Hugh Lewin, who spent seven years in the Sixties as a political prisoner in Pretoria, joined last weekend’s gathering of some 1 200 ex-political prisoners for a reunion on Robben Island IT IS a weekend of rituals. The ritual of resurrecting the ghosts, re-uniting them, dancing with them from lime quarry to cell-block, and (perhaps […]

Katz commission member Pierre du Toit argues that critics haven’t read the report SOUTH Africa is finding that tax reform within a real democracy is very different from the old days. Regardless of the Katz Commission’s specific terms, submissions came from a much wider representation of society and were much more fundamental than those received […]

Critical Consumer Pat Sidley This is a sad tale about a dog called Gatting, named by his owners, the O’Keefe family, in 1990 after cricketer Mike Gatting, who was supposed to be heading up a cricket tour. The O’Keefe family’s three young children were attached to the dog, a highly pedigreed labrador with an unfortunate […]

Illegal occupants defiantly laid claim to vacant homes in a Lenasia suburb this week. Mapula Sibanda spoke to them OVERGROWN shrubs surrounding the houses testified to desertion, but there were newspapers pasted up to serve as curtains and white crosses marked on the windows to show that people were living there. On Wednesday afternoon, this […]

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser CONCERTOS for piano and violin by Mozart had mixed success in the first two concerts of the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by visiting British conductor Meredith Davies. Francois du Toit, standing in at short notice for Tessa Uys, gave a carefully considered reading of the composer’s A Major Piano Concerto. As […]

Dunhill Challenge: Bland misses out as Player opts for Buhrmann GOLF: Jon Swift IT is ironic that Gary Player, the Southern African team’s non-playing captian in next week’s inaugural Dunhill Challenge at Houghton, opted for the youth of Hendrik Buhrmann ahead of the experience of John Bland in finalising his line-up. As the current holder […]

Anouk Mommer and Inge Ruigrok A PRETORIA pharmaceutical company claims to have developed a drug that will improve the length and quality of the lives of Aids sufferers. Dr Roy van Brummelen, a director of Biomox, said this week clinical tests indicated the new product, Equimmune, could be the most successful drug in Aids treatment […]

By Reg Rumney Finance Minister Chris Liebenberg this week expressed concern about the effect of so-called “private label” credit cards on the country’s savings. Liebenberg said that aside from inflation, the other factor decreasing savings was financial deregulation. “When credit is more freely available, there is less saving.” In that context he was concerned about […]

A smile. A chuckle. A quip. Their lordships have begun deliberations Strange, is that laughter we hear? Justin Pearce reports on the inauguration of the Constitional Court SELDOM can a South African court have heard as much laughter as the Constitutional Court did on Wednesday, during its first day of proceedings.It was the good- natured […]