The state-owned synthetic fuel producer is demanding another R1,8-billion, reports Mungo Soggot Mossgas, the state-owned synthetic fuel producer which is one of South Africa’s most expensive white elephants, has asked the government for another R1,8-billion. The latest call for cash by the plant — which is controlled by the embattled Central Energy Fund (CEF) — […]

FRIDAY, 8.00AM: PRETORIA Judge William De Villers on Thursday issued a summons to President Nelson Mandela to appear in court to explain his decision to appoint a commission of inquiry into rugby. The decision has alarmed the government, and Mandela’s legal adviser Nicholas Haysom said it will set a precedent, allowing anyone to challenge the […]

Philippa Garson Etienne Marais, a director in the Safety and Security Secretariat found guilty last week of sexually abusing two girls, will face a disciplinary hearing or be dismissed, unless he resigns first. Marais, chief director of liaison and communication, was found guilty of masturbating in front of two girls, aged seven and 12 at […]

Steve Morris : Rugby The acid test for South Africa’s new regionalised Super 12 system does not come on Friday February 27, when the southern hemisphere’s provincial championship kicks off in Cape Town where the Western Stormers face Wellington at Newlands. Neither will it really come should one of the local composite teams make the […]

IN BRIEF SA’S FIRST INTERACTIVE NOVEL ACCLAIMED South African author Jann Turner made literary history in South Africa when she launched the first local interactive Internet novel on Thursday. Turner — author of Heartland– will write the opening scene of a romance called Take Mine Valentine, and visitors will be asked to continue the book, […]

Lynda Gledhill Compassion, caring and commitment has kept a non-governmental organisation in Pietermaritzburg alive despite a severe shortage of donor funds. While other organisations close down when the funding tap is switched off or fail to report properly to funders when extraneous spending occurs, Winnie Kubayi has kept her project alive and manages to report […]

Wonder Hlongwa The South African Red Cross Society’s national executive committee is sitting on an explosive report detailing maladministration, corruption, negligence, racism and nepotism — apparently in an attempt to cover up for colleagues who are implicated in it by name. The report details the inability of the Red Cross’s national director general, Keith Gower, […]

Janet Smith Down the tube Robert Powell’s haunted face is our most abiding cinematic image of Jesus, thanks to Franco Zeffirelli, the same director who said all those disgustingly true things about the public response to Princess Diana’s death last year. Zeffirelli would never perform a vulgar deed, which is why the spare, exquisite features […]

Alex Clark The End of Alice by AM Homes (Anchor, R69,95) This novel, an everyday tale of paedophilia and child murder in middle-class America, is published in paperback plastered with the panegyrics of American critics, united mainly by their admiration for AM Homes’s horrifyingly “real” treatment of a taboo subject. At the same time, the […]

John Seiler Important questions have been asked about the still-unresolved collapse of most major Pacific Rim financial markets and economies, but the common conclusion is flawed: that the Asian governments involved, and by extension this and other African governments, have a minimal role to play in dealing with the complex mix of economic and political […]