Affirmative action appointees are job-hopping for ever-higher salaries, reports Mapula Sibanda A new affirmative action trend is taking root in South Africa’s job market as skilled black recruits find themselves in short supply, and hop from one management post to another — sometimes changing positions for as little as R100. These moves would not have […]

THE Norgaard principles are named after Carl Aage Norgaard, a Danish national and president of the European Commission on Human Rights, who was asked at the time of the Namibian settlement to frame guidelines defining the concept of a political prisoner. For a crime to be deemed a political offence, he stipulated the following should […]

The major problem at Rhodes University is not ‘unruly’ students, but the old boys’ club that runs the place, argues lecturer Colm Allan Unruly students have provided a convenient scapegoat at our crisis-ridden universities. But the focus should shift to the slow pace of transformation at these institutions. The source of the crisis lies in […]

Nicholas Lezard=20 CIGARETTES ARE SUBLIME by Richard Klein (Picador,=20 R39,99) =20 AN academic of Richard Klein’s — middlingish — age=20 would normally by now have published three or four=20 unreadable books. This is his first, and it’s excellent.=20 A valedictory hymn to the poetry of cigarettes, as well=20 as a thrilling work of literart criticism […]

Reg Rumney=20 The listing of black-controlled Real Africa Investments=20 last week made instant paper millionaires of three of=20 the directors.=20 According to the RAI pre-listing statement, executive=20 chairman Don Ncube held 1 472 230 shares indirectly in=20 RAI. At a closing price on the Johannesburg Stock=20 Exchange mid-week of around R2,50, Ncube is worth R3,7- […]

Bruce Cohen=20 A bitter battle for the knock ‘n drop newspaper market=20 in Gauteng between the Argus Company and Caxtons has=20 ended — and just begun.=20 The Appeal Court this week upheld an appeal by Caxtons- CTP against an 18-month-old Supreme Court judgment which=20 allowed Argus to publish freesheets in competition with=20 Caxtons, which was […]

Tara Turkington=20 I Want to Tell You by OJ Simpson=20 (Little, Brown, R80,99)=20 Orenthal James Simpson, ex-American football star,=20 congenial endorser of Hertz Rent-a-Car and mediocre=20 actor, ousted the United States’ afternoon TV soaps by=20 leading Los Angeles police on a televised car chase in=20 June last year. =20 Now on trial for the murders […]

Eddie Koch NELSON MANDELA’S air force helicopter was covered in camouflage paint and created a scene from a war film as it thudded over the green hills and thorn trees that surround Weenen. Although unintended, the image was appropriate because the president had come to this farming town in kwaZulu- Natal on Sunday to help […]

Jane Rosenthal=20 EXIT INTO HISTORY: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE NEW EASTERN=20 EUROPE by Eva Hoffman (Minerva, R48,99)=20 IN Exit into History, Eva Hoffman invites us to=20 accompany her on a thoughtful meander through Eastern=20 Europe. As readers of her first book, Lost in=20 Translation, will know, she was born in Poland in 1946=20 and emigrated […]

Clive Simpkins=20 True marketing expertise takes years to develop.=20 Academic theory is often very different from the reality=20 of business. =20 Astonishingly, almost as soon as a superb base of such=20 expertise is in place in a corporation, the pool of=20 talent or the individual talented marketer is retired.=20 In some regions of South Africa […]