Chris Opperman Former foreign affairs minister Pik Botha and several senior retired Armscor officials will be among the key witnesses in a sensational case due to resume in a Paris court later this year. It is expected to expose details about South Africa’s top-secret international weapons transactions during the days of the arms embargo. A […]
South Africa’s street-activist-turned-minister-of-finance effortlessly cruised through his second budget this week, delivering the bad news with wit and the good news with his trademark Cheshire-cat grin. It was a virtuoso performance by Trevor Manuel – except for the blaps at the end when he thanked President Nelson Mandela “in his absence” for his support. Mandela […]
Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS Six o’clock in the evening and there is no parking space left in the Old Edwardian Sports Club in Lower Houghton. Cars overflow outside the club’s gates on to Fourth Street, all the way to 11th Avenue. These are the premises of the Old Edwardian Society, prime real estate in this […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi and Bruno Willemse A diamond deal that went terribly wrong last week has shaken the inner circles of the African National Congress in the Northern Cape and cast doubts on the future of its Premier, Manne Dipico. Dean Snyders, a former activist and close friend of Dipico, was arrested last week on charges […]
Belinda Beresford If you’re one of those people who finds it irritating listening to the ubiquitous ringing of telephones over dinner, on the golf course or – most odious of all – at the movies, you’ll find it hard to resist cheering at the news that cellphone imports are to be hit with customs duties. […]
Tim Radford in London Suddenly the moon has become precious real estate: a kind of off-planet investment. Twenty-five years since two astronauts from Apollo 17 dusted their hands off and climbed back into a lunar module, Nasa scientists had peered at data from an orbiting spacecraft and found water at the lunar poles. Now a […]
Mark Swilling The irony was not lost on Minister of Provincial Affairs and Constitutional Development Valli Moosa when he unveiled the new White Paper on Local Government at a ceremony at the Castle in Cape Town this week. As the fortress that housed South Africa’s first colonial local government, it was a fitting venue to […]
Nicole Turner As the government battles to stem the brain-drain of professionals from rural areas to urban centres, South Africa’s youngest and fastest-growing university is improving the skills of thousands of rural teachers from disadvantaged backgrounds every year. Vista University’s Distance Education Campus (Vudec) in Pretoria enrolled 10 079 students last year, all of them […]
Mungo Soggot The corruption crisis in South Africa’s state oil industry claimed its most important casualty so far when Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna sacked his special adviser on energy this week. Maduna’s decision to axe his trusted aide Thulane Gcabashe, an African National Congress stalwart, has sent shock waves through the Department […]
It was a brilliant idea for former featherweight champion of the world Barry McGuigan to teach Daniel Day-Lewis how to fight for The Boxer, reports Paul Hayward In Jim Sheridan’s new film, The Boxer, a Belfast boxing ring is torched and becomes a blazing symbol of Northern Ireland’s endless war. This latest movie to address […]