WEDNESDAY, 1.30PM: ENROLMENTS at South African tertiary institutions have dropped some 21% this year compared to last year, with former “bush universities” worst hit, while student numbers at traditionally white universities actually rose over the same period. The University of Zululand registered a 21% fall in registration, the University of the North an 18% drop, […]

TUESDAY, 12.00NOON: THE Cabinet is set to discuss a series of proposed “legacy projects” intended to redress the portrayal of South Africa’s history, with a Freedom Park as the flagship project. The Freedom Park will focus on the themes of democracy, nation-building and the liberation struggle, and will house monuments, museums and galleries to the […]

Janet Smith Pianistically, Paul Hanmer is beautiful. His music – folkloric, occasionally proletarian, always warm and real – is not a private dominion or a place where culture is combat. His music, as experienced on his celebrated Sheer Sound debut album Trains to Taung, has reached into the South African jazz community like a hand […]

Marion Edmunds When retired Western Cape premier Hernus Kriel heads off on his caravan tour of South Africa, he sets off comfortable, he says, in the knowledge that his party will rule the Western Cape into the next century. Kriel bowed out of provincial politics this week, with a crocodile tear and a Cheshire-cat smile, […]

The South African petroleum industry was thrown into confusion in March 1997 when Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna threatened to “re-regulate the entire industry”. He accused multinationals operating in South Africa of maintaining a stranglehold on the domestic industry without contributing to black empowerment or the economy as a whole. Recently, black empowerment […]

A letter from Don Mkhwanazi cites Thabo Mbeki as the “top command” of his black-empowerment bank, reports Mungo Soggot The offices of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and businessman Don Mkhwanazi this week sought to dispel suggestions that Mbeki was closely involved with the Malaysian-backed bank Mkhwanazi chairs. Senior staffers at the bank, including its former […]

Wonder Hlongwa The widows of two prominent African National Congress leaders in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands are seeking legal advice to sue Inkatha Freedom Party members implicated in their husbands’ murders. They say they are not satisfied with the quality of the evidence submitted to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty committee. Thobekile Maphumulo and Sbongile […]

Everything on Wall Street is excessive: buildings, bonuses – and sexual harassment of female clerical staff by male brokers. But women are striking back. Joanna Coles reports from New York Wall Street is a place of excess: the seven- figure salaries, the soaring, self-reflecting buildings of chrome and glass, the bonuses bigger than the national […]

Swapna Prabhakaran If tigers could speak, they’d sound just like Tim Modise and Ofeibea Quist-Arcton. Their laidback voices resonate around the studio in a half-purr, half-growl hinting at claws and teeth, and the very sharp intelligence of jungle cats. Modise – an old familiar on SAfm – has teamed up with the BBC’s Quist-Arcton to […]

Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg It seems to me there are two particularly compelling reasons to stage a tribute to Gibson Kente in 1998. In the first place, it’s about bloody time. We need, for the record, to preserve a body of work such as Kente’s in case we forget. Secondly, it’s a rare […]