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 […]

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 […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi African National Congress politicians have allegedly taken a direct hand in a disciplinary hearing against an SABC journalist. The hearing is threatening relations between junior staffers and senior managers at the SABC, where three trade unions have vowed to act against any victimisation. At the centre of the tensions are allegations that Northern […]

South African and Mozambican investigators have failed to contact a potentially crucial witness in the McBride affair, writes Mungo Soggot A close associate of Robert McBride, who has offered information to counter allegations that the foreign affairs official was smuggling weapons in Mozambique, has still to be contacted by Mozambican and South African authorities. As […]

Ferial Haffajee The government has slashed the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s (IBA) budget by millions, and the organisation is haemorrhaging skilled staff who are leaving to avoid a troubled merger with the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra). Five departments are without heads and insiders say other essential staff are “looking [for work] or leaving” before […]

Ferial Haffajee Here’s the dream: industrial development zones (IDZ) will bring prosperity to some of the country’s poorest areas, where new industries will fuel the renaissance of the economy as exports grow. An advanced labour relations system will solve disputes in record time as thousands of workers will be trained to service new industries. Here’s […]

The Durban Designer Emporium’s first exhibition installation was a facelift for fashion and performance art, writes Suzy Bell `Durban’s sub-culture needs to be tickled, then scratched,” hissed the chick with a live goldfish swishing about her liquid handbag. The blood still hasn’t quite drained from the flush of it all, but the gouges, at least, […]

Brett Pyper The newmusic@rhodes series does not aim to present a Who’s Who of South African art music. Instead, it focuses on one specific vein within the work of composers from divergent traditions: music that somehow reflects the encounter of African and Western musical values in South Africa. This approach de-emphasises the substantial South African […]

The South African petroleum industry was thrown into confusion in March 1997 when Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna threatened to “re-regulate the entire industry”. He accused multinationals operating in South Africa of maintaining a stranglehold on the domestic industry without contributing to black empowerment or the economy as a whole. Recently, black empowerment […]