Njongonkulu Ndungane: UBUNTU Last week I was privileged to attend the launch of a new liberation movement: the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign. This movement’s main objective is the liberation of Africa from the chains of debt. The movement calls for Africa to begin the new millennium with a clean slate, free from debt, as a […]

Everything on Wall Street is excessive: buildings, bonuses – and sexual harassment of female clerical staff by male brokers. But women are striking back. Joanna Coles reports from New York Wall Street is a place of excess: the seven- figure salaries, the soaring, self-reflecting buildings of chrome and glass, the bonuses bigger than the national […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga The University of Zululand – one of the hardest hit by government subsidy cuts and student debt – spent more than R1,7-million on curtains in three years. However, university representative Carl de Villiers said this week a preliminary report on the linen spending spree “does not show any criminal activity”. The probe […]

Emeka Nwandiko As South African companies struggle to fill high-flying posts they are increasingly relying on executive recruitment agencies – better known as headhunters – to fill the gap. Crime is the reason most often given for the outflow of mainly white senior executives from South Africa since 1994. The Central Statistical Service notes that […]

A letter from Don Mkhwanazi cites Thabo Mbeki as the “top command” of his black-empowerment bank, reports Mungo Soggot The offices of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and businessman Don Mkhwanazi this week sought to dispel suggestions that Mbeki was closely involved with the Malaysian-backed bank Mkhwanazi chairs. Senior staffers at the bank, including its former […]

Who was Trevor Huddleston? Eric James It is remarkable that it was a white bishop whom the African National Congress asked to open their first conference in freedom in 1991. His return to South Africa as a hero, after an absence of 35 years, was the measure of the stature of Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, who […]

Dave Chislett Sugardrive, leaders of the pack in the FNBSama Awards rock category, have been around for well over four years now. Probably best remembered as grunge masters who sounded uncomfortably like Pearl Jam, that is a phase that they would now rather forget. So far, they have released two albums, one EP and a […]

Appearance masked disappearance and death in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Nothing was how it seemed. Nigel Fountain reports on the photos that hid dirty deeds One photograph in The Commissar Vanishes is of two men playing chess in the sunshine of Capri. It is April 1908. Alexander Bogdanov, later to found the Soviet Union’s first blood […]

David Beresford One of the former stars of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s investigative team, Piers Pigou, this week delivered a savage critique of the inquiry, charging it with having failed lamentably in its task of uncovering the “truth” about human rights violations during the apartheid era. Pigou, who will long be remembered for his […]

Mungo Soggot The taxpayer’s bill for Public Protector Selby Baqwa’s exploration of Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna’s possible slander of the auditor general is on track to outstrip the corruption watchdog’s total annual budget of R7,5-million. At least five legal teams are due to appear before Baqwa’s investigation, which should run for at […]