Comment Greg Mills and Tim Hughes Pretoria has responded predictably to the imposition of European Union sanctions on Zimbabwe, describing them as “regrettable and unfortunate”. President Robert Mugabe has called the act “disgraceful” and “illegal”. Both might well have added “inevitable” given the nature of unfolding events. After all, the past 18 months have seen […]

The finance minister’s Budget is going to bring greater misery analysis Nigel Bruce If the economy had been growing at 5% or more, a United States dollar cost R5 or less and a million jobs had been created instead of lost over the past five years, the national Budget presented to Parliament this week by […]

Drew Forrest Water cut-offs in parts of Cape Town have risen sevenfold since 1999 and huge disparities persist in spending on services for white and black Capetonians, according to newly released research. The study, by Canadian academics David McDonald and Laila Smith, finds particularly glaring racial imbalances in capital spending on water and waste disposal. […]

The government has undertaken to help a floundering Khomani San community find its feet, three years after the transfer of large chunks of the Kalahari under the Restitution of Land Rights Act. Roger Friedman reports. Benny Gool took the photographs A series of constitutional changes designed to protect the rights of elders and traditionalists will […]

SOCCER Ntuthuko Maphumulo The league title is there for the taking this season, but no one team seems to want to assert its superiority and take a commanding lead. So far several teams have occupied the number one spot, with Cape-based Santos currently sitting pretty. Defending Premier Soccer League (PSL) champions Orlando Pirates played Sundowns […]

Wisani wa ka Ngobeni, Jaspreet Kindra and Sapa The huge complexity of the task facing South African observers of the Zimbabwe election was thrown into relief this week when senior observer Brigalia Bam warned that her team was powerless to act against politically motivated violence. Bam, chairperson of South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission, told SAfm […]

I cannot remember when last I have seen such a provocative and sensational banner front page headline as in last week’s M&G, “Spoiling for a fight”. The fight is allegedly between “two education heavyweights”, the Minister of Education, Professor Kader Asmal and Professor Malegapuru Makgoba. The boxing analogy is carried over into David Macfarlane’s article […]

You write in your Editorial Reversing Verwoerd (15-21 February 2002) that “Fort Hare and Rhodes, for example, are balking at the planned merger. One has a proud anti-apartheid record, the other a proud academic record”. This is inaccurate. The University College of Fort Hare was taken over by the Minister of Bantu Education from 1 […]

ATHLETICS Martin Gillingham The news that top sprinter Adri Schoeman has tested positive for the use of an anabolic steroid should surprise no one. The metamorphosis her body has been through over the course of the past few years makes the changes underwent by Flo-Jo (Florence Griffiths-Joyner) in the late Eighties look like nothing more […]

Wisani wa ka Ngobeni In what senior government officials have described as an “onslaught against young, dynamic director generals”, Thami Sokutu’s name has been added to a growing list in conflict with their ministers. Departmental sources claim that Sokutu, the Director General for the Department of Public Works, is being pressured to quit his job […]