Designed to get working mothers back on the job as soon as possible, many businesses are opening up their own childcare facilities, writes Fay Davids THE high-pressure environment at Liberty Life is getting to Kyle and Wesley. It’s only 11am and already they’re at blows. It happens often these days, say staff, looking on wearily. […]

most controversial man in Zimbabwe, won’t give interviews. But a phone call to his office is revealing enough Roger Boka is a mysterious Zimbabwean businessman who has taken out full-page advertisements in the state-controlled newspapers calling for the “indigenisation” of the country’s agricultural and industrial sectors. The origin of his wealth is not generally known […]

SOUTH African Communist Party criticism of the government’s macro-economic framework has come under fire in the African National Congress’s national executive committee (NEC) — from no less a person than President Nelson Mandela himself. Although he did not mention him by name, it was widely understood that Mandela was referring to SACP deputy secretary general […]

Loud music eased the tension for Jean-Jacques Terblanche before his big race in Atlanta, and it inspired him to win gold, writes Julian Drew PARALYMPIC champion Jean-Jacques Terblanche is not an athlete who succumbs to big match nerves. As he sat in the call-up room waiting for his 200m individual medley final at the Georgia […]

Jane Cortez and her band blend music and words. GWEN ANSELL interviewed them at the Arts Alive festival So what’s a “jazz poet”? Some bearded dude in shades spewing Kerouac sentiments in a cellar while a cool vibraphone tinkles? Some other bearded, shaded-and- dashiki-wearing dude declaiming angrily in a loft while a hot saxophone wails? […]

Marion Edmunds The Constitutional Court wants to make it more difficult for the Constitution to be changed by a strong ruling party. Parliament’s power to write and re-write the Constitution has been a controversial point in negotiations between political parties since Codesa, when talks broke down over the dispute between the African National Congress and […]

Mail & Guardian Reporters In the week the Constitutional Court made legal precedent by passing judgment on two constitutions, it also set a grammatical precedent which had some of the press temporarily baffled. Announcing its decision on the certification of the KwaZulu-Natal Constitution to the public gallery, the court appeared to pioneer the concept of […]

Lottery operators should not be allowed to cream off the profits, Richard Branson tells Madeleine Wackernagel Richard Branson is a firm believer in capitalism, but with one exception — a national lottery. The British entrepreneur, in Johannesburg last week to garner publicity for the inaugural flight of Virgin Airlines, was adamant that South Africa should […]