Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS It’s Saturday and the Avalon cemetery in Soweto is full of life. As usual, more than 100 funerals are going to take place before the afternoon is over. Dozens more will take place at Dobsonville and Roodepoort cemeteries. Saturday belongs to the dead in Soweto. The hearses – flamboyant stretch limousines, […]
Andy Duffy Special state investigations swallowed more than R40-million of taxpayers’ money in just 12 months, the government’s finance watchdog has found. The figures, buried in the report the auditor general released to Parliament earlier this week, point to a sudden acceleration, in the 12 months to March 1997, in the government’s drive to call […]
Dale T McKinley: CROSSFIRE What hole did Kuseni Dlamini (Crossfire, May 22 to 28) just climb out of to proclaim the death of the left? I’ll take a wild guess that it was the one he dug for himself in the depths of the corporate bowels of De Beers where, I have no doubt, the […]
WEDNESDAY, 7.00PM: JOSEPH KONY and a group of his Lord’s Resistance Army forces have been surrounded by Ugandan troops at Polaro in the northern Gulu district of the country. Ugandan troops have reportedly killed more than killed 100 of Kony’s LRA rebels. The New Vision newspaper reported that Ugandan troops have freed 140 civilians abducted […]
WEDNESDAY, 6.30PM: A 33-YEAR OLD man was wounded in a shooting incident between members of the “Yakkie” gang and taxi drivers in Rocklands, Mitchell’s Plain on Tuesday. Police said the bystander was taken to hospital after being shot and was later discharged. Taxis blocked the road outside Mitchell’s Plain police station earlier on Tuesday demanding […]
TUESDAY, 1.30PM: THE South African Police Service is considering cutting 10000 jobs in terms of chief executive Meyer Kahn’s new strategic plan, which was slated in Parliament on Monday by the South African Police Union. But divisional commissioner Neels Steenkamp said Kahn has been misunderstood, and that the 10000 figure refers to natural attrition over […]
TUESDAY, 7.30PM: ARMED bandits in Angola are forcing people to become refugees within their own country, with almost 40000 having fled to towns, largely from the south-western province of Benguela, according to the United Nations mission in the country. It is likely that most such bandits are demobilised or recalcitrant members of Unita, the long-time […]
Neil Manthorp Cricket The first Texaco Trophy one-day international was played on Thursday. The squad now travels in their luxury coach (with microwave, kettle, fridge and toilet) to Old Trafford, Manchester, and Headingley, Leeds, for the second and third matches on Saturday and Sunday. Although the smart money is on South Africa to win, it […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Police are three times more likely to commit crime than ordinary members of the public, and that’s official. In its forthcoming monthly report, the Human Rights Committee says statistics provided by Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi show the shocking extent of police involvement in criminal activities. Mufamadi told the National Assembly […]
Phillip Kakaza African music The sound of a marimba drifts out of Guguletu’s St Gabriel’s church in Cape Town where Ayanda Hollow, a budding musician, is conducting music lessons. The tinkling sound is just a hint of what is happening behind the concrete walls. Hollow’s vision of a vibrant mobile school of African music has […]