OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday FORMER Umkhonto we Sizwe commander and current foreign affairs official Robert McBride, former Vlakplaas police commander Eugene de Kock and rightwing leader Piet Skiet Rudolph have been given amnesty for various attacks committed during the apartheid era. McBride and ANC special operations senior commander Aboobaker Ismail were given amnesty for […]
AN Islamic court in northern Nigeria has sentenced a man to 80 lashes for falsely accusing his neighbour of sodomy, court officials said on Wednesday. Ibrahim Mamman Na-Wurno was found guilty on Tuesday by the Sharia court in Gusau for lying against Lawal Idris, a court official said. He said court judge Dahiru Mohammed Gusau […]
Barry Streek African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni has been summonsed by the Blaauwberg administration for the non-payment of R3?281,89 in rates and a further R84,78 in interest. The Blaauwberg administration, which is now part of the Cape Town Unicity, instructed its lawyers to issue the summons against Yengeni on February 19 this year […]
Barry Streek Crossfire The silence in political circles ranging from the ever-critical Democratic Alliance to the African National Congress, the government, the South African Communist Party and the apparently land-conscious Pan Africanist Congress about the legalistic judgement in the Land Claims Court rejecting the claim of the Richtersveld people to their land is revealing. It […]
Thebe Mabanga The process of trying to analyse the cause of the Ellis Park disaster and avert a possible future occurrence got under way this week with the release of the terms of reference of the commission of inquiry into the disaster. The commission’s chair, Gauteng Judge President Bernard Ngoepe, expressed appreciation for the eagerness […]
Console Tleane a Second Look The recent furore surrounding Max du Preez’s comments on radio about President Thabo Mbeki’s alleged infidelities, and later carried by a daily newspaper, begs a relook at the role of the press in South Africa. Such a retrospection becomes even more critical following a call by the Western Cape African […]
Unions at Vista University have formally declared a dispute with the institution over its planned retrenchment of 20% of its staff David Macfarlane In a bizarre move, Vista University is planning to shed 365 of its staff at the same time as the government proceeds with plans to dismantle the institution. Even more bizarrely, there […]
Stefaans Brmmer and Jaspreet Kindra A pamphlet said to have originated in the African National Congress alliance calling for “one president, one term” has fuelled the latest round of accusations around supposed plots against President Thabo Mbeki. This has been the month in which tensions around the president, long simmering in the ANC and tripartite […]
David Le Page One of South Africa’s most prominent financial services companies stands accused of exposing policyholders’ funds to excessive risk. Senior figures in the financial services industry this week took the rare step of raising serious questions on the record about Fedsure’s handling of their smoothed bonus Guaranteed Fund. Such funds are designed to […]
whipping boy It was during a night meeting at Greyville in Durban, four months ago, that horse racing seemed to go through the looking glass into the realm of the absurd. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, until jockey Andrew Fortune stepped into the footlights with his own brand of tragicomedy. Fortune’s mount, a smart-looking […]