Gaye Davis PUBLIC protector Selby Baqwa has a favourite story he tells to illustrate how his office can help the average individual. Mrs X approached us about difficulties she was having in getting the pension due to her after her husband’s death last year. He worked for the Venda government, which no longer existed. She […]

Philippa Garson The government is in a double bind over whether to screen pregnant women for HIV, and key policy decisions are being delayed by intense debate around the issue. Although new research shows that steps taken during and after pregnancy can reduce the risk of HIV- positive mothers transmitting the virus to their babies, […]

Lynda Loxton After years of neglect, the African mining industry is attracting unprecedented attention from as far afield as North America and Australia. This was borne out strongly this week as more than 500 delegates from Africa and elsewhere turned up for the first annual Investing in African Mining Conference/Indaba in Cape Town. The reason […]

Gaye Davis It’s going to be the highest profile job in South Africa. And ideally the person who gets it should be black. An interviewing panel of Cape-based commissioners has drawn up a short-list of potential candidates for chief executive officer of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but wants the net cast wider, which may […]

TENNIS: Jon Swift THE Davis Cup presents a very different face from the dour business of collecting ATP points. It showed in the seamless polite conversation at this weeks draw where glasses clinked during the announcements and gloved waiters passed around trays of genteel canapes druing question time. You have to believe that this difference […]

Madeleine Wackernagel Thabo Mbeki and his team returned tired but triumphant from the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Wednesday. The deputy president was well-received, with fund managers clamouring to get a slice of the most popular emerging markets cake. While nothing concrete in the form of rands and cents came out of the five-day […]

Ricardo Dunn THE first national exhibition of gay and lesbian art has got tongues wagging in Bloemfontein, where religious groups and concerned citizens have bombarded the press with complaints since the exhibitions opening at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum in January. The organisers of Gay Rights Rites Rewrites smelt trouble from the start when the director […]

The all-white Potgietersrus Primary School is invoking the constitution in its efforts to remain exclusive, writes Justin Pearce OUR tradition-rich school is our pride reads the slogan in the prospectus for Potgietersrus Primary, a booklet illustrated with photographs of verdant school grounds and industrious white children. Just what this pride entails will be examined before […]

A senior official in the safety and security secretariat stands charged with child molestation, reports Philippa Garson A top official in the safety and security secretariat has been suspended, pending the outcome of a court case against him involving charges of indecent assault against two female minors. Etienne Dirk Marais, chief director of liaison and […]

Selby Baqwa, the official appointed to fight the abuse of power, is himself tangled up in red tape, reports Gaye Davis PUBLIC protector Selby Baqwa may be one of the most powerful people in the country, but he has run into major problems over the appointment of the nine provincial public protectors he needs to […]