Coenraad Visser Classical music Unlike its auspicious opening season, the second season of the newly independent National Symphony Orchestra is a rather uneven affair. Russian conductor Vladimir Simkine showed all the good qualities one has come to expect of him – a thorough knowledge of the scores and strict control of the orchestra. In the […]
A special correspondent in Abuja There were few tears and fewer obsequies for General Sani Abacha, the late and brutal president of Nigeria. Wrapped in a sheet and carried to his home town of Kano in the cargo hold of a Nigerian air force jet, he arrived too late even to be buried before evening […]
Ferial Haffajee Even for a priest, it has been an extraordinary baptism – fiery, bitter and unlike the private ceremonies the Reverend Hawu Mbatha usually presides over. His recruitment as CEOof the SABC has occasioned a nasty public spat. If this quiet man had hoped for a quiet accession, it was quickly scotched. He has […]
Andy Duffy A senior Western Cape police officer, found guilty by the police force of sexually harassing a female colleague, has been given a R1,6-million golden handshake, following a decision by the provincial attorney general to drop criminal charges. The former commander of the Woodstock police station, Mario Laubscher, walked off with his bumper retirement […]
Sydney Mathibe South Africa’s witch doctors have learned the power of advertising. A cursory look at the classified sections of newspapers reveals a kaleidoscope of attention- grabbing advertisements aimed at the superstitious and the millions of dedicated muti-users. The ads urge readers to send money, and promote dubious potions, herbal and chemical mixtures and powders […]
Thorough preparation is the key to getting a salary increase, writes Mandy Collins For most people, there comes a time when their salary just doesn’t cover things anymore. The bills seem to be mounting up, and making ends meet becomes an impossibility, while your colleague at the next desk is swanning around in a new […]
John Owen Editors are biting fingernails and journalists are whispering in the corridors as the neck-on-neck magazine market prepares itself for the arrival of a kick- ass competitor in the form of Y, a new magazine written by young black people for young black people. The fire behind all the smoke has come into view […]
The whole of East Asia and the global markets, of which the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is one small component, suffered the reverberations of this week’s seismic shock in Japan when the second-largest economy in the world sank into its first recession for nearly a quarter of a century. The situation was rescued by United States […]
FRIDAY, 8.00PM: AN unqualified former secretary of the Mpumalanga legislature confessed last year that he stole more than R500,000 from the legislature’s Trust Bank account, the Ngobeni Commission heard on Friday. The matter was not reported to the police. Mpumalanga speaker Elias Ginindza testified that the former secretary, Alfred Mahlangu, officially confessed that he stole […]
Mungo Soggot and Tangeni Amupadhi They are one of the South African legal profession’s odder couples: Shafique Sarlie, a smart Indian attorney with neatly coiffed black hair, and advocate Manie Dempers, a former colonel in the South African Defence Force who could be mistaken for a security policeman with his balding head and piercing blue […]