The Mortgage Indemnity Fund has admitted victimising a Sowetan community, reports Mungo Soggot THE key government player in getting bank loans for the masses has admitted to a group of Soweto residents that it collaborated with three major banks to blacklist a relatively comfortable area in Soweto even though residents meet their bond payments. Residents […]

Gustav Thiel A RESEARCH group established in Cape Town to scientifically research remedies used by traditional healers in malaria and tuberculosis has already had encouraging results. But, in the wake of the recent controversy about the Aids treatment Virodene, researchers are wary about drawing premature conclusions. Tramed, a joint effort of the Medical Research Council […]

Jim Day AIDS activists say Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma betrayed them with her ill- considered and premature support for the so-called wonder drug Virodene. Reacting to the report this week by the University of Pretoria and Gauteng Health Department, they say the minister’s failure to fully investigate Virodene before giving it her full public support […]

Accusations of Transnet’s lack of control over its security services are contained in some explosive reports. Ann Eveleth investigates TRANSPORT parastatal Transnet is sitting on an explosive report into weak controls over private security companies it contracted, estimated to have cost the taxpayer R100- million. The Mail & Guardian has established that the long-running irregularities […]

Peta Thornycroft RADIO station SAfm’s embattled manager Charlene Smith has been told by SABC radio head Govin Reddy to resign on grounds of ill health. Reddy told Smith on February 13 that he would pay her to the end of the month if she resigned “gracefully but immediately”. Smith, hired by SAfm only five months […]

cuts Jim Day and Tangeni Amupadhi WHEN Wits University Vice-Chancellor Robert Charlton waggled a placard on Jan Smuts Avenue this week, he could count among his allies students who have spent much of this week disrupting campuses across the country. Charlton, a staunch opponent of such misbehaviour, struck the unlikely alliance to protest the belt-tightening […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson IN Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, currently on at the Market Theatre, the main character cries “Use your head! You’re on earth! There’s no cure for that!” No cure for language either, because as relentlessly as Beckett sought to strip life down to its most minimal, sub-atomic essence, he challenged the rigid parameters and […]

The Post Office takes extreme measures to counter AK-47 thieves, reports Marion Edmunds THE Post Office is to establish an internal investigations unit, staffed by former spies, to combat the rampant fraud and theft plaguing its operations. The organisation said this week that the new unit – Security Investigation Services – would work undercover to […]

A murky new Bill of Rights There could be confusion in common law as the new Bill of Rights is not entirely clear on the relationships that exist between private persons THE coming into operation of the new Constitution on February 4 1997 has heralded a return of the dreaded “horizontality debate”. Horizontality became entrenched […]