from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. Representatives of the councils, charged with organising certain “thrust” areas, say the funding allocations for their projects have […]

Just the suggestion of producing an Afrikaans film with an all-white cast in South Africa in 1998 is enough to make a boardroom of grown businessmen burst into uncontollable laughter. “Nee hartjie,” said the men in suits to film-maker Katinka Heyns when she was doing the circuit to find financial backers for her latest project, […]

Stefaans Brummer and Mungo Soggot The law professor who guided the academic career of Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga and became a close friend had strong intelligence links and served as a front man for Renamo, the notorious Mozambican rebel movement backed by apartheid’s security establishment. Professor André Thomashausen, a constitutional law expert based at Unisa, […]