It’s bonus time and the best place to put your cheque is in the bank. However, there are some romantic alternatives, writes Belinda Beresford Christmas is coming, and the credit card companies are getting fat, so please put your bonus into the bank. The sensible thing to do with your Christmas bonus is pay off […]

Robert Mattes: A SECOND LOOK As reported recently (“The ANC and the seven dwarfs”, December 4 to 10), voter surveys have revealed increasingly large proportions of voters who might be persuaded to vote differently than they did in 1994. The first Opinion ’99 survey in September 1998 revealed that 56% of all potential voters now […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Luanda | Friday 5.00pm. UNITA rebels shelled the town of Malanje in northern Angola early on Friday, Catholic radio station Ecclesia reported. Several people in two neighborhoods were reported injured in the attack. On Thursday evening several shells landed within a kilometre of the governor’s residence in Malanje and dozens of civilians were […]

A Bill aimed at protecting indigenous knowledge appears to be more intent on gaining full control over the information garnered, writes Rachel Wynberg Legislation aimed at protecting and promoting South African indigenous knowledge has developed within the context of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s “African renaissance”. The intended outcome is to transform indigenous knowledge and technologies […]

Twenty-five years after William Plomer’s death, Stephen Gray searched out more of his literary remains A quarter of a century ago William Plomer died in England unexpectedly. His revision of his two memoirs into one Autobiography was not yet complete. His Collected Poems of 1973 – including all of his best South African items – […]

David Shapshak A flamethrower system fitted to cars to ward off hijackers has attracted huge international attention. In the same week South Africa hit the headlines with the discovery of a 3,5- million-year-old skeleton, a local entrepreneur was attracting nearly as much attention for an entirely different reason. Charl Fourie’s flamethrower will launch a fireball […]

Fiona Macleod A deal being hammered out with the southern Kalahari Bushmen will entitle them to jointly own and manage more than 1 000km2 of the Kalahari Gemsbok National Park in the Northern Cape. It will also add about 500km2 on to the park. If the deal goes through – and there are indications it […]

One defeat provoked less than subtle expressions of white supremacy, two released emotions constrained by the excesses of the likes of Eugene de Kock and Craig Williamson. Naively increduluous they asked each other: “You mean our side did that? Well there was communism you know.” On the Talk At Will show, where they feel most […]

Ann Eveleth The Hartebeespoort local council agreed this week to consider an innovative land reform plan hatched by local farmers, but Broederstroom smallholder Roger Roman vowed to continue his hunger strike “until the process becomes unstoppable”. Roman launched his hunger strike on November 25 in a bid to force the conservative local council to kick- […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby When, in 1990, FW de Klerk made that watershed speech in Parliament, I wonder if he realised how, in doing so, he was snatching the rug from beneath the feet of innumerable and worthy white liberals, those long snuffled ranks of good souls who had been living so well for many […]