commission Khadija Magardie The Human Rights Commission (HRC) is investigating possible criminal charges against Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe. This follows an application by the Mail & Guardian to investigate Radebe, after remarks he made in a submission to the HRC during the racism in the media hearings earlier this year. Radebe accused M&G […]
Paul Kirk The ease with which a child molester can escape prosecution came into sharp focus this week when a lowly suspected car thief was caught red-handed with a sensitive and stolen police investigation docket into the rape of a teenage girl. Had the docket not been recovered the rapist may well have escaped scot-free […]
Ivor Powell With Parliament gearing up to act and the auditor general questioning the probity of the process, the lid could finally be coming off South Africa’s controversial R32-billion weapons procurement programme after a report in the Mail & Guardian last week (“Nepotism in R32bn arms deal”) showing irregularities in the awarding of contracts. Both […]
Barry Streek The government has saved R45- million in rationalising and reducing the use of energy in some government buildings in Pretoria and Cape Town, says Deputy Minister of Public Works Buyi Nzimande. In some buildings savings of more than 25% of energy costs had been achieved, she said in Parliament during the discussions of […]
Antony Barnett, James Meikle and John Vidal A zoologist has found evidence that genes used to modify crops can jump the species barrier and cause bacteria to mutate. A four-year study by Professor Hans- Hinrich Kaatz found that the alien gene used to modify oilseed rape had transferred to bacteria living in the guts of […]
Andy Capostagno RUGBY It is now time to acknowledge that all of us have been guilty of damning the Super 12 champions of the past three years with faint praise. The Crusaders entered all three finals as rank outsiders and then beat the Blues (20-13), the Highlanders (24-19) and now the Brumbies (20-19). By which […]
Grant Shimmin OLYMPICS I’m not too sure where or how the phrase “nothing ventured, nothing gained” originated, but if I met someone now who’d somehow never heard that well-worn saying before, I could probably go some way to convincing him that it was coined for Colleen Orsmond and Helen Fleming. It could well have been […]
Angus Begg Born – October 4 1918, died – April 4 1994, Gregg Simons was one of the Riemvasmakers trucked in 1970, against his will, from his home in the northern Cape to the red and rocky hills of Damaraland in the former South West Africa. As far as family graveyards go, his resting place […]
Connie Selebogo The youth development club in Moutse, Mpumalanga, has developed a new literacy campaign consisting of a computer project on maths and science called Computer Aided Maths Instructions (Cami). However, the project is stalled for a while for lack of computer equipment. A pilot Cami project has been implemented in one of the local […]
Can Tolkien’s classic be read as an allegory about the dark forces of globalisation? Larry Elliot It’s what a generation of superannuated hippies have been waiting for – the big- screen version of The Lord of the Rings. With Sir Ian McKellen as the wizard Gandalf, JRR Tolkien’s epic is being filmed in some of […]