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/ 22 September 2006
Slave wages and slave-like restrictions on job mobility — that’s what a Bulgarian stripper says she encountered while working for strip club owner Lolly Jackson (50). Jackson, owner of the Johannesburg ”adult club” Teazers, appeared in court this week on four charges of contravening the Immigration Act, including keeping the passports of workers in his office.
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/ 19 September 2006
This year the popular Aardklop Arts Festival celebrates its sixth anniversary and organisers are expecting it to be the biggest ever. From Tuesday September 23 to Saturday September 27 art lovers of the north will descend on Potchefstroom yet again, writes Yolandi Groenewald.
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/ 15 September 2006
Fridays in Potchefstroom are usually mundane affairs. The sleepy town, only 150km from Johannesburg, snores away as many of the students from the local university leave to party elsewhere on the weekend. But Aardklop Fridays are different. Yolandi Groenewald looks back at this year’s Aardklop arts festival.
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/ 8 September 2006
Apartheid law and order minister Adriaan Vlok this week shed new light on his involvement in the dirty war against activists in the 1980s — including signing pre-drafted letters thanking policemen for carrying out assassinations. In a wide-ranging, two-hour interview at the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s offices, Vlok also admitted using words like "eliminate" in motivating policemen to crack down on political troublemakers.
North West’s beleagured agricultural department has spent almost R2-million this year on the salaries of at least five officials who are sitting at home on suspension. Four agriculture department officials have been suspended on allegations of corruption, fraud and maladministration following a forensic audit last year.
Brett Kebble had already appeared in a well-publicised court case on fraud charges when the Democratic Alliance accepted a R250 000 donation from him. It was also in February 2004 — the month of Kebble’s donation to the DA — that the <i>Mail & Guardian</i> revealed his dubious role in supporting ventures of the ANC Youth League’s business arm, Lembede.
Every year, at the end of September, the N12 to Potchefstroom becomes congested. It is the exodus of the Afrikaners to Aardklop to soak up some culture and “see some shows”. This year’s Aardklop kicked up questions about Afrikaner identity and the future of its theatre, writes Yolandi Groenewald.
Conflict between North West Premier Edna Molewa and senior cabinet members over alleged corruption in the provincial government has been highlighted in confidential documents leaked to the Mail & Guardian. In one she questions former minister of agriculture Ndleleni Duma’s authorisation of a corruption investigation into the North West’s crisis-ridden agriculture department.
While the average working South African donates a generous 2,2% of his or her salary to worthy causes — amounting to about R1-billion a month — huge amounts of food are still wasted every day. It is almost impossible to determine how much surplus food is thrown away in South Africa because organisations that redistribute food work largely in isolation.
Minister of Land and Agricultural Affairs Lulu Xingwana muscled a South African Airways passenger off her business-class seat on a flight to Johannesburg two weeks ago, relegating the latter to a crew seat at the back of the aircraft. According to the pilot’s formal incidents report, Xingwana stormed through the boarding gate and ”hijacked” seat 1F when she discovered she had been removed from flight SA 570 from Durban to Johannesburg.