Tangeni Amupadhi While police statistics show a decrease and a ”stabilisation” in serious crime over the past four years, a research agency has predicted criminality will increase over the next seven years. The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) says in the Nedcor/Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Crime Index that murder, burglary and rape could shoot […]
Mike Jensen Since the Internet depends on the quality of the underlying telecommunication infrastructure, the poor quality of the network remains a basic impediment to rapid growth in Internet use. While most African countries are extending and modernising their telecommunication networks, sub-Saharan Africa’s tele-density has stayed at less than one per 200 inhabitants. The telecommunication […]
If the international community wants to help Rwanda and its people in their recently declared process of reconciliation, the massive psychological impact of the genocide on the population of the country will have to taken into account. I cannot help but remember the speed with which the families of those who died in the crash […]
The food sector of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is overcrowded, with too few companies offering shareholders significant returns on their investments. In January 1996 the food index stood at 9 300. Within a year, it had fallen 100 points, recovered its losses and remained at this level until the October 1997 market correction. Between that […]
THURSDAY, 7.00PM: THREE people were killed and one injured on Thursday afternoon in a taxi that was attacked between Libode and Umtata in Transkei, while three people were injured in a taxi-related shooting in Mamelodi near Pretoria. Three people have been arrested in connection with the Mamelodi incident. Police in Mamelodi fired teargas and stun […]
TUESDAY, 5.30PM: APARTHEID dirty tricks agent Ferdi Barnard’s advocate closed Barnard’s case in the Pretoria High Court on Monday, admitting that he was unable to find even one witness who was prepared to testify for Barnard. Advocate Faan Coetzee told the court that several witnesses were hesitant to testify as they would be implicated in […]
TUESDAY, 1.30PM: A REMARKABLE number of staff of the Safety and Security Ministry — including Minister Sydney Mufamadi, his driver, his private secretary, and the private secretary of his deputy minister — have all been involved in accidents while driving state-owned cars, the ministry revealed on Monday. “Good grief,” was the response of usually outspoken […]
Stephen Gray : Unspoilt places ‘Prickly pear”, I suppose I knew, was the homely way to refer to that flat, jointed, paddle-leaved plant which holds its barrel- shaped fruit aloft like sore thumbs. If pushed, I could have volunteered its botanical label: Opuntia – a suitably blunt name for the gawky, invasive alien that should […]
Mark Gevisser COUNTRY OF MY SKULL by Antjie Krog (Random House, R90) ‘We boers,” wrote Rian Malan in Business Day recently, “are terminally fed up” with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has become “increasingly irksome to those of us who thought we attained a certain nobility in 1994 by surrendering power to a mistrusted […]
Shaun de Waal : CD of the week The Rough Guide books have been helping people (usually young, hip people)find their way around the world for years. Recently a set of superb music guides was added to the list -World Music, Jazz, Rock – and now, in a logical extension of the concept, here comes […]