Staff Reporter

THE SA Revenue Service plans to recruit about 100 additional full-time auditors and about 30 forensic auditors in the coming months in order to deliver on its undertaking to collect R210,4-billion in taxes in 2000-2001. Business Day reports that this would be 7,2% higher than this year’s achievement. It reports that SARS commissioner Pravin Gordhan […]

SOUTH African Airways has recommended US-based Boeing as the supplier of 20 to 25 new planes in a possible deal worth R4,3-billion, a senior government official said on Friday. The official said the recommendation is, however, still subject to final approval by South Africa’s transport utility Transnet which owns 80% of SAA. SAA Chairman Mafika […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Saturday 11.30am SOUTH Africa’s mines still hold big and profitable deposits, but the embattled industry needs to open up to black and small businessmen, a summit on the future of mining heard on Friday. Minerals and Energy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka told delegates: “The 21st century African is not going to allow […]

HEAVILY armed ex-rebel forces in Sierra Leone forced a contingent of United Nations peacekeeping troops to back off from deployment into an eastern region, the UN mission UNAMSIL said on Friday. The troops involved in Thursday’s standoff were heading from Kenema and Daru, 240 and 270 kilometres east of Freetown, for Koidu in the diamond […]

CONTROVERSY over the radical revamp of New Africa Investments Limited took a new twist on Wednesday when co-founder Jonty Sandler denounced the group’s planned restructuring. In a full page advertisement in South Africa’s leading business daily, Sandler said the unbundling of Nail, which has been held up as a model of black advancement, will undermine […]

Rail parastatal denies it will sell sidings to neighbouring farmers Mike Loewe Transnet has renounced plans to sell off many of its Eastern Cape railway sidings after the Mail & Guardian last week exposed how the sale could leave homeless hundreds of evicted farm workers living on the sidings. After several calls and a meeting […]

Caroline Sullivan NOT CD OFTHEWEEK Tom Jones has spun out his “comeback”, which began with a gut-busting version of It’s Not Unusual on Jonathan Ross’s trendy Last Resort show in early 1987, for years, but has never quite overcome the novelty- oldster tag. People half his age flock to see him at Glastonbury, other artists […]

Greek South African comedian Irene Stephanou reminisces about growing up in a caf Usually, having a caf on the corner meant having a relationship with the family on the corner. Well, that’s what it felt like. Every day, including Sunday, every night, there you were behind the counter. Saturday afternoons were my worst – hot […]

Howard Barrell Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel played the ball deep into the private sector’s court with his budget speech on Wednesday. He showed that he had succeeded in getting the public finances into their best shape in decades and in creating an outstanding environment for business to take the economic lead, to invest for […]

PARLIAMENTARIANS on Tuesday rained praise on former president Nelson Mandela at a special debate on his release from apartheid jails a decade ago and proposed that his bust be erected in the legislature. The proposal was mooted by ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni and supported by opposition politicians, who voiced as much admiration for Mandela […]

Deon Potgieter BOXING When Musibulele “Hawk” Makepula was awarded the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) junior flyweight world title on Saturday night it was not a controversial decision, but a bad one. Although the likeable Makepula has the potential of developing into a bona fide superstar, he still has much to learn. Watching the bout at […]

Jubie Matlou The Department of Home Affairs has instructed a Cape Town woman to have her sex certified by a district surgeon after her complaint that the department arbitrarily changed her gender on her identity document. The apparent mishap occurred when Georgia Kinghorn lodged her application for an identification document nine years ago. She only […]

For the third year in a row, Trevor Manuel has produced a largely acclaimed budget. What does it mean for individual South Africans? Belinda Beresford The big news of the budget was the restructuring of personal income taxes, and the consequent slashed tax bill for most taxpayers. More measures to encourage savings might have been […]

Windows 2000 has hit the shelves, and many computer users will be wondering whether the time has come to upgrade. Before you dash out to spend a fortune on the latest code from Redmond, however, pause to consider whether Bill Gates’s latest offering is really for you. Firstly, the hype around this release has largely […]

ALTHOUGH Queen “Iyaya” Sesoka, lead vocalist of popular Kwaito group Abashante, is still missing after disappearing on Tuesday, police say while they are aware of it, no missing person’s case has been reported. The 25-year-old singer’s disappearance took a strange turn on Friday when the Sowetan newspaper reported that a caller claiming he was in […]

Avoid the hassles of the road and go to Cape Town by rail Angus Begg I have a friend living near Johannesburg who booked on the Trans-Karoo’s new luxury version – Premier Classe – for a journey to Cape Town. Her search for the promised “Africa of a bygone era” took some work. Her difficulty […]

Donna Block The co-founder of New Africa Investments Limited (Nail), Jonty Sandler, tried to claw his way back from the business wilderness this week, appealing to shareholders in full-page advertisements to block Nail’s long-awaited restructuring. The disgraced former executive resigned his post last year after it emerged that Sandler and three other directors had hatched […]

Barry Streek The country’s poor have been the main beneficiaries of the government’s social spending, which has between 1993 and 1997 increased by an estimated 34%. This was revealed by Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel in this week’s budget speech in Parliament, where he emphasised this “significant shift in social spending from the more affluent […]

Peter Dickson In a move the police have codenamed Operation Beetle, a squad of 200 armed public order officers has been deployed to Uitenhage to keep the peace after car-maker Volkswagen’s sacking of 1E300 factory workers. Police hope Operation Beetle will prevent further incidents of post-strike intimidation that has already resulted in the hospitalisation of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bombay | Friday 2.00pm. INDIA are 75/5 at stumps of the second day of the first Test against India at the Wankhele Stadium after a day which saw 15 wickets go down. South Africa were bundled out for 176 runs, but bounced back to decimate the Indian batting with some fine bowling. India […]

Barry Streek The Pan South African Language Board has accused state railway company Spoornet of acting unconstitutionally and unlawfully in banning the use of Afrikaans in the work place. In an unprecedented ruling, the board, which was appointed under the 1994 Constitution, says no institution is “allowed to restrict the use of a language between […]

Hazel Southam In a British survey last year, almost one million children claimed to have been “upset” by something they had found on the Internet. Forty per cent said that they had found something “rude”. Another poll showed that 56% of British Internet users are concerned about pornography and 75% will not let their children […]

A system of mutual aid supports the Congolese community in South Africa Evariste Katanga It’s the first day of January; the transition to a new millennium has taken just one second. The joy that erupts all around the world is the same joy experienced at the Hillbrow night club Chez Ntemba. The majority of its […]

David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY It was at 6.30am that Barney awoke, to the cock-o-doodle-doo of a hahdedah playing silly-buggers in the garden. He stifled the impulse to hurl the Tea’sMade out the window. To cure him of the habit Leonora the maid had attached a rubber band. The last time he had done himself a […]

THE government plans to increase the health budget by R2,39-billion to a total of R32,32-billion for the next year, Manuel announced in his Budget. This represents growth of 6,6 percent. More than 90% of national health spending is made up of transfers to the provinces; these transfers are expected to grow from R5,4-billion in 1999/2000 […]

Last week in this column, bell hooks made a distinction between romantic love and true love. The former, she told us, quoting from Toni Morrison, is “one of the most destructive ideas in the history of modern thought”. She may be right, but then hooks goes on to define “true love” in terms that don’t […]

It wasn’t that long ago that patrons of bars and restuarants were requested to “please refrain from the smoking of pipes and cigars”. The traditional image of a cigar smoker was a leisurely fat cat in his fifties. A man with both time and money on his hands. Now it seems that most establishments carry […]

State More than half-a-million rand has failed to find its way to the country’s controlling body of professional golf Michael Vlismas GOLF The Southern Africa Tour instituted court action against the Free State’s provincial government this week in an attempt to recover more than half-a- million rand it believes it is owed. Somewhere between Cape […]

This was not the week to be jobless, poor and a sinner. In the moral schema that underlay Minister of Fiance Trevor Manuel’s budget, little charity was on offer for this category among us. It was those of us in work who got the tax breaks, the rich can afford to pay cunning accountants to […]

Michael Finch ATHLETICS During the 1999 season, there were many certainties in South African athletics – South Africa’s 400m hurdling superstar Llewellyn Herbert would always win on home soil, Wendy Hartman was untouchable in the sprints, and the men’s 400m was a toss-up between Arnaud Malherbe or Jopie van Oudtshoorn. Not surprisingly, the lure of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 7.00pm. ZIMBABWE’s minister of transport and energy resigned on Friday, saying he is unable to alleviate a critical fuel shortage in the country, worsened by heavy floods in the region. Petrol stations are running dry across Zimbabwe as floods and rain cut back fuel deliveries. All South African border posts […]

‘Frankenfoods’ Fiona Macleod Large shiploads of genetically engineered foodstuffs are quietly being imported into South Africa because a loophole in the law enables importers to fast-track such shipments without the public knowing anything about them. South African ports are receiving “an average of one large bulk shipment each month, mostly from Argentina and the United […]