Two major developments should dramatically alter the way the truth commission works, reports Eddie Koch The truth commission’s announcement this week that it will subpoena suspects in some of the most prominent political atrocities of the apartheid era comes on the eve of two other major developments that could dramatically alter the way the body […]
The recent killing of a sports writer at a high- profile function left the black journalistic community reeling. What happened, and why? Angella Johnson reports When sports writer Sipho Mthembu calmly walked into Brixton Murder and Robbery police station to hand himself over in connection with the death of fellow journalist Sibusiso Mabaso, few people […]
Vernon Seymour AMERICAN efforts to strengthen its economic blockade on Cuba by penalising foreign businesses that trade with the Caribbean state, have come under severe criticism from the World Trade Organisation. Last week US President Bill Clinton, under pressure from foreign allies, suspended part of the operation of the Helms-Burton anti-Cuba law — which tightens […]
Rapid growth in income inequality threatens the world’s economic future as the skills gap increases in the West. Edward Balls reports from London The scourge of inequality is back on the political agenda. Reports published over the past few weeks have highlighted the rapid growth in wage and income inequality and the threat this poses […]
Tebello Radebe All electricity users will ultimately pay for the more than R1,3-billion apartheid rent boycott power bills at some point, says Kevin Morgan, legal adviser to the electricity regulator, following the agreements reached by Eskom and debt-ridden local authorities. “Eskom, being a state-owned enterprise, can only write off the debts against income from what […]
Anthony Egan PASSIVE RESISTANCE 1946: A SELECTION OF DOCUMENTS compiled by ES Reddy and Fatima Meer (Madiba Publishers/Institute for Black Research, R75) When the government of Field-Marshal Jan Smuts first announced a new Bill — what was later passed into law as the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Bill in June 1946 — little […]
Bantu Holomisa says Sol Kerzner paid for it, but host Paul Ekon says he and other businessmen bore the cost of Thabo Mbeki’s birthday party, writes Stefaans BrUmmer PAUL EKON, the businessman who hosted Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s 50th birthday party — and who Bantu Holomisa claims was merely a go-between for casino magnate Sol […]
funding Gaye Davis SHOULD political parties make public details of who gives them money, and how much? Does the public have a right to know who’s paying what and to whom? These vexed questions have sprung to the fore with Bantu Holomisa’s allegations that hotel magnate Sol Kerzner bought favours by contributing to African National […]
The Mark Gevisser Profile One Free State, one Lekota? `One Free State!” yells Councillor Bazooka Ma-baso, working the crowd for Comrade Terror. “One Lekota!” the overflowing classroomful of Mangaung residents yells back, on cue. The chant, first heard in Welkom a week or so ago, is moving like tumbleweed across the Free State’s plains as […]
Stephen Bates in Brussels Jean-Luc Dehaene, the Belgian prime minister, has found himself cast in the unlikely role of the absolutist French monarch Louis XIV by angry compatriots and press cartoonists since he ruthlessly seized control of the economy in an attempt to prepare the country for the European Monetary Union. The man spurned by […]