Durban’s fledgling centre for the arts is preparing to=20 fly, reports HUMPHREY TYLER MAYBE they should hire lifeguards for the official=20 opening in a few weeks of the Bat Centre beside the=20 water in the harbour in Durban. Vusisizwe Mchunu=20 (mostly known as Vusi), the centre’s project manager=20 and a prize-winning poet, shook his head […]

Simon Segal COMPARED to our survey at the beginning of the year,=20 South Africa’s major economic forecasters have slightly=20 scaled down their economic growth forecasts.=20 On average, the 10 forecasting units now expect gross=20 domestic product (GDP) to grow 2,9 percent this year=20 and 3,3 percent next year. GDP estimates at the=20 beginning of the […]

Lynda Loxton reports on the union-backed research=20 project that has moulded the new government’s=20 industrial policy The South African government should not ape Korea in=20 the 1960s by trying to intervene to help carefully=20 chosen “winning sectors” of the economy. This is one of=20 the conclusions of a detailed study of South African=20 The study, […]

Reg Rumney For many small businessmen tax planning boils down to=20 declaring half of what you actually earn; employees in=20 the lower ranks of big companies don’t even have that=20 illegal option. Both would benefit from employing a good accountant so=20 that they can participate in the upper-class sport of=20 avoiding — not evading, which […]

Ann Eveleth The KwaZulu/Natal government has been accused of=20 dragging its heels over the implementation of an=20 intensive land reform programme worth more than R79- million, while tens of thousands of dispossessed rural=20 residents wait helplessly for the assistance promised=20 them by central government last year. The charges come amid the province’s calls for greater=20 […]

Meshack Mabogoane reports on the saga that has been=20 played out at National Sorghum Breweries National Sorghum Breweries (NSB) has teamed up with=20 Indian brewing giant, United Brewery International=20 The deal means NSB will now produce the Indian brewer’s=20 Kingfisher Lager at Vivo’s brewery. The joint venture marks the most extensive Indian=20 investment in South […]

Does the defiantly un-PC humour of comedy duo Programme=20 Fluoride deserve a place in the new South Africa? JOHN=20 PHILLIPS reports IT’S 6pm in an Irish pub in central Cape Town and Chris=20 McEvoy and Roger Christian — the two determinedly=20 confrontational comedians who make up Programme=20 Fluoride — are poised over pints of Guinness […]

The Le Bourget Air Show in Paris is the meeting place=20 of governments, military men and high-tech innovation.=20 Stefaans Brummer attended this year’s show THE fashion this summer at Le Bourget, Paris: designer=20 suits, shades and cellphones, but very few skirts. The=20 Russians, of course, go for grimy anoraks, while the=20 South Africans stand the […]

1983: Anton Harber, junior reporter at the Rand Daily=20 Mail, receives a tip off that two strange people are=20 paying a black man to distribute anti-United Democratic=20 Front pamphlets outside Park Station in Johannesburg.=20 He is told to expect another rendezvous at 5pm that=20 Harber goes to the meeting place with a photographer.=20 The men […]

Despite the process of reconciliation, there are=20 obviously judges who are struggling to break out of the=20 old mould, writes Dennis Davis IT could surely not have been expected that there would=20 be unanimous enthusiasm for the decision by the=20 Constitutional Court that the death penalty was=20 unconstitutional. But for a sitting judge of the=20 […]