Staff Reporter

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday, 10.00PM. ALLAN Boesak’s former accountant stole money from his boss and falsely attributed irregular transactions to him, the Cape Town High Court heard on Monday. Freddie Steenkamp, the bookkeeper for Boesak’s Foundation for Peace and Justice, has already been convicted on counts of fraud and theft and is serving […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 9.30am. SPRINGBOK and Mpumalanga Pumas scrumhalf Dan van Zyl is hoping for a recall into the Springbok rugby side after signing a contract to play for Western Province on Monday. Van Zyl toured Europe with the Springboks last year, but has fallen out of favour with national coach Nick Mallett […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Monday, 6.30PM. DETAILS of an agreement between government and teachers’ unions on rationalisation and redeployment is expected to be made public within a fortnight, Education Minister Sibusiso Bengu said on Monday. There are still “one or two matters” to attend to, he said, but is confident that redeployed teachers will […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 8.30PM. GOLDEN LIONS scored seven tries in an entertaining match in Johannesburg on Saturday to beat Eastern Province by 43-22. But Province played a spirited game and go home with a bonus point, thanks to scoring four tries. Lions went ahead in the ninth minute with a try by flanker […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Sunday 7.00PM. MPUMALANGA Parks Board’s embattled chief executive, Alan Gray, dismissed reports on Sunday that a secret R340-million loan scheme using the region’s game parks as collateral was illegal. The scheme was branded as illegal by finance minister Trevor Manuel on Saturday and is being investigated by the Heath special investigative […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Sunday 8.30PM. AFTER being a goal up in the very first minute, Hellenic lost 2-3 to Sundown in their first-leg Rothmans Cup clash in Pretoria on Sunday. The quick goal came when midfielder Bradley August slammed a piledriver into the crossbar, which bounced off into the path of striker Roger Theunissen, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maritzburg | Sunday 8.30PM. IN the first major match in the newly-restored Maritzburg oval, upgraded for R7-million, Shaun Pollock’s SA Commonwealth side romped home against Kwa-Zulu Natal with 307 for five, winning their one-day limited overs match on Sunday by 40 runs. Leading batsman on the South African side was Jacques Kallis, who […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Monday 10.00PM. THE G8 grouping of industrialised countries and the institutions over which they exercise influence have a monopoly over determining policies that affect the entire globe, an economic advisory panel told a foreign ministers’ meeting at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Durban on Monday. However those policies are not neccessarily […]

CHRISTIAN FIGENSCHOU, Johannesburg | Monday 9.00am. TWO more farmers were murdered in criminal attacks this weekend, prompting the Democratic Party to call for urgent action by government to adress the crisis. On Saturday, a retired Spoornet worker, Andre Stander (65) was murdered on his farmstead in Dysseldorp near Oudtshoorn in the southern Cape. Police spokesman […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Monday, 6.30PM. THE Heath special investigative unit spent four hours raiding the Mpumalanga Parks Board’s head office in Nelspruit on Monday morning after serving search and seizure papers on MPB chief executive Alan Gray. Unit investigators declined to comment on Monday, insisting that their investigation into the drafting of three promissory […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Border | Sunday 8.30PM. BORDER came just one point away from beating their illustrious neighbours Western Province on Sunday, after a brilliant comeback from 12-0 down at halftime. But in the end, a bounce off the left-hand upright is what denied them victory, letting Western Province go home with a 15.-14 win. After […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.00PM. A NEW Sunday broadsheet aimed at black readers, Sunday World, is to be launched in March next year. Joint publishers Times Media Limited and New Africa Publications announced on Monday that the paper will be distributed in Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Northern Province and North-West. TML chairman Cyril Ramaphosa said the […]

CHRISTIAN FIGENSCHOU, Johannesburg and LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Vaalwater | Monday 3.30pm. FOLLOWING the murders on Saturday of two elderly Cape farmers, a Northern Province farmer’s wife was attacked by four men who stabbed her 16 times at her Vaalwater farmhouse on Sunday evening. Dina Muller (60) told police that four men, including a soft-spoken farm labourer […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10PM. THE magazine and newspaper subsidiary of Naspers Limited, Nasionale Media Limited, has bought the financial journal Finance Week and will merge it with existing publications to form a new financial weekly. Finance Week’s operations will be integrated with those of Nasionale Media’s two financial journals, F&T Weekly and Finansies […]

JOHN GROBLER in Windhoek | Friday 1.00pm. INSURANCE companies operating in Namibia are threatening to pull out before the implementation of controversial legislation requiring them to pay increasing amounts of their income on premiums to the government. Sanlam (Namibia) MD Bob Meiring this week called for calm and consultation, expressing hope that sense will prevail […]

PAUL EJIME, Durban | Sunday 7.00PM. POLITICAL and security issues, including the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo and global disarmament, especially the situation in Asia, have so far dominated the preparatory meeting of the 12th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Durban. The ambassadors’ and senior officials’ meeting, which was opened early on […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday 8.00PM. FAMILIES of Zimbabwean soldiers killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been prevented from protesting outside President Robert Mugabe’s offices in Harare. Family members said at the weekend that Central Intelligence Organisation agents had threatened them. “We were harassed by youths at night who told us that all […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Port Elizabeth | Friday 10.30PM. FEDSURE Medway turned on the turbo when it counted most to win the 1998 Lipton Challenge Cup for the first time on Friday. Co-skippered by Pete Shaw and Steve du Toit, and crewed by Ken Venn, Bruce Keytel and Mike Clarke, the Gordon’s Bay Yacht Club team sailed […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.15am. SOUTH African Airways on Friday morning reached an agreement with its unions, averting a strike planned for Friday afternoon. “The agreement, which has the unanimous endorsement of the negotiating teams of all unions, will be submitted immediately for discussion by the represented employees,” the South African Railway and Harbour […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Sunday 9.00PM. RWANDA will send troops into the Democratic Republic of Congo if the latest peace efforts under the leadership of South African President Nelson Mandela fail, Rwanda has warned. Rwandan Foreign Minister Anastase Gasana, in Durban to attend the Non-Aligned Movement summit, told reporters on Saturday that the genocide of […]

Marlene Burger The alleged plot to assassinate United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjld 37 years ago was the brainchild of at least two British security agencies – MI5 and the Special Operations Executive – and the CIA, top-secret documents show. For once, apartheid’s dirty tricks brigade appears to have been falsely accused of involvement in […]

Gavin Evans General Lothar Neethling has not had a particularly good year; nor such a hot decade either, come to think of it. Previous allegations that he was apartheid South Africa’s poisoner-in- chief have been confirmed at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and he has emerged as a key player in the former regime’s biological […]

Ferial Haffajee The SABC board chair, Professor Paulus Zulu, may have acted unilaterally in sacking deputy chief executive Govin Reddy. Some board members sought a negotiated parting of the ways instead of the immediate termination of employment which Zulu penned in his July letter to Reddy. His action has exposed the SABC to a very […]

Carolize Jansen The Sports Information and Science Agency conducted an extensive and enlightening study on the participation of women in sport last year. The main objectives of the study were to obtain the number of women participating in various sports in South Africa, segment the number of these participants in categories according to, for instance, […]

The winds of change that have blown through the SABC seem to have bypassed the commissioning department, writes Ferial Haffajee It is 1976 and television has just hit our shores. The Broederbond has decreed that it be a totally bilingual operation. But the problem is there is nary an Afrikaans producer in sight. The commissioning […]

Alex Sudheim `After 10 minutes time you’ll forget you’re watching a screen and you’ll feel like you’re in the same room,” promises Krish Moodley of his unique new venture, the 3-D Picture Palace on Durban’s beachfront. Whether or not you actually want to be in the same room as several dozen grunting, sweating, copulating people […]

The massacre of species at present rates has baleful consequences for Earth, writes Tim Radford A big fish is about to swim away, forever. The barndoor skate, Raja levis, seems close to extinction. In 1951 research ships found it in 10% of all trawls of the St Pierre Bank in the Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland. […]

Matthew Krouse On stage in Johannesburg It’s not difficult to fathom why Andr the Hilarious Hypnotist is one of the biggest hits in town. Like Candid Camera and America’s Funniest Home Videos, his unselfconscious humour appeals to the lowest common denominator, showing the foibles of ordinary people in absurd situations. Andr’s spectacle parades as an […]

Cecil John Rhodes’s bones are in danger of being tossed in the Zambezi, writes Mercedes Sayagues Few places are as charged with spiritual energy as the Matopos hills in Zimbabwe. Granite boulders twist into contorted sculpture, thorny vegetation is splashed with flowers and 20 000-year-old San paintings adorn caves. This is the place to touch […]

Gavin Evans Boxing When you combine the words Namibia and sport, the only connection that springs to mind is Frankie Fredericks. There is, however, another young man – a close friend of the track star as it happens – who believes he’s on track to equal the achievements of his brilliant homeboy: Harry Simon. This […]

Sarah Penny INTO THE HOUSE OF THE ANCESTORS by Karl Maier (John Wiley & Sons) EATING THE FLOWERS OF PARADISE by Kevin Rushby (Constable) Last year Nelson Mandela made the following statement: “The time has come for Africa to take full responsibility for her woes and use the immense collective wisdom it possesses to make […]

Economists may need a crash rethink of the basic tenets of economic orthodoxy, writes Larry Elliot Another normal week for the global economy. Russia’s on the point of financial meltdown, the Chinese government is battling to stave off devaluation, bankruptcies are up 35% in Japan, stock markets are down almost everywhere, the biggest industrial merger […]