Mungo Soggot The taxpayer’s bill for Public Protector Selby Baqwa’s exploration of Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna’s possible slander of the auditor general is on track to outstrip the corruption watchdog’s total annual budget of R7,5-million. At least five legal teams are due to appear before Baqwa’s investigation, which should run for at […]
Everything on Wall Street is excessive: buildings, bonuses – and sexual harassment of female clerical staff by male brokers. But women are striking back. Joanna Coles reports from New York Wall Street is a place of excess: the seven- figure salaries, the soaring, self-reflecting buildings of chrome and glass, the bonuses bigger than the national […]
Peter Mokaba used his ministerial credit card to buy clothes, groceries and sweets, writes Andy Duffy An internal investigation by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism has found that Deputy Minister Peter Mokaba spent thousands of rands of taxpayers’ money on personal expenses. Department officials reported late last year that Mokaba had used his […]
The South African petroleum industry was thrown into confusion in March 1997 when Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna threatened to “re-regulate the entire industry”. He accused multinationals operating in South Africa of maintaining a stranglehold on the domestic industry without contributing to black empowerment or the economy as a whole. Recently, black empowerment […]
Who was Trevor Huddleston? Eric James It is remarkable that it was a white bishop whom the African National Congress asked to open their first conference in freedom in 1991. His return to South Africa as a hero, after an absence of 35 years, was the measure of the stature of Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, who […]
Victoria Brittain The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has unveiled a plan for Africa that could bring an end to wars and destabilisation activity in at least seven countries: Angola, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. Annan’s blueprint for action by UN member states would curb arms sales and covert arms trafficking, end […]
Bongani Siqoko The United Rugby Club, the only senior black club affiliated to the Golden Lions Rugby Football Union, is preparing to take the organisation to the human rights commission. Club chair and former vice-chair of the then Transvaal Rugby Union, Brian van Rooyen, says the club took this decision this week because its team […]
Anton Marshall On stage in Cape Town If it’s very difficult talking to comics about serious issues, it’s hell talking to comics about funny issues. Somewhere in Church Street, central Cape Town, there is a unique little coffee lounge that is called – well, The Coffee Lounge. It is unusual in that one floor above […]
grant Wonder Hlongwa KwaZulu-Natal Premier Ben Ngubane’s office says it is going ahead with a R5-million grant to an anti-crime scheme managed by controversial double agent Mohammed Amin Laher – alias Mark Todd – in spite of Laher’s murky past. Laher, who is under investigation for alleged fraud, assault and misrepresenting his identity, featured prominently […]
Emeka Nwandiko As South African companies struggle to fill high-flying posts they are increasingly relying on executive recruitment agencies – better known as headhunters – to fill the gap. Crime is the reason most often given for the outflow of mainly white senior executives from South Africa since 1994. The Central Statistical Service notes that […]
Krisjan Lemmer There has been much excitement in the Groot Marico – protests in the back room of the Dorsbult Bar, resolutions calling the volk to arms, death threats etc etc – over reported plans to remove Paul Kruger’s name from South Africa’s biggest game park. In the end calmer heads prevailed and the burghers […]
General Sani Abacha is nothing if not blatant. Nigeria’s military ruler is not pussyfooting around like some other former-military- leaders-turned-civilian-presidents who organised elaborate elections with the trappings, if not the substance, of democracy. Abacha banned all political parties after seizing power in 1993. He subsequently legalised five new parties, all of which just happened to […]
Lynda Gledhill Sitting in a luxury hotel dressed in brightly coloured clothes, Ester Mujawayo does not exude the air of a woman whose life has been destroyed. But this Tutsi from Rwanda is one of the few survivors in her family of the genocide that gripped her country in 1994. For a month, Mujawayo, her […]
Ferial Haffajee The government has slashed the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s (IBA) budget by millions, and the organisation is haemorrhaging skilled staff who are leaving to avoid a troubled merger with the South African Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (Satra). Five departments are without heads and insiders say other essential staff are “looking [for work] or leaving” before […]
Appearance masked disappearance and death in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Nothing was how it seemed. Nigel Fountain reports on the photos that hid dirty deeds One photograph in The Commissar Vanishes is of two men playing chess in the sunshine of Capri. It is April 1908. Alexander Bogdanov, later to found the Soviet Union’s first blood […]
Ann Eveleth A government probe into job reservation at a private construction giant blamed a single official for racist hiring practices, but ignored the role of three managing directors when it effectively exonerated the company. Thuso Ramaema, the department chief director tasked by Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Kader Asmal to probe allegations of […]
The Discovery Channel will show films made by South Africans in its upcoming South African Visions series, reports Janet Smith Isicathamiya is not only about singing in perfect harmony, wearing white gloves and a three-piece suit. It is also about heartbreak and love and survival, as viewers in the process of re-educating themselves about this […]
Suzy Bell Six guitarists, all fluent in French – yet decidedly South African. Doctors, artists, teachers, a lawyer and a sailor – a Durban writers’ circle. Over a year, every two weeks, they met in caf,s, restaurants and private homes to mull over words, sip whisky, write and rewrite until they created Unwrapped – irreverent […]
Janet Smith Pianistically, Paul Hanmer is beautiful. His music – folkloric, occasionally proletarian, always warm and real – is not a private dominion or a place where culture is combat. His music, as experienced on his celebrated Sheer Sound debut album Trains to Taung, has reached into the South African jazz community like a hand […]
Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON It is hard to hush one’s scepticism when, within hours of the mindless shootings on the Benoni smallholding, up pop grave-browed politicians in various displays of rue and distress. Her face set in scrupulous wrath, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was in court when the gunman appeared. Her ex-husband was at the shoulder of […]
Hermann Wittenberg On show in Cape Town If you’ve recently seen too many clever installations, provocative experimental exhibitions or deeply relevant conceptual art, take a look at Till Mayer’s remarkable sculptural works at Cape Town’s Mau Mau Gallery. Vital Functions is an exhibition of wooden sculptures which not only display an unusual technical virtuosity but […]
Angella Johnson Five-year-old Magriet is practising her ballet steps, twirling around the cane furniture in her living room, watched by loving parent Gertruida Greyling, and Hermien Oosthuizen. The Brakpan lesbian couple celebrated a historic court decision this week when a judge ruled that their sexual proclivities do not preclude them from bringing up a child. […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga The University of Zululand – one of the hardest hit by government subsidy cuts and student debt – spent more than R1,7-million on curtains in three years. However, university representative Carl de Villiers said this week a preliminary report on the linen spending spree “does not show any criminal activity”. The probe […]
Marion Edmunds When retired Western Cape premier Hernus Kriel heads off on his caravan tour of South Africa, he sets off comfortable, he says, in the knowledge that his party will rule the Western Cape into the next century. Kriel bowed out of provincial politics this week, with a crocodile tear and a Cheshire-cat smile, […]
Pallo Jordan: CROSSFIRE The black (African, Indian and coloured) political movements that pioneered the democratic struggle were initially led by an educated elite who had embraced democracy and modernism as universal visions. “Modernism” has been used in two senses, one technological, the other socio-political. Its technological dimension assumed humanity would incrementally attain mastery over nature […]
Charlene Smith The government has launched a R10-million marketing assistance scheme to help entrepreneurs market South African tourism more aggressively worldwide. The International Tourism Marketing Assistance Scheme run by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism compensates entrepreneurs active in tourism for some costs incurred when encouraging foreigners to visit South Africa. The scheme provides […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi African National Congress politicians have allegedly taken a direct hand in a disciplinary hearing against an SABC journalist. The hearing is threatening relations between junior staffers and senior managers at the SABC, where three trade unions have vowed to act against any victimisation. At the centre of the tensions are allegations that Northern […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Like President Nelson Mandela, Gaaitsiwe “Conka” Rakuba is a veteran prisoner who celebrated 27 Christmases behind bars. But he was jailed for different reasons. Rakuba (42) is a career prisoner: he first went to jail in 1970 and since then hadn’t spent more than three months “outside”, until his release last year. This […]
South African and Mozambican investigators have failed to contact a potentially crucial witness in the McBride affair, writes Mungo Soggot A close associate of Robert McBride, who has offered information to counter allegations that the foreign affairs official was smuggling weapons in Mozambique, has still to be contacted by Mozambican and South African authorities. As […]
Andy Capostagno Tennis It’s just possible that you may have been lured into the belief that there is a tennis tournament going on in Johannesburg this week. Six of the finest players in women’s tennis are battling it out for $200 000 in prize money and you can witness all the action for as little […]
Njongonkulu Ndungane: UBUNTU Last week I was privileged to attend the launch of a new liberation movement: the Jubilee 2000 Africa Campaign. This movement’s main objective is the liberation of Africa from the chains of debt. The movement calls for Africa to begin the new millennium with a clean slate, free from debt, as a […]
Once a vibrant part of the Soweto arts scene, the Funda Centre has had to adapt. Swapna Prabhakaran finds out how It is a sad fact that Soweto’s Funda Centre is better known internationally than it is in Johannesburg. The once-famous centre for literacy and the arts has transformed in the Nineties to become a […]