The wheels of justice are grinding too slowly for the liking of a Johannesburg civil engineering company which has accused the Gauteng Department of Public Works and Transport of discriminating against black firms. Manong and Associates has written a letter to the Magistrate’s Commission expressing its unhappiness with the slowness of the judicial process.
A day before the third anniversary of 9/11, Cape radio listeners were told that Jews are murderers of babies and children as well as conspirators who want to control the world. This week the radio station both broadcast and put on its website an apology to the Jewish community, after the M&G e-mailed questions to the station about the show. But a Jewish community leader says the apology is ”not good enough”.
Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour said this week he is so ”gatvol” with corrupt warders who let prisoners escape that he will henceforth disregard procedures, suspend them without pay and then fire them. ”They can waste as much money as they want on Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration,” he said. ”At the end of the day, they will be the ones left without assets, not me.”
Free State local government councillors have had to face a dressing down by President Thabo Mbeki and the Free State minister for local government, William Kotsoane, after violent community protests against a lack of services. The popular uprisings started in Ntabazwe township, outside of Harrismith, where police killed a youth, Teboho Mkhonza, after residents demonstrated on the N3.
”I have read that this and the other person is an intellectual. I too want to be an intellectual,” wrote Mr X to the Mail & Guardian some years ago. All communists and black consciousness proponents consider themselves intellectuals. It simply wouldn’t feel right if the average capitalist tagged himself as such. One has to be at least a little socially disgruntled to qualify.
For his new thriller <i>Collateral</i>, starring Tom Cruise, the director Michael Mann has ditched the first two acts — and jumped straight in at the denouement. He tells Dan Glaister why.
Matt Damon hit big with <i>The Bourne Identity</i> two years ago, and now he’s back once more as the ex-CIA assassin taking aim at his former employers. Here he talks about the role and the film.
Robert Altman is often described as a maverick, an iconoclast, idiosyncratic in his filmmaking and, as a result, films can look unstructured. That’s because the bits he likes best are the mistakes, he tells Suzie Mackenzie.
It’s a matter of official record: matric exams are becoming easier. This was confirmed last week by Peliwe Lolwane, CEO of Umalusi, the independent body tasked with certifying the matric exams. A report released on September 21 on Umalusi’s research into standards of the matric exams stated that ”higher pass rates are not a sign of examinations becoming easier”.