Doctors in Gauteng’s public hospitals work up to 100 hours a week for pitifully low salaries. Pat Sidley IT’S 7am. The early shift at the hospital has begun. But the fresh doctors are working alongside others who have already been at work for 12 hours — and may have to continue for another 24. Many […]

Inside Parliament: The onerous committee system, the code of ethics … and the ushers By special arrangement, we feature extracts from Parliamentary Whip, the publication of Idasa’s Parliamentary Information and Monitoring Service Pims MPs are seriously overstretched by the committee system, with some sitting on more than a dozen of these An investigation by Parliamentary […]

Pat Sidley Gauteng’s public hospitals are in a state of crisis. Hospital budgets are strained to breaking point, as the government has cut a whopping R600-million from the province’s health budget and sent the money to historically under-served provinces. Patients crowd Gauteng’s health services from all over the country, but there is no way yet […]

The Reserve Bank Appearance: Gotham City meets Sun City. Filled with minions performing arcane rituals. Not to be confused with: Your neighbourhood bank. The Reserve Bank is the unfriendly one that makes esoteric statements from afar about gold, foreign exchange, money supply, inflation, and what is left of the Rand. Most famous for? Interrupting Friday […]

Creativity, melodrama and humour left no room for practicality at the SA finals of the Smirnoff Fashion Awards, writes HAZEL FRIEDMAN THERE was a delicious irony in arriving at the Swartkops Airforce Base — the training ground for South Africa’s Special Forces — and being escorted by khaki-clad recce-types in Casspirs to a fashion show […]

GOLF: Jon Swift IT IS a measure of the determination, talent and sheer guts of the man that Ernie Els would come back from the bitter disappointment of the US PGA the way he has. To understand that, it is worth recalling one of the oldest maxims of professional golf: you can win the Masters […]

Justin Pearce A last-minute submission by the Western Cape provincial government has delayed an application by the province to the Constitutional Court which will have far- reaching consequences for local elections in the province. The two-week delay has ruled out the chance of a November 1 election in Cape Town. The Western Cape government has […]

The photographic exhibition Positive Lives: Responses to HIV challenges our most cherished concepts of life and death, writes HAYDEN PROUD AWARD-WINNING South African photographer Gideon Mendel is the focal point and bridge between this country and Britain in Positive Lives: Responses to HIV, a ground- breaking exhibition which enables poignant comparisons to be made on […]

DR FANUS SERFONTEIN, surgeon and showman extraordinaire (this is the charming gentleman who responded this week to the Gauteng decision to keep in place a heart transplant moratorium by saying he would celebrate with another transplant), has succeeded in ensuring his own work gets top billing in the media. But it may be more appropriate […]

Teachers in the Western Cape are demanding proper protection from the gangsters disrupting their schools, reports Rehana Rossouw GANGSTERS prowl schools in the Cape Town suburbs of Belhar and Delft, shooting and stabbing pupils, disrupting classes and trashing the premises. At one school, teachers have downed chalk in protest against the authority’s reluctance to provide […]