Justin Pearce MORE than 300 candidates who were trained overseas last year with a view to bringing the South African diplomatic corps into the post-apartheid era are still waiting to take up posts with the Department of Foreign Affairs. This is in spite of the fact that the diplomatic corps has been left understaffed by […]

Pat Sidley THE fledgling cellular phone industry has become the latest field for thieves and fraudsters with about R10- million of theft and crime occuring in the five months of the industry’s life. The scams are so rife and the amounts involved so steep that police have seconded a full-time officer from the fraud squad […]

The defence ministry is investigating Armscor’s mysterious shipment of AK47s to Yemen — which may originally have been intended for Unita. By Eddie Koch, Paul Stober and Stefaans Brummer A CLANDESTINE consignment of AK47 assault rifles sent to Yemen by Armscor officials has opened new tensions between Defence Minister Joe Modise and conservative elements in […]

The seemingly impregnable infrastructure of the SABC is under attack — and it’s crumbling. Mark Gevisser reports on changes at Auckland Park AN SABC journalist, bleary-eyed from one too many late- night meetings of her transformation committee, looks up from the stack of organograms scattered around her: “Yes,” she says wearily, “things are changing here. […]

THE National Intelligence Service is so keen to show that it is part of the new South Africa that it is gathering information on the implementation of the reconstruction and development programme and identifying impediments to the implementation of this government policy. The NIS is out of bounds. It is the role of the national […]

An explosion of shanty towns in the Vaal may force the PWV government to rethink its rejection of site and service schemes. Drew Forrest looks at the growing blight along the Golden Highway DRIVING south, it starts with Freedom Park and St Martin’s Trust, rambling down a hillside opposite Eldorado. Across the toll road lies […]

The reconstruction and development programme White Paper may have doused some hopes. By Reg Rumney ‘NO cornucopia of new money for social upliftment programmes” is the hidden message of the White Paper on the reconstruction and development programme, the ANC’s grand plan to put right the economic wrongs created by apartheid, released last week. The […]

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has decided that it will not speak to the Weekly Mail & Guardian until its concerns about our coverage of the federation are addressed. Transparency, it appears, is for everyone in the new South Africa except the labour movement. Coupled with the embargo was an instruction to the […]

The writing of a new Bill of Rights provides the chance to bring a second revolution in citizen’s rights, argue Water Affairs Minister Kader Asmal and academic Ronald Roberts THE first rights revolution in South Africa has ended the political powerlessness of the majority of citizens. The second must overcome the continuing reality of economic […]