Robert Kirby : Loose cannon With yet another Christmas spree about to bankrupt us, this is the time when it’s expected of responsible columnists to make an effort to reflect perceptively on the year just fled. It’s quite hard. Where do you start in trying to summarise, say, the corruption and general criminality of 1997’s […]

Mungo Soggot Two eminent businessmen resigned last year from an investment fund set up by Don Mkhwanazi after he paid himself and a Liberian consultant huge salaries and the fund’s first venture flopped. Mkhwanazi founded the National Empowerment Trust in 1994, together with the National Empowerment Trust Investment Fund, which he chaired. But the two […]

The truth commission’s hearings into human rights abuses end next week. But the emotional effects on the commission’s staff could last for many years. Angella Johnson reports Frank Mohapi was interviewing three surviving members of a family that had virtually been wiped out in a sectarian attack eight years ago when he noticed he was […]

M&G reporter Telecommunications Minister Jay Naidoo’s bold plan to counter the year 2000 computer crisis may be too late, computer industry sources warn. While the United States is expected to achieve compliance by July 1999, South Africa is thought to be at least a year behind in preparations for the year 2000 problem. Although Naidoo’s […]

smuggling Jan Breytenbach, a legend in the former SADF, describes how he discovered that senior officers were using ivory-smuggling routes for their own corrupt ends Jonas Savimbi’s headquarters was at a place called Jamba, a sort of squatter camp 10km south of the Biongue omuramba (flood plain) and about 15km south of the Luiana River. […]

Stefaans Brmmer A close associate of Emanuel Shaw II, the controversial Liberian adviser to South Africa’s Central Energy Fund, was investigated by Dutch authorities on suspicion he participated in a crime syndicate that used West Africa as a transit point for massive drugs shipments to Europe. Dutch investigators say they are no longer pursuing Shaw’s […]

Peta Thornycroft The former co-chair of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), accused of misusing her company credit card, has recently landed a plum government job. Dr Sebilitso Mokone-Matebane has been offered a consultancy with Sentech, the national signal distributor owned by the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications. This means all three disgraced IBA councillors have […]

Africa may have contributed little to greenhouse gases, but that hasn’t made it immune to global warming, writes James C McKinley All year long, the weather across Africa has been freaky and extreme, a product, meteorologists suspect, of the El Nio phenomenon in the Pacific Ocean. In East Africa, the year began with drought and […]

THURSDAY, 1.00PM: BAFANA BAFANA coach Clive Barker is not worried by the presence of spies who frequent their training sessions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Barker said this after taking his charges through their paces at the Special Security Forces Stadium in the Saudi capital on Wednesday. “We are not concerned with the spying because it […]