Gavin Foster When the new Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (AARTO) system kicks in early next year, traffic law enforcement agencies will supposedly be in a much better position to do their job. Authorities will have their own national debt-collecting service, the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA), to ensure that fines and recovery costs […]

Cameron Duodu Letter from the North Sometimes I wish ordinary people could address the United Nations. I would be there like a shot, asking the Western powers – who rule the UN – why they have allowed such a terrible tragedy to unfold in East Timor. That country has endured a quarter of a century […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni A top official at the Randfontein local council is being probed for running a moneylending agency through unauthorised staff salary deductions from the council’s office. Randfontein’s acting town treasurer, Willem “Bossie” Bosman, is also being investigated for allegedly using council facilities to run his loan agency. According to council officials, the […]

Clare Boylan Body Language When I was growing up, marriage was a sort of diploma in a woman’s life. After years of sleeping in hair-rollers, cinching her waist and preserving the well-chewed bone of her virginity, a girl finally got The Ring. The Ring was vital because it was glittery and she could flash it […]

Simon Waldman Just when you thought it was safe to switch on your computer, when you had dumped Melissa, chucked out Chernobyl and dug out the few files that had not been eaten up by the Explorer worm, along comes another virus. This time it’s Back Orifice 2000, a cunning program written by a group […]

Stephen Gray LEIPOLDT: ‘n LEWENSVERHAAL by JC Kannemeyer (Tafelberg) When the literary historian, John Kannemeyer, tackles the biography of one of the Afrikaans-language founding figures (CJ Langenhoven, DJ Opperman), it is fair to expect professional thoroughness. He is a fine keeper of such records, a diligent researcher who does all the legwork uncomplainingly, amasses abundant […]

Anthony Egan CAPE TOWN IN THE 20th CENTURY by Vivian Bickford Smith, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Nigel Worden (David Philip) Serious history meets the coffee-table format in this second of two volumes on the history of Cape Town. The authors, historians at the University of Cape Town, draw heavily on unpublished as well as published […]

While legislation regulating microlenders is the subject of a legal battle, the industry is in a state of flux, writes Belinda Beresford It happens to even the most highly paid individuals. Bad personal money management or just a particularly demanding month financially, and suddenly there’s a cash crunch. Creditworthy customers can turn to their banks. […]

plant tree Peter Dickson It was seven years to the day when Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils returned to a massacre site outside Bisho’s Independence stadium this week. It was his first return to the site of the September 7 1992 massacre by Ciskei bantustan troops of 28 African National Congress marchers […]

Charlene Smith Officials of the Department of Justice and prosecutors are complaining that magistrates are refusing to prosecute cases of child abuse and rape as public scrutiny of verdicts intensifies. One official complained that magistrates also didn’t want to participate in, or be briefed about, victim empowerment programmes being designed by a coalition of government […]