A little-noted post-election building boom provides valuable lessons for the recovery of our injured economy, writes Terence Moll ‘IF you’re a small builder and aren’t working every day,” the salesman said, “then you must be either lazy or fast asleep.” He should know: he works for a firm which sells precision saws, drills and concrete-cutting […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin CONCEIVED as a television film, the Emmy Award- winning And the Band Plays On is a painstaking but sometimes flawed docudrama based on the book by Randy Shilts. The transposing of 664 pages of rigorous investigative reporting into a 140-minute film clearly posed a tricky problem of adaptation – – screenplay writer […]

Wiseman Khuzwayo THE dissolution committee of the National Co-ordinating Committee for the Return of Exiles (NCCR) is pressing the attorney general to prosecute the eight people implicated in defrauding the organisation of possibly millions of rands. This follows the disclosure in the WM&G last week of a report by a two-member commission of inquiry into […]

Agents of the previous government’s National Intelligence Service have been displaying an unusual interest in the RDP, report Drew Forrest and Wiseman Khuzwayo THE National Intelligence Service (NIS) has taken it upon itself to police the reconstruction and development programme — provoking an angry response from President Nelson Mandela’s office and the office of RDP […]

Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s political power was built on three pillars: homeland patronage, which he has lost; control of the kwaZulu Police, which he is now losing; and a claim to represent Zulu traditionalism and nationalism, which he is in danger of losing. This may explain why he has behaved so badly in recent weeks. His […]

WHAT’s the cost of transformation? Well-placed senior sources claim that the transformation process has already cost R500 000, the lions’ share of which has been spent at Television News Productions. One group of facilitators was reportedly paid R200 000 for the work they did facilitating workshops at TNP; three days of workshops in the radio […]

The writing of a new Bill of Rights provides the chance to bring a second revolution in citizen’s rights, argue Water Affairs Minister Kader Asmal and academic Ronald Roberts THE first rights revolution in South Africa has ended the political powerlessness of the majority of citizens. The second must overcome the continuing reality of economic […]

NATIVE TONGUE Bafana Khumalo IT started on Friday afternoon when he came over to my desk and said I should go to the City in the Sun to cover the Miss South Africa beauty pageant. My first response was to get down on my knees and beg for mercy. “Oh exalted editor,” I said, hands […]

Next week’s Constitutional Court selection won’t provide much scandal, writes Lesley Cowling. But will this compromise its transparency? TWENTY-FIVE candidates for the Constitutional Court will be interviewed in the Civic’s Tesson Theatre next week, but it is unlikely that the hearings will contain the stuff of drama. Albie Sachs, director of the Constitutional Studies Centre […]

Archaic technology is hampering police efforts to catch the Cleveland serial killer, reports Wiseman Khuzwayo ARCHAIC computer systems have slowed down the identification of most of the victims of the Cleveland serial killer. And the lack of identification of the victims has hampered the search for the killer. The police have so far managed to […]