FRIDAY, 5.00PM AFTER six weeks of talks, the two largest of Gauteng’s warring taxi factions agreed to merge, ending a bloody five year war in which both drivers and passengers were casualties. The Soweto Transport Services and Soweto Taxi Association, rivals on the routes in south and southwestern Soweto, will now be known as the […]

FRIDAY, 5.00PM SWAZILAND’S government has ‘suspended” the country’s Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU), using the pretext that it failed to submit its financial returns on time, officials said today (Friday). The government of King Mswati II has been in dispute with the unions all year, over union demands for a democratic society. A month-long national […]

Ferial Haffajee VETERAN journalist and SABC board member Allister Sparks is to be hired to revamp the corporation’s television news and current affairs programming. But Sparks is unlikely to be welcomed by journalists brought in to do just that a few years ago. Last week, the current editor-in-chief of the television news division, Joe Thloloe, […]

THE mixture of human excrement and rotting rubbish festering on the banks of the Jukskei River creates a pungent aroma that hovers over the riverside shacks in Alexandra township. When the Jukskei floods, the front line of motley shelters built precariously on the flaky bank is usually washed away. Last year eight people drowned. Margaret […]

Scotland’s former F1 champion Jackie Stewart was thrilled with second place in Monte Carlo MOTOR RACING:Alan Henry RUBENS BARRICHELLO revived the love affair between his team owner Jackie Stewart and the Monaco Grand Prix with his flawless drive to second place in last weekend’s rain-soaked race. It is 33 years since Stewart, now 57, first […]

Researchers can’t agree on whether we are sleep-deprived, writes Jay Rayner from London, but the evidence suggests that few of us get enough IN their recent paper We are chronically sleep deprived, doctors Michael Bonnet and Donna Arand from Dayton, Ohio, produced facts and figures to support their title. They found that 50% of college […]

Jim Day THE number of black students studying to be doctors declined this year, leading government health officials to question the commitment of university medical schools to change. But medical deans reject this and blame the poor-quality education of many would-be medical students. South Africa is educating enough doctors for its needs, said the Health […]

South Africa’s economic revolution is under way and trade unions are leading the charge, writes Eddie Koch WHAT began as a silent coup, hatched in the corporate boardrooms of Main Street, Johannesburg, and Sandton, has burgeoned into one of the most radical transformations since the 1994 elections. At stake is the very nature of South […]

SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi THE soccer programme this weekend is nothing if not varied with two Zimbabwe clubs in South Africa, Aces staging a home match several hundred kilometres from their Witbank base, and some strange kick-off times. On Saturday afternoon, Harare Glamour Boys Dynamos are at PAM Brink Stadium in Springs to face Jomo Cosmos […]