Rehana Rossouw In a field on the edge of Parkwood Estate in Cape Town is a ramshackle wooden building with a tiny garden lending a splash of colour to the dreary township. The garden is filled with petunias, marigolds, tomatoes, cabbages … and dagga. This is the home of Bernard Brown of the Burning Spear […]

Karen Harverson Newly appointed chief executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) Ian Goldin may face an uphill battle from some of the bank’s staff who feel a black candidate would have been more suited to lead its transformation. For the past 18 months the bank has been racked with mass departures, and […]

Dirk Hartford It was reminiscent of the heady mass struggles of the Eighties. For four hours last Sunday, several hundred trade unionists listened to fiery speeches from workers and trade union leaders denouncing the government and its policy of national reconciliation as a `national disaster’ between songs praising socialism as the only road to liberation. […]

Simon Segal JUST what does the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) office, officially called the Development Planning branch of the President’s Office, do? Is criticism around its delivery fair? Deputy director general Bernie Fanaroff is clear that the office has three primary functions: l Development planning: This is the mobilisation of resources to match societal […]

The pundits overseas favour Rome, but there is a strong argument for South Africa being the favourites to win the race for the 2004 Olympics, writes Julian Drew THE 11 candidates for the 2004 Olympic Games have only travelled three weeks along the 21-month obstacle course that will culminate in the awarding of the Games […]

According to evidence in the Eugene de Kock trial, a 1985 necklacing much touted by the Nat government for propaganda was the unforeseen result of a police dirty tricks operation, writes David Among the thousands of killings which marked the townships rebellion of the 1980s, none was more tragic or, in its impact on world […]

FINE ART: Ruth Sack IT was half my life ago that I spent three terrified years as Cecily Sash’s student at Wits University, and the terror by last week had barely abated. How, I asked myself, can the mortally dangerous Miss Sash be making pictures of hedgerows? English country hedgerows? Well, she does them with […]

On Monday, SABC television undergoes a radical facelift. HAZEL FRIEDMAN surfs the revamped channels for something worth watching IT can hardly be described as a blushing bride — a hastily rouged matron is more appropriate — but there is definitely something old, something new, something borrowed and, in places, something slightly blue about the new […]

Andrew Sillen The storage and study of human body parts has stimulated intense debate, pitting scientists and museum authorities, on the one hand, against ethnic, national, and religious groups on the other. But, the issues are not always The issue first emerged in North America, where the violent history of expansion has created an enduring […]

is an in-house squabble between the generals while the soldiers sit forgotten at the side, argues Prishani Naidoo THE irony of the William Makgoba saga is that while there were two distinct camps at the beginning of the battle for transformation in 1991, there seems now to be a narrowing of interests which may fit […]