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 […]

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 […]

Steve Morris: Rugby It is an inevitable consequence of the continuing struggle this nation is having with the concept of joining the rest of the world and allowing the free flow of ideas and innovations, that this would be mirrored in the South African obsession for sporting activity. It is also understandable that the triumphs […]

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 […]

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 […]

Mungo Soggot The Department of Justice is targeting prosecutors and other justice officials who quit for private practice during trials and are then rehired in the same capacity for the same trials at far more expensive private-sector rates. In a nationwide circular, the department has threatened already overstretched attorneys general that they could have to […]

Inga Latham : In your ear What fresh aural hell is this? Subjected on Cape Talk to talk show host Sister and comedian Mark Banks’s infantile derision of callers, I began to question my conversion to talk radio. To the best of my knowledge the imperatives of talk radio are to inform and to discuss, […]

The 100-year-old Pretoria News is still learning new tricks. Janet Smith reports Gauteng Newspapers managing director Deon du Plessis, editor of The Star Peter Sullivan, the late editor of The Sunday Times Tertius Myburgh, Reuters’ Africa desk chief Lesley Wroughton and former press photographer of the year Nicky de Blois all have one thing in […]

THURSDAY, 10.30AM INDEPENDENT Harmony gold mines, formerly in the Randgold stable, posted an R800 000 profit in the final quarter of 1997 from a third-quarter loss of R37,2-million. The company achieved the profit despite large-scale restructuring, retrenchments, strikes and a devastating fire. MD Bernard Swanepoel said the worst is behind the company and that its […]