BANKS may face legal action if they continue to discriminate against small back business, Parliament has warned. The Government has been called on to introduce legislation that will encourage the banking sector to grant black business more loans. This comes after the trade and industry portfolio committee approved a report which says that black businesses […]

Paul Kirk The KwaZulu-Natal government’s investigation into a series of Mail & Guardian exposs on Prince Gideon Zulu has found the MEC for welfare and population development squeaky clean – without checking the bank accounts that implicated him in the first place. Meanwhile, the controversial prince has blamed the rampant chaos in the provincial Department […]

David Beresford Another country The end of the world is nigh and will be brought about by wind. This latest triumph in speculative physics (or is it meteorology?) arises from contemplation of the vexed question of what happened to the dinosaurs. For those who are not up to speed on this great scientific debate I […]

Jeffrey Ndumo During the Oliver Tambo Memorial Lecture, on August 11 2000, President Thabo Mbeki delivered a fierce speech which had two main themes. The first was to chastise the “black petit bourgeoisie” and native intellectuals for reducing themselves to the status of foot-lickers of white capital at the expense of a contribution to the […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Newly elected general secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) Slumko Nondwangu this week began an uphill battle to stamp his authority on a union increasingly divided by tensions over ideology. At 36 Nondwangu assumes a difficult task: continuing the legacy of his predecessors that has made Numsa the […]

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing into the crash was biased, crude and ignored the maxims of balance and fair play, writes Robert Kirby That the transcript of the secret Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearings into the Helderberg accident has been kept from public view comes as no surprise. What is far more surprising […]

Howard Barrell OVERABARREL Britain’s campaign to seize the Falklands Islands back from Argentina in 1982 provided the backdrop for a delightfully executed deception against a South African journalist. For a number of years, the journalist, who shall remain nameless, had maintained a fruitful (though proper) relationship with a locally based British diplomat who was not […]

Rhoda Kadalie Is President Thabo Mbeki playing the race fiddle while Rome is burning? Has he not learned that when one uses race as a political rallying point, racial conflict gains a momentum of its own that is often difficult to reverse in times of crisis? Has ethnic conflict in Bosnia, Rwanda, Burundi and Serbia […]

Nawaal Deane and Ntuthuko Maphumulo The first in-depth investigation into the efficacy of South Africa’s Aids awareness campaigns on the country’s youth shows that while the information is getting through, few believe it applies to them. The survey, conducted by the Beyond Awareness Campaign, reveals that most young people see HIV as a threat to […]