Appetite stimulants sent to starving Sudanese refugees, toxic chemicals ‘donated’ to Bosnia: many Third World countries have become dumping grounds for the pharmaceutical industry, reports Terry Slavin THE international pharmaceutical industry is up in arms about moves to stem the flood of inappropriate drug donations to the Third World. Hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of […]

Individuals’ access to government information is still severely hampered, argues `Serjeant at the Bar’ RECENT media reports suggest that government departments might be using commercial contracts in an attempt to shield themselves from the public’s right to know. This is a misguided course of action, which signifies an inability to grasp the profound implications which […]

Chris McGreal in Lubumbashi ONE group of women knows exactly what it expects from Laurent Kabila’s rebel troops, should they ultimately be victorious in Zaire – the abolition of Mobutu’s Family Code which legalised polygamy, relieved husbands of responsibility for the maintenance of wives and children, and lowered the sexual age of consent to 13. […]

Matthew Krouse HISTORY records the existence of Yiddish theatre troupes in South Africa, in the 1880s, when an alumnus of the famous Goldfadn, Yankl Rosenfeld, led several performances of Yiddish classics. The latter part of the 19th century saw ad hoc troupes travelling the breadth of the country, playing to a culture-starved European audience that […]

With the SABC not meeting its public service mandate, advertisers and independent producers are pushing the IBA to speedily decide on a new free-to-air channel, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE burgeoning crisis and disarray within the SABC is prompting independent producers and advertisers to look to the new free-to- air channel as a way of rescuing […]

Justin Arenstein THE head of Dolphin, the foreign company which has secured exclusive commercial rights to top South African tourism sites, this week evaded attempts by politicians in his home country to question him over a defaulted R34-million government contract. Ketan Somaia was summoned to appear before Kenya’s parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, but failed to […]

Tiger Woods’s father believes his son will `do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity’. Many golf fans will concur after he won the US Masters last weekend GOLF:Greg Williams THIS week America officially remembered an infamous footnote in its history. Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of Jackie Roosevelt […]

Former apartheid minister Adriaan Vlok is still seen as a superhero. Marion Edmunds reports SUTHERLAND is a Karoo town where coloureds and whites still bury their dead on different sides of a fence. This deference to apartheid does not stop at the cemetery gates. Whites in the Northern Cape town also like to pay quiet […]

The Independent Producers’ Organisation (IPO) has launched a campaign to save the SABC. We agree that it is time to draw back from the welter of condemnation attaching itself to the national broadcaster and its crises, and ask instead how we can rescue what is one of our most important cultural assets, one that reaches […]

In a move to eradicate sweatshops worldwide, a US task force has reached agreement on working conditions and wages in clothing and shoe factories, reports Paul Blustein LEADING representatives of the United States clothing industry, responding to an anti- sweatshop initiative by President Bill Clinton, have reached what they call an “historic” agreement with labour […]