A new health scheme favoured by the government is likely to prove hugely popular. Pat Sidley reports THE government is actively investigating a national health insurance plan which would, if implemented, revolutionise the country’s health system and provide the funds for basic health care to all citizens. Three options are under consideration. The Weekly Mail […]

Ironically, NGOs face their most serious crisis in the new South Africa. Paul Zille suggests scenarios for their survival IF there is one aspect of the development debate in South Africa about which there seems to be complete consensus, it is the importance of non-governmental organisations. Yet, ironically, NGOs today find themselves in the most […]

Information on outlandish research conducted by a group of companies for the SADF is being revealed. By Eddie Koch and Derek Fleming A NETWORK of companies near Pretoria developed chemical warfare equipment for the South African Defence Force and also conducted secret experiments on animals to test high tech “dum dum” bullets and heat resistant […]

TELEVISION: Luke Alfred CHRIS DU PLESSIS is a former Vrye Weekblad journalist and now director of CCV-TV’s Thursday night amalgam of local culture, Not Quite Friday Night. It contains all sorts of things — local music, off-beat interviews, comedy sketches. Last week’s programme featured one of the more bizarre forms of local subculture: a koedoebokdrolverspoeg […]

A five-storey-high screen and 13 000 watt speakers are just part of the attraction of Cape Town’s new Imax cinema. Peter Frost reports AFRICA’S first Imax cinema — hyped as “much more than movies”, with its 15m by 22m screen — opened in Cape Town this week, launched by visiting actor James Earl Jones. The […]

Jeremy Cronin, SACP leader,writes that the ANC cannot sit back and enjoy its honeymoon AT least three complex dynamics will be at play in the ANC’s conference. The first, the leadership issue has, rather tediously, been the focus of considerable media attention. Emerging out of three decades of illegality, the ANC has had to develop […]

Mapula Sibanda LIKE Martin Luther King, whose poster adorns his office wall, Jody Kollapen also has a dream, and his appointment this week as national director of Lawyers for Human Rights will afford him the luxury to realise it. Kollapen’s dream is to change the confrontational relationship between the police and human rights lawyers, building […]

Native tongue Bafana Khumalo `TIS a season to be jolly. `Tis time for even an angry young black man who is fast becoming a cynical old fart to dispense with the vitriolic poison pen and embrace all of humanity with enthusiasm, in a spirit of peace and love. I am happy. So much so that […]

The two men in charge of ministering the environment display two distinctly different styles, reports Eddie Koch WHEN cabinet ministers Kader Asmal and Dawie de Villiers were confronted by angry demonstrators outside a toxic waste site near Johannesburg earlier this year, their body language described two distinct styles of managing this country’s environment. De Villiers […]

Has the Big Top got smaller, or have we just got bigger? Mark Gevisser took a nostalgic trip to the circus `IT’S just not what it used to be,” said a man, an unimpressed toddler in the crook of each arm, as he left the tatty confines of the rather modest Little Top that is […]