Edward Cottle The African National Congress’s election manifesto appears to be an impressive document. It promises “five years of accelerated change” on the basis of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). What is completely absent from the document is its growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear). Does it mean that Gear has been abandoned? The […]
Sarah Bullen Russian-born director Sergei Bodrov saw the setting for his new feature film Hoofbeats, a big-budget production by Columbia TriStar Pictures, in Solitaire. Solitaire – best described as a tiny enclave somewhere in the middle of Namibia’s endless Namib desert – has very little going for it apart from a caf, a petrol station […]
Phillip vanNiekerk:FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK The truism that a week can be a long time in politics has been brought home to me. At the end of last month I devoted this column to what I had thought to be an unanswerable case against newspapers coming out in support of political parties – a practice […]
ANNUAL passenger car sales worldwide will barely top 32-million in 2000, 3,3-million vehicles fewer than last year’s turnover, reducing sales to levels last seen in the 1980s, Britain’s Economist Intelligence Unit said on Thursday. “Overall world car sales will not exceed their 1997 peak volumes again until 2003,” the EIU said in an abstract from […]
feet’ Sharon Hammond A senior manager in the Kruger National Park was accused this week of being a foul- mouthed tyrant who terrified his staff members and tortured animals. The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) heard in Nelspruit that the trails and information manager, Bruce Bryden, allegedly cut off the feet of elephants […]
John Matshikiza:WITH THE LID OFF Abstraction rules. I am one of many abstractions, queuing with my faceless peers for the chance to vote for abstract promises. Crime will be defeated. There shall be jobs and housing. Your neighbours shall end up loving you as you love them. An abstract situation. A man looks at me […]
Friday night Isaac Chokwe and Tim Horwood We left the office at 7.06pm, unaware of what lay ahead on this autumn Friday night. At the intersection of Jan Smuts and Empire roads I noticed a movement through my open window and glanced to my right … but nothing happened, no one ran up to the […]
Cathy Jenkins:A SECOND LOOK `Let me ask you, Reverend [Musa] Zondi, who should be prosecuted for stockpiling weapons and who should not? If we want the country to be governable, as the Inkatha Freedom Party says it wants to do, who do you think should be prosecuted whenever they transgress the law?” Tim Modise, interviewing […]
Mercedes Sayagues:BODY LANGUAGE I saw my ex-boyfriend for the first time in the 10 months since we broke up. We live in different cities and I went to his for a reporting job so it seemed natural to look him up for a friendly chat. As we sat over a ridiculous, formal lunch where we […]
Charlene Smith The government is delaying a number of studies into rape, HIV and the use of anti- retroviral drugs with the obstinate stance that researchers must have a control group of rape survivors who do not receive medication. One proposed Johannesburg-based study with a $100-million grant from pharmaceutical companies would see free anti-retroviral treatment […]