Farouk Chothia: Durban KWAZULU/NATAL chiefs have received an increased stipend since April in what appears to be a move on the Inkatha Freedom Party’s part to retain their loyalty in the post- election era, it emerged this week. This disclosure comes amid further signs that Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini is battling to prise chiefs — […]

FINE ART: Ivor Powell A COUPLE of weeks ago I had some things that were not exactly brimming with goodwill to say about the kind of art exhibitions one encounters in the Christmas season. Well, it turns out I have to eat my words before I get to eat my turkey or brandy pudding. Anything […]

Terence Moll FORMER Reserve Bank governor Gerhard de Kock once severely criticised South African businessmen, calling them inept in controlling company spending and simply not able to understand fundamental economic principles. The highly respected governor is on record as having said: “At the start of an economic upswing, our businessmen spend as if boom times […]

Moveable Feast Marino Corazza YOU are what you eat; we’re also what we drink. But what the statement really should say is: “We are what they want us to eat and drink.” Through the passage of time, we, the human race, went and lost it — the original tree of knowledge, the magic mushroom. Terence […]

Tokyo Sexwale, Gauteng premier, argues that the ANC must face up to the challenge of power OPENING the inaugural meeting of the South African Native National Congress (later the ANC) in 1912, congressman Pixley ka Seme said: “We are gathered here today to discuss a thing which my colleagues and I have decided to place […]

A top-secret document discloses the names of African states that bought hi-tech eavesdropping equipment from Armscor, reports Eddie Koch ARMSCOR sold hi-tech “radio hopper” equipment to African states that enabled South African military intelligence officers to monitor sensitive diplomatic and military messages passed on by the governments of these countries. A top-secret document — which […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin THERE is little reason to doubt that Orlando (the pan- historical figure who serves Queen Elizabeth, changes sex in Constantinople and takes more than 300 years to write a poem) represents Virginia Woolf’s friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West, who, in Woolf’s words, inspired “the lusts of the flesh and the lure of […]

Mduduzi ka Harvey Members of the South African Police Intelligence Unit had to try twice before managing to bomb Khotso House in central Johannesburg, headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, in 1988. Affidavits by former Intelligence Unit members in the possession of the Weekly Mail & Guardian tell a story of careful planning, […]

Bruce Cohen A MASSIVE European Union (EU) development package for South Africa — R500-million in 1995 — is currently being finalised in Brussels. It will bring much-needed relief to many NGOs which have been staggering through a funding crisis since the April election. NGOs, however, will have to get used to sharing the EU funding […]

Nombuyiselo Maloyi YOU can’t miss the Freedom Square RDP and Healing Centre, launched on Saturday. Fifty shipping containers painted in all the colours of the new South Africa flag now occupy the field in Kliptown, near Soweto, where the Freedom Charter was drafted 49 years ago. The traders’ containers and corrugated iron units were donated […]