FRIDAY, 3.00PM INDEPENDENT Broadcasting Authority co-chairman Peter de Klerk, who resigned last week in a financial scandal, misled Parliament’s public accounts committee over double claims for expenses on an overseas trip, and may be liable for prosecution for fraud. The auditor general’s report on financial irregularities in the IBA said that on a United States […]

THURSDAY, 4.00PM THE Director General of Housing, Billy Cobbett, has been fired after asking the auditor general to investigate the R185-million Mpumalanga Housing Project, the largest yet under the government’s housing subsidy scheme. In a hastily called press conference on Thursday afternoon, Housing Minister Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele denied Cobbett had been fired, saying he had asked […]

IT is now three weeks since the Mail & Guardian disclosed the horrific details of the report compiled by Zimbabwe’s Truth and Justice Commission on the atrocities in Matabeleland. The only response has come from Robert Mugabe, who denounced those responsible for the report as “mischief- makers” and declared: “If we dig up history then […]

Fiona Macleod I SPEAK OF AFRICA: THE STORY OF LONDOLOZI GAME RESERVE by Shan Varty and Molly Buchanan (Londolozi Publishers, R300) THE ENVIRONMENTAL FUNDING GUIDE by Jill Ritchie (Papillon Press, R100) WHY would anyone want to pay R300 for the eulogy to the Varty dynasty in I Speak of Africa? Firstly, because the Vartys have […]

Mungo Soggot THE probe into the state’s oil trading arm, the Strategic Fuel Fund, is now expected to be finished by the middle of next month after hitting some delays. The investigation’s preliminary findings in late March led to the suspension of the fund’s boss, Kobus van Zyl. Don Mkhwanazi, chairman of the Central Energy […]

Ann Eveleth PRESSURE is mounting in educational circles for a re-think on timeframes for implementing the new school curriculum as funding shortages, training backlogs and staff vacancies pile up. Gauteng and Eastern Cape education officials this week called on the national government to scale down plans to put the new outcomes-based education system into effect […]

to Africa South Africa’s attempts at diplomacy failed, but the rebels succeeded and Zaire became Congo. Africa will benefit from these developments but the West is alarmed Despite jitters in the West, Laurent Kabila’s victory is potentially the most stabilising development in Central Africa in many years. Chris McGreal reports from Kinshasa ZAIRE disappeared at […]

It is once more time for South Africa’s most lavish fiction award – but now it’s adults only, writes SHAUN DE WAAL IN the absence of the CNA Literary Award, which was discontinued earlier this year, the M-Net Book Prize for a South African novel takes on a new importance. It always was the most […]

Sactwu has shown that capitalist investment can work not only for workers, but for their children too. Ferial Haffajee reports SCORES of clothing workers’ children graced this week’s launch of a clothing union’s bursary fund: among them was one who has done particularly well. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel introduced himself as “the son of a […]

games Jon Henderson feels the Sampras factor rather than marriage is behind the decline of a moody genius PETE SAMPRAS’S favourite line from literature is from The Catcher In The Rye: “Don’t ever tell anybody anything.” Andre Agassi, Sampras’s great rival on the tennis court, is from the opposing, let-it-all- hang-out corner. The silent approach […]