Stefaans Brummer BOTSWANA authorities are reviewing charges of trust fund embezzlement against South Africa’s Deputy Minister of Safety and Security, Joe Matthews — who skipped bail there in 1985 — and may ask for his An official in the Botswana attorney-general’s office this week said charges against Matthews “have not been withdrawn, neither have they […]

President Mandela’s report to the UN World Summit on Social Development shows that South Africa still has a long walk to prosperity, writes Justin Pearce South Africa is one of the most unequal nations in the world with regard to income distribution. This is the essence of the National Social Development Report which President Nelson […]

The proliferation of nominee companies to obscure=20 ownership continues despite the King Commission’s=20 recommendations to the contrary. “One wonders what will=20 trigger a confrontation,” says the latest edition of=20 McGregor’s Who Owns Whom. “One hopes that the sane international norms will soon=20 replace South Africa’s obsession with secrecy,” says=20 Over the past 12 years the […]

The government is threatening to use the law against=20 tax advisers who come up with fancy avoidance schemes,=20 reports Reg Rumney THE first Budget of the new Government of National=20 Unity studiously avoided gnashing its teeth at anyone=20 other than those who use dodgy tax avoidance schemes. Finance Minister Chris Liebenberg took these schemes to=20 […]

Ann Eveleth A KEY witness in an African National Congress (ANC) court application against the controversial kwaZulu/Natal House of Traditional Leaders was brutally gunned down just weeks after deposing to an affidavit in support of the case, the ANC said this week. ANC organiser Celani Radebe was shot dead in the Ntabamhlope district of Estcourt […]

Jan Taljaard As high courts go, the new Pretoria Supreme Court has had little time to steep itself in history. No smells of previous life-or-death dramas cling to the machine- tooled benches. The lighting is almost overbearingly efficient and clinical, the texture of the wood panelling, if not exactly cheap, symbolises transient society rather than […]

Justin Pearce AS the University of the Western Cape battled against boycotting students this week, Professor Cecil Abrahams was still pondering whether or not to take up the post of rector which he was offered last Thursday. After consulting students, workers and academics on campus, the UWC council voted unanimously to give the job to […]

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser AUDIENCES in Gauteng have been treated to a feast of=20 new music — a world premiere and two first South=20 African performances. For the third time Carlo Franci conducted the Transvaal=20 Philharmonic Orchestra in a first performance of one of=20 his works. But enough is enough. This year’s creation, Time of […]

EGYPT is the third-largest movie producer in the world,=20 earning the country the title of the “Hollywood of the=20 Middle East”. The Egyptian Film Festival, which begins=20 today at the Seven Arts Cinema in Norwood,=20 Johannesburg, will present eight of the country’s=20 landmark films, made between 1968 and today.=20 The films, presented by the Egyptian […]

Phil Collins combines good music with all the right=20 political credentials, writes Pat Sidley FOR those with their hearing (and purses) still intact=20 after the Rolling Stones blast, the best reference for=20 the Phil Collins concerts has come inadvertently from=20 the Stones’ own publicist, who thinks Collins’ concert=20 is one of the best on the […]