Australian daytime TV tells us that everybody needs good neighbours. ”Naai-burrs,” goes the ditty, ”Ivry-bawdy nades good naaaaaiii-burrs.” And they’re right. Who wouldn’t want to live just a blackjack-infested lawn and splintering picket-fence away from Kylie Minogue? Granted, she was still just Leedle Coily back in her soap days, and not yet an internationally famous rabbit-toothed bottom, but still.
Bulelani Ngcuka arguably blundered by indemnifying French arms dealer, but two secretaries could come to his rescue.
The cost of food, in real terms, has come down to 1999 levels, according to a Food Price Monitoring Committee report released on Friday. ”The general price of items in a shopping trolley has decreased by three percent in the last year,” committee chairperson Johann Kirsten told reporters in Pretoria.
Anti-retroviral (ARV) treatment given to 61 patients, some HIV-positive, at Sterkfontein psychiatric hospital in Johannesburg after an assistant nurse allegedly used the same needle on all of them, is likely to be ineffective, because the treatment was provided too late. The Gauteng department of health then said the assistant nurse had been suspended for administering glucose tests to patients without changing the needle.
”I had the guts to fight these men,” said former Western Cape MEC Frieda Adams following this week’s conclusion of her four-year legal battle over her allegations of sexual harassment and defamation against former party colleagues Peter Marais and Gerald Morkel. Although awarding her damages for injured feelings, the Cape High Court found that Adams had not sufficiently proved her case of sexual harassment.
In what is seen as a test case to break the racial mould of South African politics, the Democratic Alliance is putting up a black candidate in a safe municipal seat in the previously arch-conservative Gauteng town of Vanderbijlpark. The by-election in Vanderbijlpark will take place next Wednesday — in a ward won by the DA in the December 2000 general municipal poll with 92% of the vote.
A mysterious fax suggesting that the <i>Mail & Guardian</i>’s recent stories about the alleged shenanigans in the Ehlanzeni District Municipality are motivated by a desire to attract advertising for the <i>M&G</i> is doing the rounds.
The fax suggests that the newspaper is part of a campaign to replace the incumbent mayor, Jeri Ngomane.
A high-level South African delegation is in Angola this week to explore economic opportunities there, in the aftermath of that country’s civil war. Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest oil producer (after Nigeria), and within the 13-member Southern African Development Community, Angola is South Africa’s fourth-largest trading partner.
Mpumalanga’s controversy-ridden department of public works has been at it again. This time, a top official of the department is alleged to have helped a Telkom employee to hijack a R10-million provincial government contract from the telecommunications parastatal. The allegations are contained in a confidential draft report compiled by Ramathe Fivaz Forensic and Investigative Accounting Services.
The ever-versatile and accomplished jazz activist Darius Brubeck gets another album together ”before it’s too late”. A collection of some of the best local session musicians, Before It’s Too Late has all the elements of a great jazz album, writes Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya.