Mungo Soggot RESERVE Bank governor Chris Stals said this week he feared lifting exchange controls because of the heavy “pent-up demand” in South Africa to invest abroad that had built up in the past 30 years. Talking about the rand’s meltdown and the Reserve Bank’s relationship with the government, Stals rejected the view that the […]
Lyndon Johnson, when asked why he kept J Edgar Hoover on as head of the FBI, made the famous observation that “I’d much rather have that fellow inside my tent pissing out than outside my tent pissing in”. It is a philosophy which has governed President Nelson Mandela’s attempts to handle Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi for […]
A BRITISH spy, held for 135 days in prison after making the mistake of coming to South Africa on holiday, was freed this week when a Kempton Park magistrate refused a United States application for his extradition. Paul Grecian was freed by magistrate Danie Oberholzer, who said the offences Grecian had been charged with in […]
A decision by curators will allow indigenous people to claim back body parts of ancestors which have been kept at museums, writes Eddie Koch A CONFERENCE of South African museum curators last week resolved to back demands for the body parts of a Khoisan woman whose pickled brains and genitalia are being stored in a […]
Evita Bezuidenhout would have loved these designs for a national costume, writes HAZEL FRIEDMAN THE designers might have been billed as the Young Lions of local fashiondom, but some of the creations spawned by the finalists of the South African Fashion Designers Association (Safda) competition would have been more deserving of disaster-relief aid than a […]
Luan Nel abandons his miniature landscapes and transforms concrete walls into canvases for a show this weekend. He spoke to HAZEL FRIEDMAN VISITING the site of Luan Nel’s Centre is like watching an old silent movie (in technicolour) at the Top Star drive-in. Giant, flickering images – many of them bucolic in mood – are […]
Secret documents handed in at the Malan trial last week link two current cabinet ministers to violent raids into Lesotho in the 1980s. Minutes of the State Security Council (SSC) show Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs Pik Botha was authorised – along with three other ministers in the National Party government – to use […]
Gaye Davis All three issues outstanding appear in the draft Bill of Rights of the new Constitution. They are: l Education: The ANC and NP clauses agree on the right to education in the official language of one’s choice in public educational institutions, where reasonably practicable, and that national legislation and policy will play a […]
Moyiga Nduru A banana war between two of Somalia’s main warlords is under way over the control of the lucrative banana export trade. The forces of General Mohamed Farah Aideed, the self-proclaimed president of Somalia, are pitted against the militiamen of his former financier, Ali Hassan Osman “Atto”. Aideed needs the revenues, estimated at around […]
THE advice to NGOs to “adapt or die” in a changing environment is becoming painfully repetitive. It is also superfluous, as we – the remaining NGOs –would not have survived until now if we had not constantly restructured, repositioned and transformed ourselves. In her response (“NGOs are not about to roll over”, April 19 to […]