FRIDAY, 4.00PM FORMER Lonrho chief Tiny Rowland, who is still the group’s single largest individual shareholder, has attacked Johannesburg Consolidated Investments’ attempt at a merger with Lonrho in full-page advertisements place in the British and South African press. In the ads, Rowland attacks JCI chairman Mzi Khumalo and his relationship with Anglo American, and suggests […]
millions Mukoni T Ratshitanga A PHONECARD scam, thought to have been pioneered by engineering students, has prompted Telkom to launch a surveillance operation on university and technikon campuses across the country. The operator said it had lost R1-million in one week alone this month – when it discovered the fraud – and suspects a syndicate […]
Gustav Thiel ARMS manufacturer Armscor sold bulletproof vests to the police, army and the prisons service – ignoring concerns that they were sub-standard. The vests were produced for Armscor by a now-defunct firm. Johannesburg-based Ballistic Body Armour, which supplies body armour, said this week that the vests “could endanger the lives of people who wear […]
FRIDAY, 2.00PM HIGH Court Judge Edwin Cameron has ruled that Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister Penuell Maduna flouted basic legal rights when he fired the CEO of the Diamond Board. In overturning Maduna’s dismissal of Gerhard Bindeman, who had been CEO of the board since 1989, Cameron found the minister to have acted in breach […]
FRIDAY, 2.30PM THE South African government will officially raise Thursday’s arrest of Congo opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi with President Laurent Kabila, as part of its efforst to assist in the country’s road to democracy, Presidential aide Parks Mankahlana said on Friday. “There’s no reason to be hysterical about this incident,” Mankahlana said. Meanwhile, the National […]
Instead of pointing to inflexible labour markets as the cause of South Africa’s unemployment problems, the Reserve Bank should look to its own policies, reports Charles Millward TWO remarkable events connected to the Reserve Bank took place last week. First, Gencor announced that it would transfer (with the permission of the bank) the greater part […]
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 […]
COMMUNITY radio broadcasting is battling to keep its head above water. The bulk of community radio stations operate at a loss, with sky-high debt; staff lack financial training; and infighting and power struggles further undercut the stations’ potential for growth. This is according to a detailed industry review of community radio compiled by the monitoring […]
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 […]
Claudia McElroy in Monrovia MONROVIA’S shantytown of Westport, one of the poorest and most congested areas in Liberia’s capital, has suddenly become the scene of some excitement. Braving monsoon rains, bemused residents throng the narrow streets to witness the unusual spectacle of a 14-car motorcade in which presidential candidate Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf and her entourage […]
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 […]
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, […]
FRIDAY, 8.30AM EXPORTS rose sharply in May to R12,32 billion, up from R10,57 billion in April, helping to push the trade balance up by almost a billion rand to R1,7 billion. Economists, who had been hoping that the trade balance would reach R1 billion, were delighted. The cumulative trade balance from January to May is […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
PETER MAKURUBE meets West African music man and griot Adama Drame, who is visiting South Africa with his troupe of singers and drummers WHEN he was born he joined a long line of great musical tradition – the Djeli griots (musicians) had been at it for six generations. Adama Drame was totally immersed in the […]
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 […]
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. […]
Human rights form a significant part of the new police curriculum, reports Tangeni Amupadhi F ROM now on police recruits will be trained to be nice to people, replacing the old-style “bandit-chasing”. About 200 000 applications have poured in for the 1 300 police posts advertised so far. Training with the new curriculum kicks off […]
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 […]
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 […]
Amagazine that played a vital role in our literary history is back, writes Chris Dunton STAFFRIDER, so vital in energising South Africa’s literary scene in the late Seventies and Eighties but silent for the last few years, has been relaunched with financial assistance – for the time being, at least – from organisations in Sweden, […]
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 […]
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 […]
`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 […]