Alec Hogg boardroom talk During a week when financial results from South Africa’s largest insurance companies grab the investment community’s attention, a share-price boom by a relatively small outdoor advertising business is easy to miss. Also, after seeing the price of Corpcom shares virtually double in the past 10 trading days, a natural assumption is […]
Sean O’Conner food My dear friend Elize was in mortal danger of over-salivating prior to last week’s Community Chest Carnival, held at Maynardville in Cape Town. Having never been to the Carnival before, she’d heard how important it was for her taste buds to peak at the right time. So she stopped smoking that morning, […]
Glenda Daniels A major shift is happening in South African politics as white workers flock to sign up for union membership. Are class alliances superseding race a Trotskyist dream come true? Is expedience at work as jobs are lost in thousands? Has political consciousness been raised? Or are white apolitical unions mushrooming because they can’t […]
David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels The widely expected appointment of a woman as the next vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand was announced this week but it is not Professor Leila Patel, the current deputy vice-chancellor. Instead, the selection committee this week recommended Irish candidate Professor Norma Reid. The university senate and the council […]
Barry Streek South Africa should introduce a food voucher scheme to ensure low-paid workers and their families can use smart cards to buy food apart from their cash earnings the Women’s Development Bank (WDB) has urged. Food vouchers could ensure food security in a country where 73% of all households receive monthly incomes of less […]
Guyana is one of the few places in the West Indies where fast bowlers are not always in the ascendancy John Young One of Guyana’s nicknames is “Mudland”. The pitch at the Bourda Ground in Georgetown, where the Test series begins on Friday, is nearly a metre below sea level. They get a lot of […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION When it comes to television documentaries there seems to be a peculiarly British disease, rampant among directors particularly at the BBC. It is a pathological inability to leave well enough alone. In a recent BBC Panorama programme the subject was the spectacular cock-up that constitutes the current British railway system. After last […]
David McKay Inside mining Anglo Platinum, the world’s largest platinum group metal (pgm) producer, expects the pgm market to remain stable despite significant increases in production. Anglo Platinum, for one, is building yearly production to 3,5-million ounces by 2005, a growth in that company’s output of about three-quarters. The increasing use of pgm in autocatalysis […]
Nawaal Deane South Africa’s newest editor marked her first week running one of the country’s most prestigious financial publications with a thunderous attack on her management about editorial independence. Caroline Southey, who took over the helm of the Financial Mail (FM) last week, found herself in disagreement with her employers over her authority. BDFM, the […]
David Le Page Tiego Moseneke, CEO of empowerment company New Diamond Corporation, does not concur with some of the more severe criticisms of the Mineral Development Bill. He feels the provisions for security of tenure, for example, are adequate. “Once you are at mining stage, the Bill countenances the granting of 25-year leases that’s as […]
Key features of the National Plan for Higher Education include: l reducing the number of institutions; l eliminating duplication of programmes offered by institutions in the same region; l establishing a single distance education provider by merging Unisa, Technikon South Africa and Vista University’s distance education centre; l merging Vista’s contact tuition campuses with other […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo The African Credit Bank has launched a money school to empower its clients on consumer issues relating to the financial market. The bank, which recently repositioned itself as a credit bank to cater for the lower end of the market, identified consumer education as one of its key corporate strategies to meet the […]
To mark International Women’s Day, a special Court of Women heard moving accounts of hardship from women displaced by war Marianne Merten ‘My husband was an ex-soldier and in my country [with the coming to power of a new government] ex-soldiers were pursued [for political reasons],” explains refugee Susan Matata. Matata, who comes from a […]
Sipho Seepe no blows barred Education has tended, throughout history, to serve the interests and objectives of political, cultural and economic systems. In South Africa education was once an instrument that divided people racially and ethnically. This Verwoerdian prescription became the bedrock that was to direct educational policies for 40 years of apartheid rule. The […]
After the huge success of the martial arts romance, Ang Lee is to make a follow-up which will focus on the high-kicking warriors played by Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat.
JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Thursday FORMER special government advisor Pieter Rootman lodged 25 complaints against the elite Scorpions investigation unit for alleged gross human rights violations after being arrested on R1m fraud charges last week. Rootman said Scorpions investigators were guilty of “unconstitutional conduct” when they raided his Pretoria home and arrested him. The investigators […]
FARM workers have called on the government to place a moratorium on all evictions until it establishes special courts to handle rural violence cases. The Mpumalanga Labour Tenants Committee said on Wednesday that the abuse of farm workers would increase if offers by fascist American organisations like the Ku Klux Klan to protect white farmers […]
MARK BENDEICH, London | Thursday AFRICAN gold mining firm Ashanti Goldfields Co Ltd took the axe to the value of its mine assets on Wednesday, plunging the bottom line into red ink, but the troubled group looked to be turning a corner. “It looks fine to me,” said analyst Mike Jones of brokerage Canaccord Capital, […]
ANGOLAN UNITA rebels said on Wednesday they had shot down two government helicopters in the central Angola and claimed to have inflicted more casualties on government forces, the Lusa news agency reported. The rebel movement led by Jonas Savimbi claims to have killed more than 200 people and destroyed 23 military vehicles in fighting in […]
KENYA Airways, Regional Air and Ethiopian Airlines on Wednesday suspended flights to Bujumbura, the Burundi capital, because of deadly fighting there between rebels and the army, an airline official said. The suspension went into effect immediately, said the official with Air Burundi, which provides airport ground services for the three companies. Clashes between Hutu rebels […]
SHARON BEHN, Washington | Thursday A DINKA tribesman who escaped from slavery in Sudan’s largely Muslim north has appealed to the United States to help him free other southern Sudanese still being held in bondage. “Now I will use my freedom to free my people who are still in bondage and have no voice,” said […]
SWAZILAND will run a budget deficit of around 469 million emalangeni in 2001-02 because donor aid has dried up and the wage bill has soared, says Finance Minister Majozi Sithole. He told the House of Assembly that a slight economic recovery was possible this year as more investors are attracted to Swaziland thanks to improved […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Thursday AT LEAST 27 schoolgirls have been burned alive and scores more injured after a blaze broke out in a hostel at their school in central Nigeria where they were locked in to stop them meeting boys. Police said at least 23 students had died, but reporters said the toll was […]
LESOTHOS Independent Electoral Commission announced on Wednesday that the country’s long awaited general elections will be held in 2002, on a date yet to be announced. IEC chairman Leshele Thoahlane said eligible voters would be able to register to vote between August 13 and September 9 at 1_300 registration centres. The final voters’ list is […]
INTERNET banking fraud could become a major problem because criminals could net larger amounts of money than were currently being stolen at automatic teller machines, says Banking Council CEO Bob Tucker. He said theft at ATMs remained an issue of serious concern and that the situation needed to be addressed. Tucker was speaking at a […]
AN independent election watchdog has blamed Uganda’s presidential guard for violent weekend clashes in the west of the country that left one person dead. National Election Monitoring (NEM) called on government to demilitarise the electoral process and to restore public confidence in the elections by withdrawing the guard from areas where the president is not […]
OLD Mutual, the South African life insurer listed in London, has reported a 38% rise in operating profits for 2000 but warned business conditions may prove challenging in 2001. South Africa’s largest life insurer proposed a final dividend of 3.1 pence, making a total for the year of 4.7p, up 18%. – Reuters CUSTOM SHARE […]
RIGHTWINGER Eugene Terre’Blanche has to go back to jail after the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein upheld his attempted murder conviction and six-year jail sentence. Terre’Blanche was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to six years imprisonment in 1997 for assaulting a farm worker by hitting him over the head with a blunt object. Paul Motshabi […]
SOUTH Africa has offered to help the British government fight the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease there. The provincial agriculture minister of KwaZulu-Natal province said his province, having battled an outbreak of the deadly livestock disease, was sympathetic with the “harrowing and anxious time” Britain was going through. Foot-and-mouth disease broke out in Britain in February, […]
PIETER-Dirk Uys’s controversial Aids education show has been banned from the campus of Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, reports Beeld newspaper. The show is, according to Professor Madoda Zibi, vice-rector of development and chairman of the university’s Aids committee, “unscientific”. Professor Carools Reinecke, the university’s rector, also “rejected” the show. Dr Elmarie Claassens, a […]
A KENYAN father has been sent to jail for three years for marrying off his 13-year-old daughter for 22 000 Kenyan shillings ($280) in bride price. Gudu Mramba, 35, said he needed the money to pay for hospital treatment. The would-be “husband” – a 51-year-old father of six – and his teenage son were given […]
MPUMALANGA will spend more than five times what it expected on the plush new government complex in provincial capital Nelspruit. The riverside complex was originally envisioned as a R120m development when it was approved four years ago. It has already cost Mpumalanga R561m and will cost an additional R51m to finish sometime this year. The […]