South Africa has bucked the international trend towards neo-liberalism. But this important challenge can only be carried through if the country’s social democrats make themselves heard, argues Eddie Webster In a recent article in the London Review of Books, RW Johnson rightly points to the fact that the Government of National Unity has accepted the […]

A PROFESSIONAL dog-fight is raided and three of the spectators are found to be police officers. The Cape Law Society discovers that 20 of its members have been making under-the-counter payments to public officials and tries to protect them. Nearly two million schoolchildren go hungry, because someone has defrauded the national feeding scheme. A study […]

They are the remnants of an ancient hunter-gatherer society — and they’re still on the move, in carts that carry their homes. Sheep-shearing is their livelihood, and their life is often harsh and violent. But it is also gradually disappearing. Eddie Koch visited the Something about the word “verge” best defines the life that Johanna […]

RUGBY: Jon Swift THE heart of the misguided and unbearable paternalism which has caused so much damage on so many fronts in this country beats strongly in the bosom of South African rugby. It threatens to rend the game asunder in this country. For nowhere else is arrogance of the “papa knows best” syndrome more […]

Anne Eveleth The former State Security Council’s dirty-tricks operation Stratcom (Strategic Communications), was not disbanded in 1991, a former security policeman has Suspended security policeman Sergeant Gary Pollack claims Stratcom became a top-secret structure known by its Afrikaans acronym “Trewits” (Teenrevolusionere Strategie — Counter-revolutionary Strategy). Under pressure to cease political operations following the Peace Accord […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]