Staff Reporter
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/ 5 May 1998

Ferdi stands alone

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 […]

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/ 1 May 1998

Damn dams, look in your own backyard

Alexandra residents take the World Bank to task over plans to expand the Lesotho Highlands Water Project We are a group of low-income residents of Alexandra township, near Sandton. We have filed a formal protest at the World Bank Inspection Panel – the equivalent of its auditor general – against the expansion of the Lesotho […]

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/ 1 May 1998

Look after yourself, the banks won’t

Shop around for the best credit card deal available, writes Charlene Smith Despite the entry of more than 70 foreign banks into the local market, the South African commercial banking sector, protected by a R1-million limit on deposits to locally based foreign banks by individuals, is plodding along in its same uncompetitive way – unless […]

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/ 1 May 1998

Poets gather in Durban

Durban will once again host a number of international and South Africa poets, when the second Poetry Africa festival takes place at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre, from May 4 to 9. Some 20 poets will present and read from their work and engage in discussion. Jamaican-born musician/poet Linton Kwesi Johnson is the opening-night headliner. Well […]

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/ 1 May 1998

Allister Sparks replies

John Pilger cannot be accused of understating his case, either in his film or this article. Which is fine, but then he musn’t expect others to endorse his polemical views and interpretations. Hence the disclaimer. He says the old SABC sometimes ran critical documentaries by foreign TV journalists and accompanied them with disclaimers like the […]

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/ 1 May 1998

M&G needs a bottom line

Robert Kirby : LOOSE CANNON I keep telling the editor of this paper that he needs to get much more with it, to shrug off the air of 1960s priggish decency that pervades the entire Mail & Guardian enterprise. Just because Jeff Zerbst worked in what were then The Weekly Mail offices shortly before he […]

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/ 1 May 1998

Mastermind plans Aids research unit

Andy Duffy The government is mulling over an offer from one of the world’s leading Aids experts to set up a R40-million research unit in South Africa. Dr Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who first isolated the HIV virus in 1983, tabled his offer in a meeting in Cape Town last week with the Department […]

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/ 1 May 1998

Fragile Angola undermined by SA arms

Nelson Mandela is promoting peace and development in Luanda … but neither are foregone conclusions Chris Gordon President Nelson Mandela’s visit to Angola this week takes place against a background of rumours of war and the poor health of President Jos Eduardo dos Santos. Mandela is scheduled to meet Dos Santos to discuss the two […]

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/ 1 May 1998

For land and freedom

Has the time come for Namibia to honour the heroes of its past? James Ambrose Brown looks back at the bloody conquest of legendary Bondelswart rebel leader Abraham Morris whose lust for liberty took him to his grave Abraham Morris was the last of the fiercely independent Bondelswart fighting generals. With his handful of ragged, […]

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/ 1 May 1998

Monty Python charges

An overlap between Robert McBride’s outlandish charge sheet and the discredited Meiring report suggests an intelligence set-up, write Mungo Soggot and Stefaans Brmmer Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Robert McBride conspired with Cuban and American diplomats to overthrow the ANC government: that is among the bizarre claims which have kept McBride in a Mozambique prison cell for […]