If Gear fails it could lead to political mobilisation against the government, writes Johann Nel Unemployment is undeniably a national crisis. The Reserve Bank estimated that five million people were without formal jobs at the end of 1995, an unemployment rate of 33% of economically active South Africans. In 1996, when the economy registered relatively […]

Melvyn Minnaar : Potable pleasures If Dop-en-Dam at one stage suffered an image problem of hairy white legs and powder-blue crimplene safari suits, and Klippies-en-Coke got a bit of a character knock in the theatre, it wasn’t that there was anything amiss with the brandy used for those seriously traditional drinks. Brandy, after all, has […]

Gustav Thiel The Director General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Rusty Evans, leaves the department he has served for 30 years at the end of the month with a retirement package rumoured to be worth R10-million. He would not disclose how many millions he would get in his golden handshake, except to say it […]

Times In his book, Ascent and Dissent, Ken Vernon asks the unanswerable question: why did the country’s top newspaper never check on the credentials of team leader Ian Woodall? In a review last week, Brian Pottinger, editor of the Sunday Times, fired off a series of missiles at the reporter he assigned to cover the […]

NDABANINGI SITHOLE GUILTY VETERAN Zimbabwean opposition leader Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole was found guilty in the Harare High Court on Friday of plotting to assassinate President Robert Mugabe. He was also convicted of sending men for military training with the purpose of overthrowing the government, and of possessing arms of war. The 78-year-old Methodist cleric, a […]

Three-year rolling Budgets facilitate long- term planning, writes Madeleine Wackernagel Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel has taken all the fun out of Budget day. No more anxious scanning of the Budget book in search of revenue and expenditure targets: they are now freely available for the next three years. Some elements do survive Manuel’s Budget […]

Lizeka Mda If there were still “Whites Only” signs in South Africa, most people would be outraged. Yet practically the whole physical environment in the country says “Able-bodied only” as it deliberately shuts out a fair percentage of the population. Disabled South Africans are denied a full life because they have minimal access to education, […]

Angella Johnson They faced each other like gladiators in the truth commission arena; two battle- scarred adversaries in a fight to decide if the killers of Communist Party leader Chris Hani should be granted amnesty and walk free. The verbal sparring between civil rights advocate George Bizos and the formidable racist grand dame Gaye Derby-Lewis […]

Mail & Guardian reporters The Minister of Minerals and Energy, Penuell Maduna, this week vowed to resign if the Mail & Guardian could provide details of how he came to know about a $10 000 bribe. Maduna has denied any knowledge of how a leading oil trader gave $10 000 to Liberian Emanuel Shaw II […]

Eze Anaba Since Sani Abacha, head of Nigeria’s military government, dissolved his Cabinet and announced the impending release of some political detainees last month, the mood in his country has changed from elation to anxiety. Instead of releases, there has been a spate of new detentions, among them the wife of a journalist who fled […]