Lynda Loxton While local authorities take desperate measures to get consumers to pay their bills, the final touches are being put to an ambitious plan to get South Africa’s electrification programme back on track. Minerals and energy department deputy- director Wolsey Barnard told the parliamentary minerals and energy committee this week the plan involved dividing […]

FRIDAY, 11.30AM JOHANNESBURG Consolidated Investments, SA’s first black-owned mining company, is to be split into thrre smaller companies: a parent holding company, a gold company, and a non-gold commodities firm, according to a letter to staff from chairman Mzi Khumalo. In the letter, Khumalo said the purpose is to create management structures to ensure a […]

Gaye Davis Tom Sebina, who has died aged 60, was for years the public voice of the African National Congress and one of the last of the organisation’s cadres to return from exile. His office, little more than an agglomeration of desks and chairs crowded into a tiny room at the ANC’s rudimentary headquarters off […]

Janet Smith SA Fashion Week 1997 Designers who’ve paid fees of between R10 000 and R40 000 each to present their ranges are pinning their sumptuous fabrics on what could be a renaissance of fashion for fashion’s sake at South Africa’s first ever fashion week. Sponsors like Audi have invested R80 000 for each of […]

The spirit of Shaka Zulu is back, this time featuring a gaggle of international stars, reports Charl Blignaut Ask any common or garden foreigner about their impressions of South African history and you can safely bet that the words “Shaka Zulu” will come your way. That’s got a lot to do with SABC-TV’s 1986 series […]

Marion Edmunds The director general of the public service department, Paseko Ncholo, believes South Africa’s R74-billion public sector wage bill is a political ” hot potato” that Cabinet needs to address through “political decisions”. Speaking at a briefing in Parliament, Ncholo denied knowing anything about government plans to prune the country’s empire of 1,2-million public […]

No, they have not arrived. This is an integrated class A 40 watt per channel stereo amplifier, and it comes, not from Mars, but from Panfield’s Andrew Meintjies. Meintjies, a photographer, camera-builder, and “Renaissance techno-geek”, makes the amps by hand. Their form-follows-function design is unique: the aluminium casing – available in 10 different colours – […]

The Angella Johnson Interview Look at the photograph. Familiar, isn’t he? It’s Bankole Omotoso, or as he’s more popularly known, Yebo Gogo – the face that launched a slew of Vodacom cellphones. Here is a true Renaissance man; a master of many trades who refuses to be tied down to just one job. When this […]

Foreign traders flocked to South Africa in the hope of making their fortunes, but have found crime instead, reports Anna Georgiou From Timbuktu to Tripoli, traders from across Africa have flocked to South Africa to strike gold and have been met with hostility by locals. Saturday business at the Market Theatre flea market in Johannesburg […]