Ann Eveleth The head of security at the SABC has dumped one of the broadcaster’s top private security firms after it blew the whistle on him. An internal SABC probe found that its protection services manager, Chris Solomon, had discussed employment with at least two companies while he negotiated the privatisation of SABC security operations […]

ANIMAL PICKETSANIMAL rights activisits picketed in Johannesburg on Saturday against Environmental minister Pallo Jordan, demanding that he resign for allowing a consignment of 40 baboons to be exported to a controversial French animal experiment laboratory. NOBODY NOTICES DIAZ The weekend marked the 500th anniversary of the event that launched the colonial age in Africa — […]

Marion Edmunds The Cape justice system was in the dock in Parliament this week when the province’s portly attorney general, Frank Kahn, was forced to acknowledge his impotence in the face of escalating gangsterism and crime. Angry Cape Flats residents filled the benches on one side of the old senate chamber, across the aisle from […]

V Roger Prabasarkar : Cricket Despite two wonderful victories against Pakistan and the West Indies on Monday and Tuesday, South Africa still had not made certain of a place in the final of the quadrangular one-day tournament, Hansie Cronje’s assertion to the contrary at the post-match prize giving function notwithstanding. With so many accidents befalling […]

Melvyn Minnaar : Potable pleasures Despite a multitude of folkloric fixes and other frivolities – or the remedies mothers-in-law dictate over the phone when the baby needs to be fed at dawn – there is no instant cure for the hangover. If you haven’t taken enough Essentiales or Prohep (that means a handful) the night […]

Andrew Tylecote The developing countries of East Asia, led by China, have been the locomotive of the world economy this decade. An enormous inflow of capital has allowed them to run large current account deficits. This has done a great deal to boost demand in the West. Any such capital inflow depends on confidence that […]

Alex de Waal In June 1993, a Belgian soldier serving with the United Nations in Somalia put a gun to the head of one of my Somali colleagues and threatened to shoot him. At the time I was investigating the war in Somalia: that the residents were living in fear of the peacekeepers came as […]

Johnny Masilela Chief Lucas Mangope’s political comeback has been smacked by a stream of high-profile defections from his United Christian Democratic Party (UCDP) – among them his own sister. It has also emerged that Roelf Meyer’s and Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement (UDM) is the main beneficiary of Mangope’s losses. Celia Ditsetelo, Mangope’s younger sister […]

The local branch of a church probed for fraud was behind a bid for Capital Radio, writes Suzy Bell Quima Investments last week failed to win its licence bid for Capital Radio because it neglected to reveal vital information to the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), including details of a controversial backer. The consortium was slapped […]