Barry Streek Controversy-dogged land tenure legislation is to be tabled in Parliament next year, after a week-long national conference on land rights at which the government hopes to forge consensus among conflicting actors in the land field. The legislation is intended to give tenants, living under chiefs’ tenure, rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Seen as […]

Glenda Daniels In a move that could heighten tensions between labour and the ruling African National Congress, the Congress of South African Trade Unions is to stage a national summit on economic reconstruction involving all elements of civil society. The summit, which Cosatu wants to convene by the end of the year, but is more […]

Mail & Guardian reporter The South African Revenue Service (Sars) set the seemingly arbitrary date of October 1 this year as the date that capital gains tax (CGT) came into effect and the base cost of units is determined. But the date turned out to be anything but arbitrary. As fate would have it, just […]

Paul Kirk A Durban bus company that has gone into liquidation claims a spate of hijackings crippled it. The government-run KZT Transport – which was the major provider of public transport to blacks during apartheid – was half-owned by the Bantu Development Corporation. The company’s operations in rural areas were later subsidised by the KwaZulu-Natal […]

Barry Streek Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils has told his Director General, Mike Muller, to break the law if it is necessary to implement his department’s water programmes. Kasrils admitted in August that there had been underspending on water programmes and said they were being implemented too slowly because of problems with […]

Khadija Magardie Watching her willowy teenaged daughter and her gurgling grand-daughter playing together, Veronica’s* eyes glisten with tears. The soft-spoken woman says simply: “When I see them together, so happy, I ask myself time and time again, why did this happen?” Her daughter, Sibongile, is HIV-positive. So is her six-month-old grandchild, Tinashe. The baby was […]

Leslie Tilley looks at whether there are any safe bets left when it comes to investing Forget previous investment strategies: the world economy has entered a new era and in the process pushed aside the financial tenets of the past. The September 11 attack on the United States has caused a paradigm shift in Western […]

Drew Forrest The fascinating African National Congress document targeting an “ultra-left tendency” in the labour movement and the South African Communist Party is the latest broadside in a decades-old battle in the South African left over the role of trade unions. It revives conflicts in and outside the union movement in the 1980s between “populists” […]

Born in Trinidad, he had a breakdown at Oxford but went on to build a reputation as a world-class novelist. More recently, his personal life has come under scrutiny, his views have drawn accusations of racism and homophobia, and he has found himself at the centre of a literary feud. Maya Jaggi on an outspoken […]

ATHLETICS Martin Gillingham Let me tell you a true story. There’s this national leader who approaches the president of a global sports body and pleads him to stage his world championships in his country. “But you haven’t got a stadium big enough,” replies the sports boss. “I know,” says the politician, “but if you give […]