FORMER transport minister and communist party stalwart Mac Maharaj has taken up the post of a director at a leading commercial and merchant bank, he announced on Tuesday. Maharaj, who made himself unavailable for the cabinet of new President Thabo Mbeki selected in June, took up the post at the FirstRand Bank, formed from a […]
EMSIE FERREIRA, Pretoria | Saturday 7.00pm. SOME 5000 South African gold mine workers marched on the British High Commission and the Swiss embassy in Pretoria on Saturday to protest at central bank gold sales which have sent the gold price plummeting. Wearing shirts bearing the slogan “Not an Ounce More”, the workers blamed the Bank […]
IVORY Coast and Ghana, the world’s two top cocoa producers, have agreed to “optimise” production to help cushion the effects of a steady drop in world price of the cash crop, officials said in Abidjan on Thursday. At a meeting on Wednesday, agricultural and commercial trade ministers from the two countries vowed to “optimise their […]
WEDNESDAY, 8.45PM: BANKING representatives of the 12-nation Southern African Development Community on Wednesday formed the Southern African Development Community Banking Association which will form uniform banking legislation, practices and procedures in the SADC countries. The constitution of the new body has already been agreed on, with objectives to establish standards in-line with international practices, as […]
with the soul What does our species, with its computers and space walks, get from the ancient ritual of branding, asks Charl Blignaut `Can I watch?” asks the tall skinny boy with a bullring through his lower lip and a friendly sneer along the upper. “Sure,” I reply. “Nervous?” he asks. The photographer adjusts a […]
Andrew Benson Motor Racing Michael Schumacher broke his right leg last weekend at the British Grand Prix in exactly the kind of accident drivers have been warning the sport’s authorities about for some time. The German’s head-on impact with a wall highlighted just how inefficient the gravel traps used to slow out-of-control cars can be […]
A JOINT military commission to monitor the Democratic Republic of Congo ceasefire will be set up at a meeting starting in Lusaka on Monday. Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge said on Friday that the meeting of ministers from countries involved in the conflict was also expected to discuss continued clashes in the DRC. “We want […]
Wally Mbhele reports on allegations that an advertising agency misled parastatals about its black empowerment The Office of the Public Protector has launched an investigation into the awarding of more than R200-million in advertising contracts to a company that is alleged to have misled parastatals with false information about its black economic empowerment. Documents handed […]
Philippa Garson Class Struggle It’s early days yet but the appointment of a delivery-oriented leader, in the feisty form of Kader Asmal, is already raising hopes for the resurrection of education. During an exclusive interview with Asmal recently, it became clear that his appointment to the position of education minister is the best news we’ve […]
KENYA’S Fred Kiprop won the Gold Coast marathon for the second straight year on Sunday. Kiprop, 26, broke away from the leading pack of runners at the 34-km (21-mile) mark and won in a time of 2 hours 14 minutes 02 seconds on Australia’s Gold Coast tourist strip. The time was well off the 2:11.00 […]
Howard Barrell Zimbabwe will be pressuring South Africa and other countries in the region to agree to use military force to back peace efforts in Angola when leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) hold a summit in Maputo next month. “There has to be general consensus within SADC on a military commitment shared […]
Friday night Sean O’Connor After loading saddlebags at Fish Hoek Fisheries, purveyors of the most generous crispy-fried fresh hake this side of the boerewors curtain, Angela, Karen and I bivouac on a road overlooking this timewarped dorp to enjoy our grub. We wet tongues and tonsils with some of the good stuff before climbing into […]
For those who remember, the Eighties in Johannesburg wasn’t only the era of two states of emergency, harsh censorship and PW Botha. It was also the decade that gave rise to an angry enclave of alternative white boppers who reformed Yeoville, colonised warehouses and established loud clubs in strange places. DV8 was going as the […]
BAFANA Bafana midfielder Quinton Fortune is to have a week-long trial from July 27 with Manchester United. The 22-year-old, who played in all three of South Africa’s matches at last year’s World Cup finals, has been at Atletico Madrid for the last three years but failed to gain a regular first team place. His Cape […]
Jack Schofield NETWATCH Yureka is billed as the Internet’s first “find engine”, which means it reduces searches – which are actually performed by MetaCrawler and well-known search engines like AltaVista – to a manageable number of likely results. It’s not exactly clear what it does, apart from reduce duplication. However, the search box provides a […]
Ivor Powell and Mungo Soggot Former state president PW Botha could face prosecution in connection with the grisly 1985 killing of eight East Rand youth activists by booby-trapped grenades. Botha has been named in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty application of South African police Commissioner Johan van der Merwe as having authorised what has […]
The debate may be heated, but the statistics show that controlling gun ownership is the way to go, writes Anthony Minnaar South Africa has become part of a worldwide trend with its controversial draft legislation that tightens controls on the issuing of firearms to individuals. The whole world seems to have become gun conscious. The […]
THURSDAY, 12.15PM: THE English hockey squad arrived in South Africa on Wednesday, going to East London for the first two internationals on Saturday and Sunday. The team is worried that it knows little about the South African side. “I came here with the Australian group back in 1995, and I have seen some of the […]
South Africa and England are favourites in the race to host the 2006 World Cup. Denis Campbell gives an English view of the bid battle It’s man against boy, statesman against striker, the champion of South Africa’s black majority against the champion of Walker’s cheese and onion crisps. Nelson Mandela, the 80-year-old who ended apartheid, […]
Andy Beckett THE TESSERACT by Alex Garland (Penguin) There are very few verbs at the start of this novel. In a derelict hotel, a man called Sean is waiting to ambush some gangsters; he is in a suburb of modern Manila, growing stickier with the dusk; he is nervous. Entire sentences, even paragraphs, are composed […]
Cameron Duodu Letter From The North `Africa’s leaders, some of whom seized power in coups themselves, have decided, at the final OAU [Organisation for African Unity] summit of the century to ostracise any future African leader who takes power by force,” an OAU spokesman said. (Reuters) (Fast forward to January 1 2000. Military music is […]
Darran Thomas Winter in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands is hunting season for landowner and poacher alike and past seasons have seen their share of destroyed hunting dogs, imprisoned poachers, human death and communities at each others’ throats. But one Midlands man seems to have gone some way towards reconciling the divergent philosophies of hunter and landowner. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Carnoustie | Thursday 5.30pm. A RELIEVED Ernie Els marched off the 18th green, delighted that the winds sweeping in off the Firth of Tay had failed to blow away his British Open championship hopes. The South Africa was delighted to finish third with a 74 – only three-over-par on the hardest course in […]
You don’t have to be a professional to create a good home page, explains Jack Schofield Anybody can create a website. No special software is needed – you can create pages with a simple text editor, such as Windows’s Notepad or the Mac’s Simpletext – and there’s no shortage of Web space. Most Internet service […]
Review of the week Brenda Atkinson I used to do my laundry on 4th Avenue in Parkhurst, at a laundromat that boasted original Seventies signage and an enormous ginger cat that would warm itself on the tumble dryers. At the time, 4th Avenue featured in my mental suburban inventory as an antique shop strip for […]
Leader: Laurent Kabila General area of operations: western and southern Congo. Forces: Armed Forces of the Congo (FAC): 40 000 to 45 000 poor-quality troops, most of them formerly in Mobutu’s army, collected by Kabila and stationed around the country. Angolan armed forces: 2 500 to 3 000, stationed mainly around the diamond mining centre […]
ANDREW MUCHINERIPI, Johannesburg | Friday 12.30pm. EVEN with 24 hours to go before the kick-off of the Iwisa Charity Soccer Spectacular, the real winners and losers in the annual one-day extravaganza are already known. Ajax Cape Town (formerly Seven Stars) are the winners after accumulating a staggering 56683 votes (43580 telephonic and 13103 postal). What […]
Barbara Ludman A Second Look A disturbing new twist in the Tuli elephant saga surfaced last week on a radio talk show where callers were invited to debate the importance of brutalised elephant calves versus raped and murdered teenagers. Astonishingly, plenty of callers bought into that spurious equation. “Let’s get our priorities straight,” they said. […]
Rowan Callaghan The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) is eagerly awaiting the launch of its first electronic share settlement system on July 30 this year. It is hoping that Share Transactions Totally Electronic (Strate) will help repair the damage caused by a notoriously inefficient settlement system and boost investor confidence. Although paper share certificates should remain […]
Peter Bradshaw Yugoslavian movie of the week There’s never been a more appropriate time to see a movie set in Serbia, so run, don’t walk, to see Black Cat, White Cat. It is a pungent and gripping gangland comedy by Emir Kusturica (The Time of the Gypsies), about patriarch gypsy godfathers on the banks of […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.00am SOME 4500 workers at Oryx gold mine went on strike on Friday in protest at job losses, against the backdrop of falling gold price, union leaders said. The National Union of Mineworkers called the walkout after negotiations with management over pay-out packages for 900 workers to be retrenched, deadlocked. […]
The David Gleason Column South Africa is regularly castigated in financial and commercial circles as being a country which pays scant regard to the essential processes of good corporate governance. We are too often oblique, it is said, when it comes to reporting frankly and truthfully and we pay lip service to consistent transparency. So […]