Edwina Spicer spoke to Margaret Dongo, the woman who took on Robert Mugabe and his Zanu PF party, and won ‘WILL someone remove this barking dog from our midst” President Robert Mugabe is reported to have said of Margaret Dongo, MP for Harare South, during the run-up to Zimbabwe’s general elections last year. Dongo lost […]

The SABC will have to rewrite its television licence application with the IBA’s assistance, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy The SABC’s application for an amendment to its television licences — hastily submitted during a stand-off with the Independent Broadcast Authority — is fraught with errors and will be declared null and void. The corporation will then attempt, […]

Crispin Pemberton-Pigott I wonder if you up in Johannesburg could hear us rolling off our chairs in laughter as we read Patrick Bond’s ad hominem response (M&G January 12 to 18) to Dominic Tweedie’s compelling argument for the provision of land first (and fast) to the homeless (M&G January 5 to 11). We who, like […]

The housing crisis: Three lively responses to this newspaper’s recent coverage Simplistic solutions to the housing crisis will bring unintended results — such as the apartheid-style settlement of the poor away from cities, argues Dr Angela Tait It is beginning to sound rather hollow to blame the housing shortage on the backlog inherited by the […]

Eddie Koch and Mehlo Mvelase Police either colluded in the Christmas Day massacre at Shobashobane or are guilty of negligence in the run-up to the attack that left 19 people dead in the KwaZulu-Natal village, according to a television documentary to be broadcast by SABC’s Agenda programme on Sunday night. The documentary includes strong criticisms […]

Brendan Martin questions who will benefit from privatisation of state assets There would have been no prizes for predicting, a year or two ago, that the fragile unity of the new South Africa would founder on government action to secure “black economic empowerment”. But how many sages foresaw that it would be the ANC’s alliance […]

South Africans are not alone in grappling with the balance between the financial pressures to boost its arms trade, and the cost to human rights. Britain this week deported Saudi dissident Mohammed al-Mas’ari to Dominica instead of considering his application for asylum. He had not breached any condition for political refugee status. It was not […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE Congress of South African Trade Unions cannot count on the support of its main affiliate, the 300 000-strong National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), in its planned anti- privatisation strike on Tuesday. Although, as a Cosatu affiliate, the NUM is bound to some degree by the federation’s decision to strike, ambivalence is being […]

Raymond Mhlaba, Eastern Cape Premier, in The Mark Gevisser Profile You catch the similarity first in the tone: the ponderous and spare mode of delivery, a schoolmasterish stress on each syllable. Then you catch it in the ability — perhaps borne of a half-lifetime in captivity — to control a large, even gangly, frame with […]

John 8:32: “The truth shall make you free.” It is widely recognised that liberation takes many forms and that “freedom” was not finally won with the assumption of power by Nelson Mandela on May 11 last year. The horrendous matric results signpost the long walk to freedom still demanded of millions of our children before […]