Musicians made an impassioned plea for an airplay quota for local music at this week’s IBA hearing. Hazel Friedman was there IF you happened to be walking past Johannesburg’s Mariston Hotel on Tuesday this week, you might have thought you’d stumbled upon a replay of The Concert at Ellis Park. You would have noticed Hugh […]

The prison service is breaking its own guidelines on the treatment of HIV-positive prisoners, reports Mark Gevisser WHEN the kitchen staff of Johannesburg Prison were told, in September last year, that blood would be taken from them as part of a routine annual medical checkup, “Gerrit” thought nothing of it. Two weeks later, he was […]

Steuart Wright in East London SUN City supremo Sol Kerzner is safe from prosecution for bribery — at least for the next seven months Business Age, an overseas magazine, has suggested that Kerzner could escape prosecution following a secret deal with President Nelson Mandela and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who the magazine said was a […]

Jacques Magliolo `ALL I owed was R5 000 — that’s all! And now I’ve lost my business.” Renowned South African couturier Hilton Weiner was placed in liquidation by holding company Bergers before it too was placed under final liquidation.Like so many professionals Weiner concentrated on his craft and neglected making it a priority to understand […]

Senior National Parks Board members have pushed their own self-destruct button. Eddie Koch reports A SHAKE-UP in the management of South Africa’s game reserves is on the cards. Senior members of the National Parks Board have — in the face of pressure for them to resign — pushed their own self-destruct button by asking the […]

After his successful comeback at Sun City last week Brian Mitchell is aiming for a title fight BOXING: Drew Forrest UNLOVABLY arrogant he may be, but Brian Mitchell showed he had lost little of his two-fisted magic after a three-year layoff at the Sun City Superbowl last Saturday. Beefier, harder-hitting but marginally slower than when […]

Media and Marketing Clive Simpkins MARKET-SHARE greed versus service standards calls for scrutiny in the cellular telephone industry. I was advised by an overseas cellular guru that on the launch of cellular services, the existing telephone network operator is usually in a better technical position for the first year or so. It is then typically […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin OLIVER STONE’S Natural Born Killers portrays a Darwinian vision of modern society as an inferno in which only the most brutal survive. America is perceived as a war zone, not unlike Vietnam territory, that encourages guerrilla warfare and mass slaughter. In a florid and tendentious treatment of the career of two serial […]

Mduduzi ka Harvey THE Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) has split, amid accusations that the leadership has given undue priority to police issues, misused union money and failed to resolve internal problems. The newly formed breakaway group, the Correctional Officers Union of South Africa (Cousa) — launched last week by prison staffers and […]

WE have sympathised with new cabinet ministers who have had to grapple with sometimes recalcitrant departments as they try to take hold of the machinery they need to implement their policies. So we are quite taken aback at Minister of Defence Joe Modise’s frank admission that he seeks no such control over his charge, the […]