General Johan van der Merwe’s alleged meddling in Third force investigations is the real reason behind his resignation, reports Stefaans Brummer POLICE Commissioner General Johan van der Merwe’s announcement last week that he would retire at the end of March was the result of pressure by Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi, well-placed sources say. […]

Steuart Wright in East London EASTERN Cape health officials, battling to form a unified administration, are being distracted by constant firefighting as the health system crumbles around them. But they are coming up with some innovative ways to cope with the situation. In recent weeks senior health officials have been forced to run from one […]

Sankie Mthembi-Nkondo is a poet and writer and, more recently, minister of housing. Mark Gevisser met and read her `DEAR Comrade Wife,” wrote ANC poet and diplomat Zinjiva Nkondo to his wife, Sankie, during their years of separation in exile, “I know you are not afraid/ of spears/ your thighs and breasts of humanhood/ have […]

Gillian Slovo remembers a very different funeral of her mother, Ruth First, who was killed in a bomb blast THE morning after her death, I woke early. Not from her typing but from the lack of it. I walked with my father by the seaside. We didn’t talk. As the day began, we drove to […]

Pat Sidley YOU have dropped off your precious child at her first school and you imagine that as well as educating her it will take good care of her. But you are likely to have second thoughts if you read the indemnity form many schools require parents to sign. At their worst, these forms require […]

Jacques Magliolo reports on black business’ opposition to proposed JSE changes this year BLACK business cannot bid for the Anglo-controlled JCI if proposed changes to present regulations relating to pyramids go ahead this year. New Africa Investment Limited’s chairman, Dr Nthato Motlana, one of South Africa’s most prominent black businessmen, says: “We will oppose the […]

The CP is hoping to use the local government elections to win back supremacy of the rightwing, writes Jan Taljaard NOT shouting it out too loud, the Conservative Party is hoping to once again enter the race for rightwing supremacy after being virtually sidelined from mainstream politics. And it hopes to achieve this by gathering […]

Forty-four percent of all South Africans are classified poor — with whites making up only a fraction of this figure, reports Andrew Whitefield LESS than half a percent of whites, or 20 000 individuals, were living in poverty in South Africa in 1993. This estimate, from the World Bank-funded Living Standards and Development Survey, flies […]

Jan Taljaard in Pretoria THE new chief of the army has encountered a serious problem since moving to Pretoria to take up his new post: the gymnasiums in Pretoria only open at 5.30am. “No man, that’s much too late,” says Lieutenant-General Reg Otto. Gesturing towards the rather forbidding facade of Army HQ, he remarks: “We […]