Ted Leggett The Gauteng police media liaison officers recently released a statement of support for a directive issued by National Commissioner George Fivaz earlier this year. This directive admonishes police officers to “refrain from making unauthorised and unguarded statements to the media”, and to direct press inquiries to media liaison. This kind of policy, Fivaz […]
THE DAVID GLEASON COLUMN Believe me when I tell you that, for small businesspeople, the thing that counts most is the interest rate. I wrote about this last week, but it is such an important matter it needs to be addressed again. Interest rates determine how consumers behave; they set the pattern of spending. If […]
The venue that hosted Codesa has been transformed into a gambling den. Bafana Khumalo reports The “miracle” of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy was painfully hammered out at the World Trade Centre in 1993 after months of negotiation at the Congress for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa). Today, this hall of democracy has […]
Howard Barrell : OVER A BARREL Why believe economists or economic explanations? For economics takes creativity, greed, mood swings and fortune- telling, and pretends to combine them into a science. If, in this world, some things do indeed cause other things to happen, it is unusually difficult to say in the case of economics what […]
Ann Eveleth Human rights education will receive a multilingual boost this week with the launch of the Know Your Rights comic book for schoolchildren in all 11 official languages – just in time for Human Rights Day celebrations on Monday. The Rapid Phase Group, makers of the Madame & Eve cartoon and writers of the […]
all Africans John Matshikiza : WITH THE LID OFF The taxi driver is from Yugoslavia. He rails against the politicians and religious orthodoxies that have torn his country apart, but says he is now quite happy in South Africa. He drops me at the airport and wishes me a pleasant flight. My ticket says Air […]
THE police have proposed that a special court be set up to hear cases involving crimes against tourists, a spokesperson for the police crime prevention unit said on Thursday. Unit director Piet van Rensburg said perpetrators often get off free because victims are back in their own countries by the time the assailants appear in […]
Bafana Khumalo Sergeant Sibusiso Gwala left his army base at Thabatshwane in Pretoria in August 1997 to rush to KwaZulu-Natal when he heard his father, African National Congress leader Harry Gwala, had died. “This was a blood relative and it was important for me to be there,” he explained this week, expressing bitterness that attending […]
Wally Mbhele and Ferial Haffajee Jay Naidoo’s future as Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting hangs in the balance as tensions with his department’s officials have reached the deputy president’s office. With elections looming, the jockeying for Cabinet posts has begun and Naidoo could be an early casualty. There is a persistent rumour that Free […]
Michael Finch : Athletics If the double “MJ” show doesn’t pack out the Ruimsig stadium in Roodepoort tonight, then Athletics South Africa (ASA) is faced with a crisis. Just the mere presence of the fastest man and fastest woman on earth, Michael Johnson and Marion Jones, in the second of the three-leg Engen Grand Prix […]
SEVENTY people drowned this week after their boat sank in a raging storm off the southern coast of Sierra Leone, a national boating association said on Friday. Two men and one woman survived the ordeal, an association official said. The passengers were mainly traders transporting essential commodities to Bo and Kenema, two towns in war-torn […]
A FOUR-DAY Durban conference on Malaria, which ended on Thursday, has concluded that the best technology for dealing with the disease is an insecticide soaked mosquito net. The malaria parasite has developed strains resistant to established drugs like Chloroquine and a vaccine may be decades away. In Tanzania, where 42-million nets have been distributed, there […]
Howard Barrell Unita rebels have taken delivery of new weapons which enable them to attack Angola’s offshore oil rigs and bombard the nation’s capital, Luanda, according to unconfirmed intelligence reports. The rebels now have three Russian-built MI 25 Hind helicopters, with another seven on delivery. They have also recently obtained more than 20 Russian-built unguided […]
Neil Manthorp in Wellington Cricket It would be pretty funny if New Zealand won the third Test, don’t you think? Unlike the Rocky scripts that have the battered, bloodied hero dragging himself off his knees and onward to last-gasp, savage victory, this plot would have a dribbly- nosed, 50kg bookworm slapping the bully into submission […]
Philip Nel : A SECOND LOOK I hope I am not the only Afrikaans speaker who feels uncomfortable with being made the focus of a special debate in Parliament. Although I can understand the political reasons why political parties would like to have such a debate in the run-up to the elections, I do not […]
THE United States government announced on Thursday that it will construct a new embassy in Nairobi to replace the previous one, which was destroyed by a powerful bomb blast on August 7 1998. The US said the demolition of the old embassy building starts on March 22 to pave way for the transformation of the […]
Emeka Nwandiko There is something strange about the cars parked outside the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides building at Delta Park. Its occupants dressed in shirt and ties get out and look around furtively before they start walking. Some just sit in their flashy cars and wait. Equally strange are the large black capital letters […]
Ian Clayton South Africa’s poorest provinces have the most civil servants, it was revealed in Parliament this week. There are more civil servants in the Northern Province – 119 465 – than there are in Gauteng – 112 851 – although Gauteng has 2,4-million more residents. The Northern Province has 25 civil servants for every […]
INDABA, MY CHILDREN by Credo Mutwa (Payback Press) Payback Press, part of Scottish publisher Canongate, is devoted to new and old works by important black writers. Among the titles already published under this imprint is Chester Himes’s Harlem cycle of murder mysteries; two famous books on black music, Leroi Jones’s Blues People and Ben Sidran’s […]
Be thorough when checking up on anyone who’s telling you where to invest your money, warns Donna Block When it comes to choosing someone to help you make head or tail of your investments there is one guiding principle: caveat emptor – buyer beware. No matter how smooth or sophisticated that person may be, the […]
Nicholas Lezard AN INSTANCE OF THE FINGERPOST by Iain Pears (Vintage) There is something about fat historical thrillers – in particular, those with pretensions – that can be uniquely dispiriting. They’re a kind of intellectual pornography, titillating us into an unwarranted sense of fulfilment. The more ambitious ones – like Umberto Eco’s The Name of […]
The head of the TRC hopes to hold on to his post, despite his recent appointment as rector of the University of the North, writes Ann Eveleth Truth and Reconciliation Commission CEO Biki Minyuku is bidding to keep his current post after he takes on new responsibilities – and a R1-million salary package – as […]
The education ministry has requested forensic audits into the financial affairs of six black universities, writes Evidence wa ka Ngobeni With black universities on the brink of collapse, the Ministry of Education has said that criminal charges will be laid against university managers if they are found to have abused taxpayers’ money. This follows Minister […]
won’t bore He’s a man of contradictions – style and good manners coexisting with arrogance and a talent to annoy. He’s romantically attached to the land of his birth, yet remains one of its fiercest critics. Roy Hattersley on the Unquiet American Gore Vidal is the most elegant, erudite and eclectic writer of his generation […]
THE European Union on Friday hailed an agreement by central African heads of state on the conservation and management of the region’s tropical forests. The heads of state of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea and Chad, along with the vice-president of Gabon and Congo’s environment minister on Wednesday signed the Yaounde Declaration agreeing […]
A lack of funding, or any of the other obstacles faced by cultural workers, hasn’t prevented Ithumeleng Wa-Lehulere taking theatre to the people, writes Lauren Shantall `Community theatre is not bad theatre,” asserts the compelling Ithumeleng Wa- Lehulere – one of the Western Cape’s foremost cultural workers and community theatre practitioners. An acclaimed actor, dancer […]
Mail & Guardian reporter The future of the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) occult-related crime unit hangs in the balance. Its supporters say senior police officers at national headquarters are blocking attempts by the unit to investigate satanic-related crimes and want to disband it. This is despite mounting concerns that there will be an increase […]
Ivor Powell Faced with recent opinion polls which suggest it could lose its KwaZulu-Natal heartland to the African National Congress in the June elections, the Inkatha Freedom Party is pursuing a double strategy. On one hand, its election manifesto makes it clear the IFP is looking to promote itself as a national party – rather […]
Matthew Krouse : Down the tube You don’t have to be as deep as Mike Lipkin to know that people spend a lot of their weekends in bed, in front of the television – particularly the early mornings, when those with kids probably get the worst end of a cute, co-parenting romp. If you have […]
Howard Barrell The Heath special investigating unit has been empowered to recover millions of rands stolen from road accident victims by unscrupulous lawyers. Judge Willem Heath’s team will investigate a fraudulent scheme which targets unsophisticated road accident victims. Rogue attorneys have been cheating semi- literate and often indigent clients of large parts of the insurance […]
Andy Capostagno : Rugby There will be those based in the north of the country who are experiencing a severe sense of dj vu about the Super 12 performance of the Gauteng Cats. You may recall that the Cats won their first match last year (39-32 vs Northern Bulls), then lost nine in a row […]
SOUTH Africa will next month host the continent’s largest-ever peacekeeping exercise. South African National Defence Force spokesperson Brigadier-General Brand Haasbroek said in Pretoria on Thursday that the exercise, called Operation Blue Crane, will involve some 4500 personnel from 26 countries, and will cost R20-million. Foreign affairs deputy director Betsie Smith said: “It is the largest […]