The public protector’s report into former minerals and energy minister Penuell Maduna’s claim that the auditor general covered up the theft of R170-million of oil could turn into a classic text of how conspiracy theory is arrived at: find some “facts”, develop a thesis and then ignore anything that contradicts it. It is worth reminding […]

Medical aids are going to have to come to terms with picking up the bills for members’ HIV/Aids treatments, reports Sarah Bullen The medical aid industry by its own admission does not have a proud record of being proactive in addressing the costs of HIV/Aids. With South Africa boasting the highest HIV infection rate in […]

Ivor Powell It was one of those acts of Sod, the unavoidable pitfalls of journalistic deadlines: the day that everything changed in South Africa fell on a Friday, the day of the then Weekly Mail’s publication. So we had to wait another week before The Weekly Mail could respond to the drama that unfolded as […]

Howard Barrell CONSOLIDATING DEMOCRACY: SOUTH AFRICA’S SECOND POPULAR ELECTION by Tom Lodge (Witwatersrand University Press) AFRICAN DEMOCRACY IN THE ERA OF GLOBALISATION by Jonathan Hyslop (Witwatersrand University Press) When people start talking of “miracles” to explain unexpected political developments, one can usually smell intellectual surrender. For, if they are anything, miracles are supposed to be […]

Ivor Powell Experts and activists in the fight against HIV/Aids are up in arms over the composition of the government’s new National Aids Council (NAC), unveiled last week to spearhead the fight against the pandemic. The NAC – slotted as a body that will marry efforts by the government and civil society to combat the […]

Michael Kahn Scientific literacy and its place in the curriculum is a topic whose discussion is long overdue. It is thus appropriate to see the attention given to this by the Mail and Guardian (January 14 to 20 2000). What is not clear in the article, SA Students are scientifically illiterate, is what is meant […]

Jubie Matlou The demarcation of municipal boundaries marks the conclusion of a process started during the multi-party Conference for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) talks to transform the system of local government for the country. Before the advent of democracy in 1994, there were about 1E300 municipalities throughout the country. Under the new democratic dispensation […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday 8.30am. ZIMBABWE’s state-owned electricity supplier has warned of imminent power cuts and said that power rationing may have to be implemented as it has fallen behind on repayments for foreign-supplied power. A spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority, Joshua Chifamba, said that the six-week shortage of diesel which has […]