Three years have passed since the inception of the RDP. Two writers consider how it is faring today Hein Marais THE Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) debate has become a pantomime, a rehearsal of predictable affirmations and affectations, gripes and allegations. Issuing from the government comes the cheery mantra that the RDP remains the cornerstone […]

Employee share schemes offer much hope, yet signify very little in real terms for workers, writes Asghar Adelzadeh of the NIEP in the seventh of a series on economic policy EMPLOYEE Stock Ownership Plans (Esops) first rose to prominence in South Africa in 1987. After a blaze of publicity and debate, all was quiet until […]

Shirley Kossick THE PENGUIN BOOK OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S STORIES edited by Kate Figes (Viking, R108,95) THIS is an excellent collection of 33 short stories drawn from various parts of the world and covering a wide diversity of subjects. There is no obvious theme or thread unifying the collection, and in her rather perfunctory introduction Kate […]

Using a State of Emergency to combat crime puts the solution in the hands of the problem, argues Nicholas Smith SHOULD the government declare a State of Emergency in an attempt to deal with the crime epidemic? Probably not, but this is a complex question so we first need to define our terms. The “crime […]

Letters warning of two years’ medical `vocational training’ have gone out, report Jim Day and Mungo Soggott HEALTH authorities have told medical interns to expect call-up papers, riding roughshod over the parliamentary health committee’s rejection of the scheme. This week students across the country received letters from the South African Medical and Dental Council telling […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter THE three men who blew the whistle on police death squads have been convicted of the murder of Durban lawyer Griffiths Mxenge while their two colleagues, whom they say were also involved, have been acquitted. Former Vlakplaas commander Dirk Coetzee, and his operatives Almond Nofemela and David Tshikilange, were found guilty […]

THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW MEET Gilbert Magabotse, a South African sporting hero. His face may not be as familiar to you as that of Olympic marathon gold medallist Josiah Thugwane, and he has not been invited to tea with Nelson Mandela, but here is the country’s latest world champion. The reason you might not have […]

Gavin Lewis IT’S easy to be cynical about the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The programme has not been helped by the rhetorical overload that accompanied its launch, unrealistic targets accompanied by impossible deadlines and the spectacle of many “opinion-makers”, particularly in business and the media (with some honourable exceptions), jumping on and off the […]

Paul Farrelly in London and John Aglionby in Jakarta THE gold rush is over. The prospectors, tarnished by the Indonesian Bre-X gold hoax, have lost their sparkle. Small mining firms panning in Indonesia and Africa have seen their shares slump as wary investors query the value of their prospects and plan an exodus from the […]

BRENDA ATKINSON reports on an art exhibition causing an ethical stir IN 1994, Marylin Zimmerman, a photography professor at an American state university, threw away a roll of film containing nude photographs she had taken of her three- year-old daughter in the bath. A cleaner discovered the film, turned it over to the university’s Department […]