Howard Barrell and Barry Streek The decision by top government leaders at an all-day meeting in Pretoria on November 29 to accelerate privatisation of state- owned enterprises is of great political and economic importance, according to officials who were present. The meeting represented a commitment by the government to economic restructuring – whatever the potential […]

Shaun de Waal Movie of the week The Blair Witch Project may have already outdone Star Wars Episode IV: The Phantom Menace and Eyes Wide Shut as the most hyped movie of 1999, except that the hype around it was relatively organic. That is to say, this low-low-budget movie (a mere $30 000 to put […]

Zolile Machi and his family, in Durban’s Kwa Mashu township, had been caring for a cousin believed to have Aids. He describes how life changed when he arrived, and when he left A cousin from the South Coast arrived on our doorstep the other evening. He was carrying a huge but almost empty black Nike […]

Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot A Johannesburg-based German businessman recently named in the British press and in local intelligence reports as an arms dealer with pariah states says he is the victim of a plot by old-guard intelligence operatives. Rudolph Heinrich Wollenhaupt says that for several years he has been the target of an orchestrated […]

Several paragraphs went missing from Lionel Abrahams’s review of Guy Butler’s Collected Poems last week. After “A major source of pressure and fire in his art is his deep experience of a world afflicted by division,” the review should have read: Articulating his own dilemmas, doubts and challenging insights, Butler foreshadows aspects of the new […]

Jerry Richardson was this week back before the TRC’s amnesty committee, but no more coherent than during his last testimony, reports Piers Pigou Between November 1988 and February 1989, Jerry Vusimuzi Richardson and other members of the Mandela United Football Club went on a killing spree that resulted in his arrest, prosecution, conviction and 20-year […]

Shaun Harris Lack of housing is a major issue facing South Africa. But it’s estimated that more than a third of the workforce is caught in the trap of earning between R1 000 and R5 000 a month – too much to qualify for the government’s R16 000 housing subsidy, but too low to get […]

M&G reporter Women and children are being touted as the latest beneficiaries of the ethical investing market with the launch this week of African Harvest’s Women’s Initiative Fund (WIF). Sixty percent of the 5% upfront fees paid by investors and 30% of the annual 1,5% management fee will be distributed to community organisations. In addition, […]

A new villain, spectacular chases, suave as ever and heavily armed with double entendres – Bond is back, says Philip French Pierce Brosnan, the screen’s fifth 007, makes his third appearance as the playboy hero of the Western world in The World Is Not Enough. He was two years old when James Bond sprang from […]

Stefaans Brmmer The Cabinet is expected to “bless” the construction of a controversial new nuclear power station in January, but environmentalists have threatened legal action against the government if it gets the nod. Eskom confirms it will be briefing the Cabinet on the project in January, and says it hopes this will result in a […]