The unbundling of Johannesburg Consolidated investments has been a damp squib. Reg Rumney reports The unbundling of Johannesburg Consolidated Investments into three, separate and more focused companies has been received with little enthusiasm. It was announced this week that JCI would be split into three separately listed companies on May 15: * Anglo American Platinum […]

Stop treating racists with kid gloves, Cosmas Desmond urges the government. The continuing crime of racism makes even a visit to your favourite bar a depressing experiencePRESIDENT Nelson Mandela has been hailed, acclaimed, canonised and even deified by the press for the firm stand he took in his address at the opening of parliament on […]

Avzal Simons is facing only one of the 11 ‘Station Strangler’ charges. Justin Pearce reports IT will take a lot to keep Lorraine Solomon away from the Cape Supreme Court in the next few weeks. Likewise Kathleen Samaai. Likewise Mary and Louise van Rooyen. Likewise most of the 40 or so other people who this […]

Critical Consumer Pat Sidley WHAT’S in a name? Anybody who was at The Rolling Stones’ concerts last weekend would know the answer. There was all the ”official, authorised” memorabilia, inlcuding the copyrighted name of the Stones. There were the concertgoers who wore jeans carrying the familiar back-pocket red label of Levi’s. Yet, like the ”genuine […]

Philip Mohr In preparation for a trip to Cape Town I telephoned the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and was surprised to find that their million rand computer systems could not provide certain basic details on listed companies. For instance, how many listed companies are based in the Western Cape and what value of the total market […]

Apartheid policies turned the Transkei homeland into a disaster area which will take years to repair, writes Louise Flanagan IT’S underfunded, marginalised, demoralised, has little infrastructure or communications, and its services are collapsing. It’s one of apartheid’s worst legacies and it’s now the Eastern Cape’s biggest nightmare. It’s the former Transkei homeland. Since the April […]

Thousands of Western Cape pupils are the victims of the on-again off-again crisis in the Education Department, reports Justin Pearce SOME 6 000 Western Cape pupils remained without school accommodation this week as relations between the Western Cape Education Department and the National Education Co- ordinating Committee (NECC) broke down again in the aftermath of […]

Hugh McLean of the Liberty Life Foundation, and treasurer of the Southern African Grantmakers’ Association writes on the funding crisis in NGOs. It was Mark Twain who said: “October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November, May, March, June, December, August and […]

CINEMA: William Pretorius IN Disclosure, the happily married Tom Sanders (Michael Douglas) is sexually harrassed by his new boss, Meredith Johnson (Demi Moore), an old flame who is now vice- president of a hi-tech firm which manufactures virtual reality systems. There’s an immediate credibility gap here. Who on earth would want to harass Douglas, one […]

THEATRE: Guy Willoughby IN a programme note to Macbeth, at the Alexander Theatre, director Craig Freimond observes that Shakespeare’s great plays “are so well known that it becomes difficult to find fresh readings of them, and even if you do, there will be many who disagree with your interpretation”. Quite true, but the inevitability of […]