FRIDAY, 5.00PM LATEST economic and financial projections published by the Reserve Bank on Friday predict a 3% growth rate for 1998/99 — in line with estimates presented in the Budget this week. Reserve Bank governor Dr Chris Stals told a parliamentary finance committee on the Budget that the Budget will enable monetary policy to be […]

Julian Drew Two years ago at the Atlanta Paralympics I was fortunate enough to stay with a wonderful family who were all involved with the Games in one way or another as volunteers. Alistair, the second of three children, was born with cerebral palsy but like all the athletes who descended on Atlanta for those […]

SABC3’s ratings have never been better. It has spent the last year or so fighting with M-Net for viewers -and now it has a narrow lead. But that doesn’t mean the war is over:the battle for the upper end of the market continues, and that’s good news for South African television viewers as each station […]

Mark Swilling The irony was not lost on Minister of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development Valli Moosa when he unveiled the new White Paper on Local Government at a ceremony at the Castle in Cape Town this week. As the fortress that housed South Africa’s first colonial local government, it was a fitting venue to […]

Marion Edmunds Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel’s copy of the 1998/1999 budget speech was a prize attraction this week at a lavish banquet for South Africa’s top black businesspeople who gathered to toast Manuel and the country’s foremost black entrepreneur, Cyril Ramaphosa. The document – which included some gentle tax cuts for the richest of […]

James Ambrose Brown: A SECOND LOOK If you were to tease my memory about the exhibits of the museum in the gardens of the library in Johannesburg, I would have to admit that I remember only two things – one is the reputed chair of Shaka, king of the Zulus; the other is a Zeederberg […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Unique learning centres established in 1995 by Unisa attempted to offer distance-education students some of the advantages of classroom teaching. But three years later, enrolment at one of the primary centres in downtown Johannesburg is on the decline. Students blame rising fees, fear of the city centre and the formal way their […]

Philippa Garson Elmo should expand his cookie-baking skills to include detective work and do some off-set sniffing around, given the brewing controversy around Sesame Street, the pre-school television production in which he stars. Questions are being raised in the United States Congress about whether the R25-million granted by USAid to the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) […]

Belinda Beresford The government is continuing its campaign to ensure that taxes become as unavoidable as death for South Africans with the latest budget, which reduced the overall income tax burden while attacking fringe benefits such as car allowances. The budget saw about R3,7-billion knocked off the income tax burden for South Africans, with the […]

Jeremy Cronin: CROSSFIRE Isn’t it time to get Crossfire cross-firing? I am going to take a few pot shots at my friend and comrade, Pallo Jordan – with whom, on most things, I mostly agree. But first some anecdotal background. At the gold summit at the end of February, I was sitting in a Braamfontein […]