Marion Edmunds Skilled officials from the Department of Public Enterprises — including its chief accounting officer, Professor Sipho Shabalala — are abandoning their minister, Stella Sigcau. Sigcau’s representative, Wandile Zote, confirmed this week that Shabalala, public enterprises deputy director general, had resigned and would leave at the end of the month, in what appears to […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga South African Housing Trust chair Reverend Frank Chikane has ordered a forensic audit into corruption allegations levelled against the trust’s subsidiary, Khayalethu Home Loans (KHL). The audit was prompted by a Mail & Guardian report last week in which KHL management was accused of paying a consultant for work he had not […]

Jos Havermans Despite the turmoil in the world’s stock markets, it seems almost every country in the world — even the poorest — wants to have its own stock exchange. And Malawi, one of the world’s 15 least developed countries, is no exception. After a three-year apprenticeship period, the Malawi Stock Exchange is poised to […]

The issue in Microsoft’s attempt to rule the browser market is a fear of tomorrow’s cheap, simple, ‘networked’ computers, argues Philip Machanick The only puzzling thing about the fact that the United States Department of Justice is pursuing a case against Microsoft is why it took so long to find a reason to tackle it. […]

Journalists frequently fall into the trap of writing too much about their own profession. It is, therefore, with some reluctance that we return to the subject, specifically by drawing attention to a column written in the latest edition of the Financial Mail by Joe Thloloe, headed “Motshekga and the media” — referring to the Mail […]

Zimbabweans have come to learn that mass action counts for more than policy. Iden Wetherell reports Zimbabwe’s beleaguered government this week responded to the crisis engulfing it by a familiar mix of bravado and brute force. But the steps it has belatedly taken only serve to expose a pattern of misrule where populist impulses substitute […]

Ann Eveleth Aruling by a Pretoria judge last week effectively makes University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Mamphela Ramphele’s old school imaginary. Judge Ben du Plessis decided that Stephanus Hofmeyer Farm School near Kranspoort in Northern Province did not exist as a legal entity at the time its staff and pupils were evicted because its governing […]

Andrew Muchineripi: Soccer The national team returns to its African roots on Saturday with a regional championship first-round match against Namibia at the Independence Stadium in Windhoek. Since clinching qualification for the World Cup last August with a tense home victory over Congo, the African Nations Cup holders have met France, Germany, Brazil, Czech Republic, […]

set It took 15 minutes to expose a wannabe legend of her time as merely a legend in her own mind, reports Hazel Friedman A pseudo-American accent, liberal dropping of Hollywood’s hottest names, a surplus of arrogance and extreme delusions of grandeur. That was all it took for con- artist Tracey Morrison to infiltrate the […]

Martin Kettle in New York When a songwriter is as good and as famous as Paul Simon then, from one way of looking at it, he has nothing left to prove for the rest of his life. But when, like Simon, you cut your first record at 16, are a superstar at 26, and have […]