The minister of health said her department could not have been expected to consult every NGO about a R14- million Aids play. Vuyo Mvoko and Justin Pearce report Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma has defended her department’s decision to spend R14,27-million on the production of a play on Aids awareness, despite massive criticism from non-governmental […]

leon Perlman Faced with shrinking margins, not everyone welcomes the return of multi-national information technology (IT) companies to South Africa. The re-entry of major IT companies is proving to be a mixed blessing for some local hardware and software distributors. Some say that local users might have to start forking out more for what they […]

The public service is run by a code so detailed and archaic that it prescribes acceptable body weights for job applicants and provides endless blockages to government progress, reports Anton Harber ONE issue, more than any other, will determine the extent to which President Nelson Mandela’s government succeeds this year in its ambitious mission. It […]

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 […]