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 […]

The Truth Commission Bill has slowed down in committee over the issue of secrecy in amnesty hearings. The parliamentary justice committee is unlikely to accept the cabinet agreement that those applying for amnesty should be free to do so in camera, and so the Bill will probably go back to the executive. While this issue […]

Reg Rumney and Simon Segal report on the implications of this week’s bank rate rise How high is too high? After this week’s general rise in interest rates South Africa’s real — that is adjusted for inflation — prime rate is now 7,4 percent. The prime rate is the rate banks charge their best customers. […]

FOUNDATION for Peace and Justice staff member Leslie Liddell has denied reports that she received a loan from Dr Allan Boesak’s troubled foundation. Liddel says she believed she would receive a car from the FPJ as part of her package, but was then told she would have to repay the cost of the car in […]