Caitlin Davies SWEET-TOOTHED elephants are going to have a field day if a sugar plantation gets under way in northern Botswana, in what conservationists call one of the most environmentally unfriendly schemes imaginable. The sugar plantation is reportedly to be built on the sand bridge behind the Chobe River and inside the Kasane Forest Reserve […]

TRYING to find out what’s happening on Radio Metro is a bit like trying to rea d the true mind of Communist China. Forget it. A simple request to their publi c relations department for a schedule took four days to be answered, and when it came it was but a skeletal construct. Repeated attempts […]

action Tangeni Amupadhi JULIA BOPAPE was the mother of an alleged criminal. Last week a crowd of 4 000 in Mamelodi, Pretoria, stoned her to death for the deeds of her son, Handsome Bopape. She was killed at a meeting during which the community accused her of encouraging her son to commit crimes, and of […]

The first stop for Investment South Africa=20 is South-East Asia and interest is strong,=20 Rafiq Bagus tells Madeleine Wackernagel RAFIQ BAGUS’S new job is persuading=20 foreigners to invest in South Africa. No=20 easy task given the fear of crime, but in=20 his previous incarnation at Wesgro, he was=20 instrumental in bringing Levi Strauss to=20 the […]

Stephen Gray THE BUCHAN PAPERS by JDF Jones (Harvill, R79,95) THE great pleasure of a literary hoax is external to the book itself. Did JDF Jones really recently discover the manuscript of this lost John Buchan novel, tied in a dusty pink ribbon, among the Lionel Phillips papers in the Barlow-Ra nd archives, and rig […]

Marion Edmunds PENSION fraud is costing South Africa at least R1-billion a year, and only direct government control of the welfare system can stop it, a government task team says. The task team – the Committee For Restructuring of Social Security, led by Reverend Frank Chikane – says the current province-based system of handing out […]

Anthony Egan STEVE BIKO: I WRITE WHAT I LIKE – A SELECTION OF HIS WRITINGS edited by Aelred Stubbs (Ravan, R49,99) HAD he not been murdered by security police in 1977, Steve Biko would be 50 no w. Where he would have stood in today’s political environment is anybody’s gue ss, but in the end […]

TECHNO: Greg Bowes IN the era of massive warehouse raves and superclubs, DJs have become more tha n just folk who mix records – some have become as big as pop stars. When Boy G eorge DJ’d in Johannesburg last year a 14 000 strong crowd turned up to see hi m, surely as many […]

Expenditure was up in the last financial=20 year, but so was revenue. The government’s=20 target deficit of 5,1% will still be met,=20 reports Lynda Loxton THE government has revised expenditure in=20 the 1996/97 Budget by R3,4-billion to=20 R176,5-billion and is confident that it=20 will still achieve a deficit of 5,1%,=20 Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said […]

Julia Grey CHRISTA MEDERI has happy chickens. They have “a nice house”, where they come and go as they please, according to their own fowl habits. They are fed mainly on a diet of organically grown greens, freshly picked. These stress-free and healthy chickens produce eggs that have an extra yellow yolk and greater nutritional […]