When will Stals ease up on interest rates and give=20 homeowners a break, asks Reg Rumney Real interest rates _ adjusted for inflation _ in=20 South Africa are punitively high, especially for=20 those buying a new home, but the reaction from=20 economists and the man-in-the-street is curiously=20 muted. The prime rate, the rate banks are […]

My Fleeting Moment with Nelson Mandela (in his=20 absence, of course) THE first time I was in the presence of the man=20 whose influence was to permeate South Africa was in=20 the early 1970s. He was thousands of miles away,=20 but hey, I was in his presence _ in his house in=20 Orlando West, which […]

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan will this week put a former leading ”Moonie” in charge of the UN’s biggest humanitarian aid agency after vigorous lobbying by the Bush administration. Josette Sheeran is to be appointed executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), according to diplomatic and UN sources.

The Third Force: Apartheid’s chickens come home to roost with the arrest of retired generals and a former defence minister Mail and Guardian reporters General Magnus Malan and 10 former colleagues were arrested because police seized top-secret documents linking them to an Inkatha hit-squad and the birth of the “Third Force”. KwaZulu-Natal’s cautious Attorney General […]

Floundering or sinking, which ever way you view it the South African-Iranian oil deal is going nowhere for now, writes Karen Harverson Depending on whom you believe, South Africa’s deal to store and trade Iranian oil has fizzled out — or it has just been suspended pending the outcome of an environmental study on the […]

Elections provide the chill factor We should have more of these things. They seem to have a very high chill pill content. I’m talking of elections. We should schedule one or two of these as a matter of course. It has been pretty laid back, this election. Even the SAUK has, until the past few […]

Neil Bierbaum An on-line radio news service is being provided by the South African Press Association under the banner of its new division Network Radio Services (NRS), which will also act as an advertising brokerage for community and commercial radio stations. The news product, dubbed Network Radio News, is presently being supplied in text form […]

* Following Oom Krisjan’s observations about the Democratic Party being the party with not only guts but gore as well, the party came out with a new slogan: “Less gravy — more meat”. The manne in the bar, always keen for a braaivleis, are awaiting the next election campaign with interest. True colours * Talking […]

Fine Art: Hazel Friedman I first saw the work of Sandile Zulu (now showing at the Market) during a 1992 exhibition held by Wits University’s Fine Arts Department where Zulu was a student. At the time his burnt offerings struck me as extraordinarily beautiful, but anachronistic in the context of all those post-modern pastiches produced […]

Philippa Garson looks into some possible scenarios for higher education in South Africa THOSE who encountered the 1990 Mont Fleur scenarios, symbolic representations of the country’s possible futures on the pinnacle of its transition, can probably remember the too-much-too-soon Icarus, the hamstrung lame duck, the head-in-the-sand ostrich and the soaring flamingos. With the exception of […]