Staff Reporter

Charles Mangwiro and Justin Arenstein The Mozambican government appears to own 20% of the plastic pipe factory outside Maputo where police last week pulled off Africa’s largest ever Mandrax bust. The raid by a squad of South African and Mozambican police netted over 300kg of methaqualone power meant for the manufacture of at least 30-million […]

Mark Milner It was in use before a written language was invented. Today it is being studied as a possible means of staving off ailments ranging from bowel cancer to gallstones. It has been used to provide heating and lighting for centuries. Even the trendiest of today’s celebrity chefs does not disdain to slosh it […]

New tax concessions to non-profit organisations are close to tax deductibility for all donations Barry Streek The non-profit sector achieved a significant – although still incomplete – victory in this year’s budget with the announcement of tax concessions to non- profit organisations by Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel in his budget speech. His announcement stopped […]

EGYPTIAN President Hosni Mubarak welcomed Pope John Paul II to Egypt on Thursday with a call for a joint battle against fanaticism and hatred in order to fulfill the hopes of the new millennium. “We should oppose all forms of discrimination, injustice and double standards if we are to establish a new viable world order,” […]

Charlene Smith Crime killed the corner caf. And made us part of global mediocrity. As a real caf society develops, and we all sit on pavements delicately sipping caffe lattes and double mochas, the corner Greek, the owner of the local “kaif”, has packed up and gone back to Mykonos or is now managing one […]

Neil Manthorp CRICKET The only surprise the South African players have encountered in India so far has been just how predictable everything has been. Knowing what to expect is one thing, but you still expect some surprises in the land of people, chaos, enthusiasm and people. And more people. Preparations for the first Test, which […]

Barry Streek Sport, welfare, arts, culture and environmental sectors, represented by NGOs, have launched an umbrella body, the Peoples’ National Lottery Coalition (PNLC), to monitor the allocation of the proceeds from South Africa’s national lottery, which is due to be launched on March 1. The PNLC intends to engage with the government “in a proposed […]

Khadija Magardie Dr Werner Bezwoda, South Africa’s top chemotherapy expert who has admitted to faking groundbreaking breast cancer trials, conducted his experiments on more than 100 indigent black women without their formal consent. Bezwoda made his bombshell admission this month after investigators from the United States flew to South Africa to verify his research, which […]

THE government has decided to retain the current asset swap dispensation, but to change the definition of the 15% limit from total assets employed in South Africa, to 15% of total assets. Unit trusts would be permitted to invest up to 20% of their total assets under management by way of asset swaps. Pension funds, […]

Scotch Tagwireyi and Heather Hogan The University of the Orange Free State (UOFS) has reintroduced apartheid-style rules in its male residences, by endorsing student demands to divide them according to race. The extraordinary decision followed several incidents of violence on campus, which were attributed to racial tensions between students. The problems mostly occurred in under-graduate […]

Many go on to earn hundreds of thousands a week, but Fifa wants to halt the exodus of ‘under-age’ African players – a move that would not be popular with the players’ moms Brian Oliver Somewhere in northern Malaysia there are 12 teenaged footballers living in one large room and hoping to be selected to […]

Donna Block SHAREWORLD I remember my first year at University and my first class, Finance 101. The professor, a wizened old curmudgeon, told us that if we learned nothing else in his class, rule one about finance was that the stock market was a crap-shoot. “You place your bets and you take your chances.” He […]

Shirley Kossick THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO WOMEN’S WRITING IN ENGLISH edited by Lorna Sage (Cambridge University Press) The material in this guide consists of over 2 500 entries – from a 300-strong panel of contributors – simply set out in alphabetical order under each author’s name. Key titles (such as Jane Eyre, To the Lighthouse […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Abuja | Friday 3.35pm NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo has spoken out for the first time against legal implementation of Sharia, stating that punishments meted out under the Islamic law violates the constitution. “For any law to be, it must be codified. Sharia is not codified. They just make references to the Koran and […]

Movies via the Net could do more than hit your local video hire shop Jack Schofield Cliff Stanford has made one fortune by bringing the Internet to the mass market, through Demon Internet, and now he’d like to make another by using the Net to deliver movies. This week, Britain’s Redbus Film Group, of which […]

Polly Pattullo Visitors look at new places with eyes that are loaded with their perceptions about the world and where they come from. Depending on the “view”, we can be fascinated, bored or anguished. It can be unforgettable or mundane. Our hosts, who look at that same view every day, see things differently. Such confusion […]

Marianne Merten The New National Party aborted its disciplinary action against its outspoken senior Western Cape member Peter Marais this week after his legal team indicated it would cross-examine the party’s national and Western Cape leaders at the hearing. Marais was axed as Western Cape welfare and poverty relief MEC on Valentine’s Day, apparently for […]

Sasha Sanders I like the Seven Elevens. I really do. I like that I can walk up the road and buy milk or chocolates in the middle of the night. I like that I can buy a drinking yoghurt on my way to work early in the morning. And I like that they bake really […]

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 […]