MONDAY, 9.30AM A GROUP of 135 members of the Federated Long Distance Taxi Association was arrested at Bushbuckridge on Sunday morning, charged with public violence, theft and assault. The drivers will appear in the local magistrates’ court on Monday morning. They were arrested after preventing taxis from the rival SA Long Distance Taxi Association form […]
MONDAY, 11.30AM LATEST Reserve Bank figures show that both credit extension and money supply growth finally began moving in the same direction, with both figures falling between April and May, leading to expectations of at least one interest rate cut within the next few months. Private domestic credit extension grew by an annualised 16,57% in […]
MONDAY, 10.00AM THE Gauteng leader of the vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs at the weekend threatened his group will kill powerful Gauteng drug barons he described as “untouchable” by the law. Ayob Mungalee said: “We feel we have a right to kill these people because they are killing many other people with their […]
MONDAY, 11.30AM LAST week’s gazetting of a draft Bill giving statutory recognition to the National Home Builders’ Registration Council has set the scene for a clash between government and the Building Industries Federation of SA. The draft Bill makes it an offence to operate a business as a home builder unless registered with the council, […]
MONDAY, 10.30AM: The appointment of Lawrence “Big Bear” Ngubane as the manager of the Durban-based Amazulu soccer team has prompted Port Elizaberth Warriors manager Budgie Byrne to proclaim that the affair is becoming “distinctly more questionable”. Byrne was referring to the two dubious points awarded to Amazulu from their drawn match against Umtata Bush Bucks. […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM BLACK-controlled investment group the National Empowerment Corporation and asset management company Coronation Holdings on Thursday announced they have joined forces in a new investment company, African Harvest Holdings, which starts life off a R1-billion capital base, including R800-million in cash. African Harvest will be created through a R1,25-billion rights offer of Coronation N-shares, […]
weather The bandit weather system El Ni —o is so unpredictable that scientists can’t predict whether it’s even going to happen, writes Julia Grey YOU can rely on the sun to rise, and the seasons to tick over predictably, but in some cases, nature is not so straightforward. It’s even possible that the breath of […]
The Heath special investigative unit turned its microscope on Mpumalanga this week, reports Justin Arenstein THE tribulations of Mpuma-langa’s disgraced former MEC for safety and security, Steve Mabona, may just be starting after South Africa’s most powerful investigative unit this week started probing his financial management of state funds over the past seven years. Mabona […]
Government is increasingly turning to business to help kick-start delivery, reports Marion Edmunds THE high-profile appointment of South African Breweries chief executive, Meyer Kahn, to the police service is just one example of a growing trend in government to rely on private-sector management skills to kick-start delivery. The departments of justice, welfare, safety and security […]
The 1997 World Bank Development Report argues that states need strong institutions to meet people’s needs effectively, reports Madeleine Wackernagel THE World Bank is not known for advocating intervention – thus, its World Development Report 1997, released this week, which takes the role of the state as its theme, could be seen as something of […]
Lesotho’s leaders play at politics, civil servants sit disconsolate in bars and a blanket of despondency AT Sparrows and at the Lancers Inn, two popular downtown bars where civil servants and the sundry elite of Maseru gather every evening to down beer and gossip, they talk of Lesotho as a land of “political wonders”. They […]
PHOTOGRAPHY: Charl Blignaut IN an essay titled “Avoiding the Event”, Western Cape academic Jane Taylor writes briefly about the steady shift from political content to personal introspection that has come to signify much of the exhibited photography of South Africa in the 1990s. The essay serves as a preface in a catalogue for a show […]
FRIDAY, 4.00PM THE Atomic Energy Corporation’s nuclear waste storage facility at Vaalputs in the Northern Cape has leaked radioactivity following the appearance of hairline cracks in concrete blocks containing spent fuel from the Koeberg nuclear reactor outside Cape Town. AEC head of nuclear waste management Brian Hamilton-Jones attributed the cracks to unusually cold and wet […]
The robber of Egypt’s tombs jailed last week was Indiana Jones with an English accent, writes Sara Boseley JONATHAN TOKELEY-PARRY cuts a flamboyant figure in his bright blue jackets and lime green shirts, his tan and upper-class tones suggesting Raffles or the Raj. He is a Cambridge philosophy graduate and an antiquities restorer turned adventurer, […]
South Africa is taking the credit for the decision to relax the ban on the international ivory trade, but animal rights groups are outraged, reports Eddie Koch THIS week’s landmark decision by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) to relax its ban on the international ivory trade is a diplomatic coup for Deputy […]
elephants When the rejoicing dies down, it will be time for the Cites signatories who supported the ivory downlisting to prevent a new wave of elephant slaughter, writes Eddie Koch THE South African government, along with those of Cites’s 138 member nations who voted to allow Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia to renew limited trade in […]
A lack of tolerance by the central party structure appears to be restricting provincial freedom and creativity, argues Jabu Sindane THE African National Congress national working committee’s intervention in the Bushbuckridge border dispute last month raises many questions of the constitutional and political importance of inter- governmental relations. For instance, to what extent: * Can […]
David Harrison THIRTY-FIVE thousand Ugandans from the Kibale forest region had not heard of the 1992 Earth Summit when they were evicted by police and soldiers clearing the area for a European Union-funded project to protect the forest and encourage tourism. Local people who resisted were shot or burnt alive in their homes, women were […]
High stakes in Las Vegas: Fear of becoming a washed-up demon will fuel Iron Mike’s ogre instincts in his revenge fight with Holyfield BOXING:Kevin Mitchell IN a famous American fight restaurant called Wolfie’s many years ago, Kingfish Levinsky, old and sad, turned to a brother in arms, Muhammad Ali, young and proud, and uttered in […]
Jon Turney in London NOBODY knows exactly how many scientific journals there are today, but everybody knows which ones really matter. Tens of thousands of obscure titles pour from the world’s presses, but scientists who want to be noticed vie for space in the two heavyweight weeklies – Nature (from Britain) and Science (from the […]
Project Coast Chris Oppermann LAST year South African National Defence Force (SANDF) chief General Georg Meiring refused to release information about Project Coast before a special parliamentary committee. Project Coast was approved in 1983 by the then minister of defence, Magnus Malan, and his colleague, finance minister Barend du Plessis. Dr Wouter Basson, who held […]
Efforts to reform rugby, apartheid’s sporting religion, have foundered on old attitudes in high places. Donald McRae analyses the shaky progress so far AS white South Africa slipped into its usual breathless fervour for the first Test between the Springboks and the Lions, Brian van Rooyen sighed wearily. “I’m just an ordinary guy,” he said. […]
FRIDAY, 3.30PM GAUTENG Premier Tokyo Sexwale told the Gauteng Provincial Legislature on Friday that the reign of terror of taxi warlords has ended with the passage of amendments to the Road Trasnportation Act of 1977. The amnendment Bill, rushed through the provincial legislature on Friday, its last day of business before recess, gives Transport MEC […]
There are some capable people waiting to provide the expertise that athletics in South Africa needs – but they have to be voted into office first ATHLETICS:Julian Drew JUST over two years ago athletics staged its first-ever democratic elections which predictably followed overtly political lines. At the time this was understandable because each province was […]
Zambia’s Chiluba’ Anthony Kunda in Lusaka THE Zambian government is portraying a meeting between former president Kenneth Kaunda and South Africa’s Minister of Defence Joe Modise as a plot for armed insurrection. President Frederick Chiluba’s deputies told Zambian journalists this week that the meeting – at Johannesburg’s FNB stadium earlier this month when Zambia’s national […]
Radio Islam believes women should remain veiled and silent. JACQUIE GOLDING-DUFFY reports A MUSLIM community radio station – Radio Islam, in Lenasia – has come under fire for allegedly violating its licence conditions and the country’s Consitution by not allowing females on air. Two complaints have been lodged with the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s Broadcasting Monitoring […]
`ACT in haste, repent at leisure” is not an adage one can throw at the Reserve Bank, or its governor Chris Stals. His inaction, when South Africa is crying out for a well- deserved cut in interest rates to put the economy back on a firmer growth path, is nothing short of unpardonable. Instead of […]
NOT for the first time the name of Swanieville evokes horror and revulsion. Five years ago, a Zulu impi cut a bloody swathe through the squatter camp, attacking alleged African National Congress supporters, in full view of the police. The police were again on the scene this week as schoolchildren were bussed in to exact […]
DOCUMENTA X: Brenda Atkinson and Ian Traynor SPURRED by the conviction that “art alone is not enough” and jeered at and reviled by critics, the uncompromising French curator Catherine David last week unveiled the world’s biggest contemporary art exhibition. A meandering network of venues in the central German city of Kassel is the setting for […]
David Ludman RAYMOND CHANDLER: A BIOGRAPHY by Tom Hiney (Chatto & Windus, R150) WERE it not for Raymond Chandler’s drunkenness we might never have had The Big Sleep, Farewell My Lovely, The Long Goodbye and the other novels and short stories he gave us. The books Chandler produced in the Thirties and Forties are with […]
SWAPNA PRABHAKARAN finds out about what’s going on behind the scenes during the glamorous SA tour of the Alvin Ailey dance company IT is easy to be impressed by the glamour and technical bravura of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre (AAADT) performances. The foot-tapping, hum-along dances and songs have been so very popular with […]
tumbles GOLF:Andrew Spencer FOR so many players, the US Open has represented both the pinnacle of a career and the graveyard of future hopes for a second major. It has often been described as the one-off Grand Slam. Ernie Els broke this mould in convincing fashion at Congressional two weeks ago, winning the prestige title […]