South Africa’s real economic challenges are beginning to=20 Reg Rumney reports Alarm bells have begun to ring for the economic outlook for=20 South Africa. As the election “miracle” begins to be discounted,=20 doubts about the underlying soundness of the economic structure=20 have begun to mount. It is not only that economists are by nature pessimists […]
CHILDREN’S THEATRE: Di Mannie A VISIT to the Johannesburg Youth Theatre is fast becoming=20 synonymous with holiday entertainment, each production having=20 its own blend of humour and surprise. For The Emperor’s=20 Nightingale, the main room (or theatre) in this romantic old=20 house has been “turned sideways”, using the length of the room=20 to present the […]
The science boffins are worried about whether the government will fund their research, or switch the money to RDP work. Jonathan Ancer and Fumane Diseko report Scientists are holding their breath while the government prepares a White Paper laying out plans for research and development. With the new government likely to use its limited resources […]
Like a castrated bull required to make calves — that’s how Pule Zwane sees the new KwaZulu/Natal Peace THE KwaZulu/Natal Implementation of Peace Bill, gazetted a few weeks ago, is a bid to resurrect the already-dead — and ineffectual — Peace Committee. It is not clear who authored the Bill, as the province’s multi-party portfolio […]
Stefaans Brummer FORMER police chief General Johan van der Merwe this week hit back at the Goldstone Commission for linking him to “criminal and despicable” police actions before the elections, charging Judge Goldstone with “the rape of the most basic principles of human rights”. Van der Merwe, who retired as police commissioner in March this […]
THE cyber-corporation may be nearer to South Africa than many=20 people think. The Internet has featured ever more prominently in=20 discussions, articles, computer exhibitions, new software packages=20 and marketing strategy discussions over the past few months. What sounded like futuristic predictions a year ago, have moved=20 from being virtual to partial to actual reality. American […]
How did South Africa’s most popular singer end up a sad, semi-destitute occupant of a seedy Hillbrow hotel? Hazel Friedman traces the decline and fall of Brenda Fassie DRUG abuse is not the sole cause of the decline and fall of Brenda Fassie. She suffers from a much deeper malaise: loneliness. It was drugs which, […]
Education Ministry bureaucrats are trying to prevent ideological changes to schools’ history syllabuses, reports Philippa Garson THE education department has launched an inquiry into the role played by one of its “old guard” officials in allegedly sabotaging the process of amending the history syllabus. Participants in the National Education and Training Forum’s curriculum sub-commitee on […]
Gaye Davis JUST two years ago, the very idea of a Socialist International (SI) meeting in South Africa would have been inconceivable — so this week’s two-day meeting in Cape Town of the council of the world federation of social democratic, socialist and labour movements in Cape Town was richly symbolic. That it took place […]
After years of silence, archetypal Gothic band The Mission is=20 alive, well — and playing in Johannesburg. FRED DE VRIES=20 THE Mission’s singer/guitarist, Wayne Hussey, has a reputation=20 for being loud and pretentious. His lyrics always used to be full of=20 quasi-religious symbolism; his music often fell on the wrong side=20 of pomp. And in […]