bias Ann Eveleth Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal undertook this week to launch an inquiry into allegations that building consortium Group Five refused to consider highly qualified candidates for senior posts because they were black or female. Executive recruitment firm Dick Muller CC blew the whistle on the construction, engineering and works […]

Ferial Haffajee Newspaper magnate Tony O’Reilly jetted into South Africa this week for a regular inspection of his African interests – no doubt he will also make time to heal an important relationship. President Nelson Mandela’s December attack in Mafikeng on foreign-owned media and its abiding white management could not have gone down well with […]

Lizeka Mda : City Limits A lifetime ago, couples would sit in Pioneer Park and smooch over a lunch of fish and chips, while mothers kept a beady eye on children mesmerised by a statue of leaping springboks. Ten years ago the park, wedged behind the Rissik Street post office and Joubert Street, still vaguely […]

On the way to interview Joe Theron, publisher of Hustler and the largest porn- video distributor in the country, my taxi driver opined: “For this pornography thing, I’m a bit concerned about the area of morals. I think I can tell my child these things myself. My parents told me babies came from aeroplanes but […]

Playwright Paul Slabolepszy has had 22 plays staged in almost as many years. So why, asks Charl Blignaut, does he have to impersonate Naas Botha at rugby matches to pay the bills? ‘All I actually want to do is stay home at the computer and write,” says Paul Slabolepszy once we have settled in as […]

Incentive schemes are big business, writes Belinda Beresford It’s nice to be wanted. It’s even nicer if your desirability is displayed in a concrete way, say by an exclusive lounge at the airport, special discounts on purchases, a bigger company car or even the odd little gift. Motivating people to do what you want is […]

Wonder Hlongwa The investigative task unit head, Bushy Engelbrecht, this week applied to have part of Sifiso Nkabinde’s trial held in camera. Engelbrecht said six witnesses fear that if their identities become known in the course of testifying against Nkabinde in an open court, their lives will be in danger. The former African National Congress […]

Battle lines are drawn over the Employment Equity Bill, write Marion Edmunds and Mungo Soggot All sides of the political spectrum dug in this week for what threatens to be the biggest parliamentary battle between now and the next elections: the government’s drive to take on white economic privilege. The Employment Equity Bill, due to […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon Question 3: a) What event was this British woman talking about in 1997 when she said: “A kind of floral fascism was at work … in a country ruled by grief police?” b) Around the same time a BBC camera chose to zoom in on a greeting card reading “God created […]