Andy Duffy Awaiting-trial prisoners are being held at CMax, raising fresh concerns about the rules prison officials follow before putting people into the controversial hi- tech jail. At least 10 suspects have been placed in the maximum security unit since Christmas, and police have played an influential role in the decision to use CMax to […]

Stefaans Brummer and Mungo Soggot The law professor who guided the academic career of Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga and became a close friend had strong intelligence links and served as a front man for Renamo, the notorious Mozambican rebel movement backed by apartheid’s security establishment. Professor André Thomashausen, a constitutional law expert based at Unisa, […]

Lesley : Cowling Material While the country is warming up to the Year of Science and Technology, the science councils are still in the dark about their funding from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. Representatives of the councils, charged with organising certain “thrust” areas, say the funding allocations for their projects have […]

Charlene Smith Barely a week after the pensions crisis in the Eastern Cape, a nationwide, million- rand inquiry into poverty is to be launched, where the poor will be asked to testify about the gravity of their situation. This will follow the first government report on poverty, which will be released by Deputy President Thabo […]

Marion Edmunds Skilled officials from the Department of Public Enterprises — including its chief accounting officer, Professor Sipho Shabalala — are abandoning their minister, Stella Sigcau. Sigcau’s representative, Wandile Zote, confirmed this week that Shabalala, public enterprises deputy director general, had resigned and would leave at the end of the month, in what appears to […]

Jos Havermans Despite the turmoil in the world’s stock markets, it seems almost every country in the world — even the poorest — wants to have its own stock exchange. And Malawi, one of the world’s 15 least developed countries, is no exception. After a three-year apprenticeship period, the Malawi Stock Exchange is poised to […]

Journalists frequently fall into the trap of writing too much about their own profession. It is, therefore, with some reluctance that we return to the subject, specifically by drawing attention to a column written in the latest edition of the Financial Mail by Joe Thloloe, headed “Motshekga and the media” — referring to the Mail […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga South African Housing Trust chair Reverend Frank Chikane has ordered a forensic audit into corruption allegations levelled against the trust’s subsidiary, Khayalethu Home Loans (KHL). The audit was prompted by a Mail & Guardian report last week in which KHL management was accused of paying a consultant for work he had not […]

The issue in Microsoft’s attempt to rule the browser market is a fear of tomorrow’s cheap, simple, ‘networked’ computers, argues Philip Machanick The only puzzling thing about the fact that the United States Department of Justice is pursuing a case against Microsoft is why it took so long to find a reason to tackle it. […]

Zimbabweans have come to learn that mass action counts for more than policy. Iden Wetherell reports Zimbabwe’s beleaguered government this week responded to the crisis engulfing it by a familiar mix of bravado and brute force. But the steps it has belatedly taken only serve to expose a pattern of misrule where populist impulses substitute […]