A ruling to reinstate workers has stirred debate over the Labour Relations Act Glenda Daniels The controversial Volkswagen South Africa (VWSA) arbitration ruling to reinstate 1300 workers who went on an illegal strike a year ago is exposing serious flaws in labour legislation. It also reinforces a disturbing trend in which courts are failing to […]

Guy Willoughby theatre Continuing the buoyant spirit of the festive season, the Cape revels in a new batch of intriguing new home-brewed shows that foster, in different forms, the unfolding cusp-millennial local genius. Most curious is the odd congruence of two dance-theatre explorations, Tango del Fuego (just ended at the Oude Libertas, Stellenbosch) and Sex, […]

Dave Simpson CD OFTHEWEEK Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst has made a career out of dividing people. For the eight million fans who bought his band’s two albums, he is an iconic spokesperson of post-millennial alienation. For the rest, Limp Bizkit are social pariahs in bad shorts, whose on-stage behaviour was widely blamed for last year’s […]

Barry Streek Parliamentary oversight over the Cabinet should play a significant role in ensuring the delivery of constitutionally guaranteed socio-economic rights and the entrenchment of a rights-based culture, delegates to a seminar in Cape Town said in a declaration this week. They also concluded that the separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and […]

Mungo Soggot, Evidence wa ka Ngobeni and Nawaal Deane The state oil company and the government are limbering up for a court battle in London over a controversial R1,5-billion oil contract under investigation by the Scorpions. The contract in question was sealed last year by officials at the state oil company, the Strategic Fuel Fund […]

The curtain lifts on the new political year with the president’s state-of-the-nation address and the opening of Parliament. The lekgotlas and bosberaads that usually precede these two events, important though they are, amount to little more than the various parties learning their lines for the new year. There is, none the less, a sense of […]

Suzan Chala Mandrax and dagga are still the favourites among South Africa’s junkies, but heroin, cocaine and amphetamines pose a danger for the future, says the man who will head South Africa’s central drug authority, Frank Kahn, director of public prosecutions in the Cape. The government has produced a drug master plan making provision for […]

Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION I have this fear that at some stage, not too far into the South African future, a lot of people will be speaking the crude burlesque of English used in e.tv news bulletins. As a crucible of what might well be described “kitchen English”, there is no finer. Any bulletin from e.tv […]

Venda villagers sold contaminated paraffin are suing Engen and its agents Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Engen, South Africa’s biggest petroleum company, is facing a multimillion-rand lawsuit from residents of a little village where a person died and many suffered severe trauma after paraffin lamps exploded in their homes last year. Lawyers representing the villagers of […]