Barry Streek Non-profit organisations are on the verge of victory in their long-standing battle to gain tax concessions from the government. This follows a draft report by the National Assembly’s portfolio committee on finance which endorsed last year’s Katz commission’s proposals to extend tax incentives to NGOs. The committee’s draft report has rejected attempts by […]

Barry Streek The government is to lay down minimum wages and working conditions for domestic servants and farm workers by March next year, the Department of Labour said this week. The department’s director of minimum standards, Fatima Bhayat, told the Mail & Guardian it would wrap up its policy on the domestic servant industry by […]

Ebrahim Harvey CROSSFIRE Unlike the earlier caution and equivocation of the ruling party, President Thabo Mbeki has recently openly called for the growth of a black capitalist class in order to provide greater stability and economic growth. But what are the real prospects for this development ? Black capitalism has arrived too late on the […]

Jubie Matlou If the newly built Rockey Street Market in Yeoville is anything to go by, then the face of informal and street trading is set to undergo an unprecedented fundamental change. Informal and street trading in Johannesburg has a rich history that is interlinked with the country’s migratory labour system just before the turn […]

Peter Dickson Eastern Cape MEC for Education Stone Sizani has promised to throw the province’s farm schools a R13,9-million lifeline after being subpoenaed by the Human Rights Commission (HRC) to explain his failure to fund the schools. The HRC has issued two previous subpoenas to Sizani since late last year, but in both instances he […]

Paul Kirk A senior member of the Zulu royal family and KwaZulu-Natal’s MEC for Welfare, Prince Gideon Zulu, is receiving regular payments by way of his daughter from the security company that delivers the province’s state pensions. Cash Paymaster Services (CPS) has held the multimillion-rand contract for about five years. It is responsible for delivering […]

Q & A Manaka Ranaka is the latest addition to the cast of Isidingo (SABC3, Monday to Thursday at 18.30pm). The blond, dreadlocked 20-year-old plays Nandipha, a streetwise maid for Derek Nyathi. In the few months since arriving at Horizon Deep, she has crossed paths with the town’s crook, George Zamdela, and wreaked havoc with […]

A travelling exhibition focuses on history’s silent witnesses, writes Alex Sudheim The crowd: that swollen, seething animal, comes to life when human beings swarm together in a single unity of desire. As an organism the crowd works its seduction by promising the surrender of individual will to the mass. Individuals, no longer responsible for their […]

Howard Barrell and Barry Streek While the government has scorned talk of an economic “big bang” and sought to dampen expectations this week, statements by President Thabo Mbeki and his Cabinet colleagues reveal that they are initiating far-reaching changes designed to propel the economy to a higher growth path. Mbeki’s State of the Nation address […]

Channel vision Last Sunday’s Newsmaker interview with Mr Thabo Mbeki should be released on video as a teaching aid, for use in first-year state-of-the-art political sycophancy lectures. Marketed overseas it could become an academic gotta-have. If ever there was a demonstration of how callow and smarmy it is possible to become, this was it. Snuki […]