Ivor Powell The University of the Witwaters-rand is embroiled in a major embarrassment after it emerged that one of its distinguished research fellows was serving as representative for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF while he was accredited to represent the university. As a visiting research professor in the university’s political science department, Zimbabwean academic Professor […]

Taking time off from the Battlefield Tourist Route, Stephen Gray hunts down the bestselling Rider Haggard Granted, with perpetual sellers of his like King Solomon’s Mines of 1885, She and so on for 60 more rattling adventures, Henry Rider Haggard put South Africa on the reader’s map of the world. His timing was right. He […]

Graham Hayman CROSSFIRE Red tape at the Medicines Control Council (MCC) is reported to be standing in the way of the registration of complementary medicines and African traditional medicine in the organisation’s databank. Complementary medicines (CMs) form part of the rapidly expanding worldwide market for non-prescription medicines. CMs include traditional herbal medicines (both African and […]

history Maggie O’Kane in Belfast When Cyril Ramaphosa arrived at his office in Johannesburg at 11.30am on Tuesday June 27, he ended a seven-day journey that took him across the world and into Ireland’s history books. He is a witness to what may finally be the end of 30 years of violence, human loss and […]

More than 80% of the proposed 17E000ha of the Coega industrial development zone is in private hands Peter Dickson With six months to go before builders begin clearing the land for the proposed R1,6-billion deepwater port at Coega outside Port Elizabeth, one man’s mine stands in the way of the Eastern Cape’s much-vaunted “economic miracle”. […]

Casinos are gambling on making a cool R2- billion a year – but they’ve had to go to the ends of the earth to get people there Mary Dover The race is on for five of the six licensed casinos in Gauteng to be complete in all their glory. It’s official: kitsch, glitz and glamour […]

Barry Streek The large-scale firing and retrenchment of workers on Western Cape fruit farms will cause huge damage to rural civil society and to the quality of life in the province but it won’t make the industry productive and internationally competitive, two University of Western Cape (UWC) researchers have concluded. They also dismiss claims that […]

Belinda Beresford Holding a telecommunications conference in Nigeria was a fitting act since the country encapsulates the problems and the lure of telecommunications in Africa. Last week’s Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC) conference was being held in Africa’s most populous nation and one laden with natural resources. Yet the country’s infrastructure is collapsing. Seventeen companies […]

The run-up to the International Aids 2000 conference starting in Durban on July 9 has been dogged by controversy Timothy Trengove-Jones If asked to name a single issue that drew into unambiguous focus the most pressing dilemmas facing this country today, one would have to answer HIV/Aids. But, immediately upon giving that answer, one would […]

Steven Friedman WORM’S EYE VIEW Sometimes “fixing” a problem can make it much worse. Local government after the pending elections may be an example. There is wide agreement that many municipal governments are not working well. Far from meeting the ambitious development goals set them by national government, local councils often battle to balance their […]