Alec Hogg boardroom talk With well over two million shares traded in Ixchange stock this week, it’s clear some rather hefty bets are being laid ahead of what promises to be one of the most important few days in the wannabe world-leading software group’s history. After the past year’s share price collapse from R28 to […]
Barry Streek Eugene Saldanah, director of the Non-Profit Partnership, opened the international conference on tax and the non-profit sector this week by dressing organisations down with a warning that they have to administer their finances efficiently if they are to be sustainable. “We must dispel the myth and nonsense that the sector is lazy, incoherent […]
academic mall Globalisation affects tertiary education worldwide, but the southern hemisphere has unique problems Marianne Merten Harvard law professor Arthur Miller sold his teaching material to an online education provider, but the Ivy League university blocked the transaction and the matter is now before the courts. Pharmaceutical companies have stepped into the funding gap at […]
Justin Arenstein A key player in South Africa’s controversial arms deal, Shabir Shaik, helped sort out a financial crisis experienced by Deputy President Jacob Zuma in 1998. Shaik was Zuma’s financial adviser while he was finance MEC in KwaZulu-Natal. Bank records indicate that Shaik tried to help Zuma convince the troubled New Republic Bank (NRB) […]
Oscared: Clutching the little statuette were best actress Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich), best actor Russell Crowe (Gladiator), best supporting actor Benicio Del Toro (Traffic) and actress Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock). Best picture: Gladiator, and best foreign film: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. On the beat: The new Johannesburg Metro Police Department, with 1000 bobbies focusing on […]
Mail & Guardian reporter The Alliance for Children’s Entitlement to Social Security is calling on the government to move the age limit for child support grants from age seven to 18 years and to take cognisance of the needs of children affected by HIV/Aids. These recommendations emerged at a ground-breaking social security workshop in Cape […]
Mike Muller right to reply The Mail & Guardian’s articles about the recent floods in Mozambique and the role of the dams on the Zambezi river were disturbing for a number of reasons. Against the evidence, the articles (“Waiting for a watery Hiroshima”, March 9 to 15; “Floods a ‘predictable disaster’”, March 16 to 22) […]
Leading analysts believe the ruling party’s claims while dismissed by some should be taken seriously and debated Jaspreet Kindra The South African government has wined and dined the developed world consistently. Yet, claims the African National Congress, the First World, including the European Union, is undermining the black-run government. The party’s claim was the subject […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Not often acknowledged as such, television interview programmes are a variation of so-called “reality television”. There’s actually very little formulative difference between, say, a Jerry Springer with his string of trailer-park trash and some hoity-toity BBC guru grilling consequential political entities. It’s only a matter of configuration. Both exercises are by their […]
David Le Page The closure of Kagiso Media’s infant Internet venture BigMedia, announced 10 days ago, may foreshadow much turmoil among online publishers. The BIG (Broadcast Interactive Group) plan was to provide a single consolidated Internet platform supporting a network of broadcasters around the country. This would have amounted to a far cheaper option for […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni A Northern Province family is suing the provincial Department of Education after a nine-year-old pupil lost an eye following an alleged beating by a teacher. The grade two teacher at Lebaka Primary School near Giyani, Northern Province, who allegedly assaulted Mokgadi Seale, has not been suspended and there are no disciplinary […]
Belinda Anderson A former financial manager at recruitment, information technology and education group Advtech has been arrested on the charge of suspected fraud, having taken up to R2,5-million from the company. Chair Brian Buckham says although the amount still has to be confirmed, there will be no loss to the company. Some of the money […]
A SUSPECT in the bombings of US embassies in Dar-es-Salaam and Kenya begged South Africa in 1999 to hand him over to the United States rather than send him home to Tanzania, the Cape High Court heard this week. Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, a 27-year-old Tanzanian Muslim, is asking the court to rule that his arrest […]
Sipho Seepe Crossfire In engaging government representatives on crime, HIV/Aids, job creation or corruption or on anything involving statistics one can expect to be treated to a mixed bag of obfuscation, denials, half-truths and an almost intemperate appeal to race. A debate last week on Brain Drain Versus Brain Gain, hosted by the Tribute Forum, […]
Southpaws have a very poor record in the golf majors only Bob Charles has ever won one Jon Henderson When Phil Mickelson stands on the first tee at Augusta next week he should forget the statistics, which say, as a left-handed player, he’s got as much chance of winning the Masters as a weekend hacker. […]
Julia Beffon golf The weather gods relented on Sunday, parting the clouds and bathing the 18th green of the Gary Player Country Club at Sun City in sunshine as the showpiece event of the Nedbank Ladies Professional Tour built to a climax. England’s Samantha Head held her nerve to hole a par putt on the […]
Paul Kirk A top Durban accountancy lecturer has had his doctorate in business management withdrawn after a United States university discovered that large portions of his doctoral thesis were plagiarised from accountancy magazines. Ian Dey-van-Heerden is head of the department of accounting at Natal Technikon and supervises 19 other lecturers and four administrative staff. Dey-van-Heerden […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo All is still not well in South African soccer circles. Although the senior national team beat Mauritius 3-0 in a African Cup of Nations qualifying match, Cape Town has lost the right to stage the Bafana vs Zimbabwe World Cup qualifier because of the row over Newlands residents not wanting soccer fans in […]
Julia Beffon food ‘One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor,” was among the graffiti in the toilets of a student hang-out I frequented years ago. That’s about the effect of this get-smashed-quick favourite, but how many perennially broke students can afford four tequilas these days? The worldwide cost of tequila has almost doubled in the […]
Iden Wetherell CROSSFIRE As European Union governments attempt to stem the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki has identified a new contagion that is threatening to cross the Limpopo and infect South Africa. It is a variant of racism that might elude visitors from the planet Mars, he claims, but has not […]
Barry Streek The involvement of ordinary people in environmental impact assessments (EIAs) is being hampered by developers and the authorities, says environmental lobby group Earthlife. It says there seems to be a general drive to ensure that all developments are approved and “that no developments are rejected”. Earthlife’s Muna Lakhani says the organisation is drawing […]
Barry Streek The complex problems facing the production and distribution of craft and other products in rural areas and turning them into commercially marketable products are to be discussed at a two-day workshop in Johannesburg this weekend. The Mineworkers Development Agency (MDA) workshop will tackle problems of quality, delivery of products and supply of raw […]
Tim Wood in New York Telecommunication stocks have fallen hard and fast, just like their media and technology cousins. It is now common cause that these stocks were more vulnerable to the business cycle than their management and promoters had believed, or let on. But telecom stocks promise the most pain. As the United States […]
Pule waga Mabe Gospel star Rebecca Malope is more popular among South Africa’s youth than President Thabo Mbeki. The Youth 2000 report released this week by the Community Agency for Social Inquiry (Case) revealed that only 4% of South African youth named Mbeki as their role model, compared to the more than 8% who named […]
Steven Friedman worm’s eye view We can’t let the poor run this country politics would become far too sophisticated for the middle classes. Sometimes a barely noticed event may tell us more about our society than the most dramatic headlines. One example may be a recent poll on attitudes to the arts conducted by Markinor […]
Walt Disney, the world’s second-largest media company, said last night it was cutting 4 000 jobs – 3% of its worldwide workforce – as the slowdown in the US economy continued to bite.
He wasn’t a recluse, didn’t shoot at strangers and was loved by all. So says the man who knew him best.
FIVE Western aid workers caught up in fighting in the Somali capital this week have arrived safe and sound in Nairobi, but four UN employees are still in the hands of gunmen thought to be loyal to Mogadishu warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow after being abducted during a gunfight. The five said they were not hostages, […]
ZIMBABWE will strip its citizens of their nationality if they hold a passport from another country, unless they renounce their foreign citizenship, under a new law published this week. The law also reduces the amount of time Zimbabweans may live overseas “without lawful excuse” from seven years to five years, before they lose their citizenship. […]
A ZIMBABWEAN High Court has charged a former top politician with the 1994 murder of a man whose decapitated head was found in his car six years ago. Faber Chidarikire, who was a powerful figure in the ruling ZANU-PF party and mayor of the town of Chinhoyi, told police in 1994 the head belonged to […]
MARIE SANZ, Havana | Wednesday CUBAN President Fidel Castro and his South African counterpart Thabo Mbeki have signed a series of agreements – one of which could clear the way for the two countries to cooperate in producing low-cost Aids drugs while ignoring drug company patents. Both sides are interested in developing low-cost alternatives to […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday THE ANC says allegations that its Chief Whip, Tony Yengeni, accepted a luxury vehicle as a kickback in the governments multi-million rand arms deal are the result of delays in the arms probe creating a field day for speculative mischief-makers. Yengeni, for his part, has protested his innocence in […]