Dawood Dithato When Sir Ketumile Masire retired last week, the bitter pill of leaving Botswana’s highest office after 18 years was considerably sweetened. The size of the former president’s retirement package comes as another indication that his departure from public life was not the magnanimous gesture it was widely heralded to be, but a negotiated […]
This week two new councillors took office at the IBA. Ferial Haffajee profiles the new kids on the block The two thirtysomething councillors add to an Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) that has grown younger and younger since it was established in 1994. It is led by lawyer Felleng Sekha, herself just on the cusp of […]
Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON We should all be grateful to Kader Asmal for giving a whole new meaning to the term Moral Rearmament. Spawned in the late 1930s, the original Moral Rearmament movement advocated absolute morality, private or public. Which is more or less what Asmal likes to advocate as the precept for quite a […]
Mercedes Sayagues It used to be that every morning when Zimbabwe’s only English-language daily, The Herald, was delivered to my home, I would read it at leisure over coffee, or take it to the office for a mid-morning perusal. A quick read was enough, since the government-owned Herald served a bland porridge of watered-down local […]
Mahluli Mngadi: In your ear In these days of wall-to-wall music everywhere, it is refreshingly rare to listen to a well-researched and produced programme on a local community radio station. But then one should not be surprised because Bush Radio is the mother of community radio stations in Africa. It was a founding member of […]
Who is . . . Paul Mashatile? Mukoni T Ratshitanga Way back in 1987, while in detention at the small Jeppestown police station, Paul Mashatile never imagined that his jailers would one day have to account to him. Nor did the police themselves in those turbulent days think of being led by a township activist. […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Another Sunday, another hot Highveld afternoon, another match in the seemingly endless Castle Premiership programme. Fixture number 270 to be precise. Mid-table Moroka Swallows versus relegation candidates African Wanderers. The setting last weekend was George Goch Stadium, a modest, homely stadium one long goal kick from the M1 highway that, like so […]
Krisjan Lemmer Last week Die Burger ran a sanctimonious article chiding two eminent neurologists for disclosing details of former president PW Botha’s stroke in his spat with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The crime the medics commited: disclosing to the world, without asking Botha’s permission, that the old crocodile had probably become mentally unstable as […]
Holistic land management has begun to take root in South Africa, reports Belinda Anderson Every year, almost 400-million tons of precious South African topsoil are washed into dams and rivers by inefficient management techniques. It is estimated that by the year 2020 all of South Africa’s dams will be silted up. The government attributes erosion […]
Charl Blignaut: On stage in Pretoria In 1997, South Africa’s leading concert promoter Attie van Wyk announced that he and showbiz afficionado Bernard Jay would be establishing a new company, In-Concert Theatre. They would be looking to inject a dash of star quality on to the local stage by importing international stars to perform in […]