FRIDAY, 8.30AM DEPUTY PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki has asked both finance minister Trevor Manuel and Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals to send a task team to Kinshasa to help with economic recovery. Stals said yesterday that the Bank could help with the managing of bank regulations, and foreign and gold reserves. The team has not yet […]
Seth Nthai WE repeatedly hear arguments from certain political parties and individuals that the solution to our crime problems is to devolve enough police powers to provinces. According to them, devolution of police powers would strengthen the arm of the South African Police Service (SAPS). I believe the devolution of police powers to provinces, to […]
Richard Williams on Eric Cantona, catalyst of Manchester United’s stunning revival, who announced his early retirement this week HOW typical of Eric Cantona that he should stand not upon the order of his going, but simply clear off. No farewell tours, no curtain calls. Yet, being Cantona, somehow the sense of a coup de thtre […]
Dawn Blalock A PLAN to build a high school for disadvantaged students has stirred up charges of racism in Sophiatown – and illustrates how the community is still haunted by its turbulent history. Sparrow Schools Educational Trust, a non- profit group that runs special education schools for disadvantaged children, is trying to buy a plot […]
FRIDAY, 1.00PM LAURENT KABILA, self-proclaimed president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire), has named his first government, but has left certain key ministries vacant, and leaving out for the time being the popular former prime minister Etienne Tshisekedi. Kabila opted for an American-style administration, abolishing the post of prime minister for which […]
Bobby Windsor, the 1974 Lions hooker, gives his view from the heart of the pack SOUTH AFRICA is a rugby country like no other. In 1974 we were hated on the field but loved off it. The welcome was a clenched fist on the one hand and back- slapping hospitality on the other. Wherever we […]
FRIDAY, 12.00NOON: SOUTH AFRICA’s Trevor Wilkinson beat Geoff Davenport of Australia in an exciting match at the MacMed World Masters in Johannesburg on Thursday. Wilkinson won the semifinal 9-5, 8-10, 9-1, 9-10, 9-6, in a match plagued by bad decisions from referee Gordon Ashby. Wilkinson will play top-seed of the 35-39 division, Ashraf Hanafi of […]
Injuries have hit the Springboks hard and coach Carel du Plessis’s biggest problem will be the locks RUGBY:Steve Morris THERE is a foreboding feeling of desperation creeping into the deliberations of new national coach Carel du Plessis ahead of the arduous season of Test rugby which lies ahead. In the interests of our national rugby […]
Phillip Brooks in Cannes ON its 50th birthday, Cannes kept up its twin-faced reputation – an explosive mixture of intense vulgarity and creativity. Not as disorganised as Venice nor as authoritarian as Berlin, Cannes remains the world’s top film festival. So it was a landmark for South African cinema when, for the first time, there […]
Gary Younge NIGERIAN art treasures are being looted from museums to supply an underground network of dealers, most of them based in London and New York. The multi-million pound trade, which contravenes a United Nations convention on the sale and smuggling of stolen artwork, has left some museums in the country virtually empty. The looting […]
negotiations Ferial Haffajee TOUGH talking will be the order of the day as crucial wage rounds involving South Africa’s biggest employers in the mining, motor, engineering and clothing sectors get under way. “It’s going to be a difficult year for negotiations,” predicts Jackie Kelly of Andrew Levy & Associates. In its most recent quarterly bulletin […]
Madeleine Wackernagel in Harare AMID all the rhetoric of new visions and a brighter future, one message came through loud and clear at this year’s Southern Africa Economic Summit, hosted by the World Economic Forum (WEF): if the Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries are serious about attracting foreign investment, the only choice is openness […]
FRIDAY, 10.30AM THE Reserve Bank has mopped up about R4,8-billion which entered the money market as a result of the sale of a stake in Telkom to a US/Malaysian consortium. The Telkom sale brought about $1,2-billion into the country, prompting the Bank action to prevent a fall in interest rates. According to Reserve Bank governor […]
South Africa’s campaign against landmines is not only based on diplomatic gains, reports Stefaans Brmmer ONCE the Buffel armoured troop carrier was a hated symbol of apartheid oppression. This week a Buffel, freshly repainted white to hide its ugly military brown, took pride of place at the World Trade Centre, where delegates from 50 African […]
The mopane caterpillar is a dietary staple for many people – and a vital agent in keeping the veld healthy, writes Ellen Bartlett THE larva of Gonimbrasia belina, the emperor moth, is fat and spiny and mottled black and gray. It does not immediately spring to mind as food.But G belina, better known as the […]
The ANC fears that internal debates on ethnicity will blow up into a race row if not properly managed. Marion Edmunds reports IN the run-up to an African National Congress special caucus meeting to discuss race and ethnicity this weekend, emotions are running high in the parliamentary caucus with MPs reluctant to speak openly about […]
Palme d’Or: The Taste of Cherry, by Abbas Kiarostami (Iran) and The Eel, by Shohei Imamura (Japan) 50th Anniversary Prize: Youssef Chahine, Egypt, director of The Destiny Grand Prize: The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Agoyan, Canada Best Actress: Kathy Burke in Nil by Mouth, Britain Best Actor: Sean Penn in She’s So Lovely, USA Best Director: […]
RUGBY:Mick Cleary THE British Lions who stepped off the plane last weekend are big, physical men, selected for their size, their power and their brooding intent, the mirror image of those they are about to meet across the playing fields of South Africa over the next seven weeks. But the South Africans will not be […]
Mungo Soggot PARLIAMENTARY defence committee head Tony Yengeni this week slammed the Department of Defence for keeping the committee in the dark about the controversial plan to buy four corvettes for South Africa’s navy. Yengeni’s criticism follows comments by Defence Minister Joe Modise last week that he might leapfrog a tender process for the boats […]
The 50th Cannes film festival was one of the least memorable in years. DEREK MALCOLM loved and loathed the hype, and the line-up of films SYLVESTER STALLONE wished it could go on for ever. Shock-jock Howard Stern said, surveying the scene, “And they think I’m weird!” Most of the rest of us packed up to […]
THE Mail & Guardian today breaks another story pointing to possible corruption in government – this time involving the Department of Housing and a R185-million housing contract. The scandal worries us on two levels. The first and obvious one is the reputation that the “new” South Africa is beginning to earn itself for administrative corruption. […]
The imminent sale of Sun Air has brought together many black businesses. Stuart Hess looks at who is bidding BLACK economic empowerment is taking to the skies in more ways than one. Four consortiums headed by black businesses comprise half the companies bidding for Sun Air, the next parastatal up for sale. Tenders for the […]
Bongani Ndodana WITH the new policy on the arts, Dr Malan’s bust, perched in its shrine in the Nico Malan opera foyer, has witnessed the unceremonious undoing of the Cape Performing Arts Board (Capab). First it was the frantic campaign to save the orchestra, then ballet went independent under the banner of Cape Town City […]
FRIDAY, 3.00PM INDEPENDENT Broadcasting Authority co-chairman Peter de Klerk, who resigned last week in a financial scandal, misled Parliament’s public accounts committee over double claims for expenses on an overseas trip, and may be liable for prosecution for fraud. The auditor general’s report on financial irregularities in the IBA said that on a United States […]
Fiona Macleod I SPEAK OF AFRICA: THE STORY OF LONDOLOZI GAME RESERVE by Shan Varty and Molly Buchanan (Londolozi Publishers, R300) THE ENVIRONMENTAL FUNDING GUIDE by Jill Ritchie (Papillon Press, R100) WHY would anyone want to pay R300 for the eulogy to the Varty dynasty in I Speak of Africa? Firstly, because the Vartys have […]
Mungo Soggot THE probe into the state’s oil trading arm, the Strategic Fuel Fund, is now expected to be finished by the middle of next month after hitting some delays. The investigation’s preliminary findings in late March led to the suspension of the fund’s boss, Kobus van Zyl. Don Mkhwanazi, chairman of the Central Energy […]
Angella Johnson SIPHO MASEKO, senior lecturer in political science at the University of the Western Cape, was not quite as kind to the opposition parties as they were to themselves – he consistently gave them lower scores for their performance than the scores the parties thought they deserved. But he and the Democratic Party were […]
IT is now three weeks since the Mail & Guardian disclosed the horrific details of the report compiled by Zimbabwe’s Truth and Justice Commission on the atrocities in Matabeleland. The only response has come from Robert Mugabe, who denounced those responsible for the report as “mischief- makers” and declared: “If we dig up history then […]
The new-look SABC TV News has come in for a lot of flak. Joe Thloloe answers some of the criticisms SOME institutions in this country are thrashing about in the throes of transformation away from the public glare. Others, like the SABC and its Television News, are scrutinised and everybody throws in comment and advice. […]
Sactwu has shown that capitalist investment can work not only for workers, but for their children too. Ferial Haffajee reports SCORES of clothing workers’ children graced this week’s launch of a clothing union’s bursary fund: among them was one who has done particularly well. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel introduced himself as “the son of a […]
position Mahmood Mamdani analyses why South African diplomacy failed in Congo SOUTH AFRICA emerging from apartheid is not the same as Congo emerging from Mobutuism. At least two political differences are worth noting. The South African transition was a compromise between forces for and against apartheid, the Congolese transition is marked by a military victory […]
THURSDAY, 4.00PM THE Director General of Housing, Billy Cobbett, has been fired after asking the auditor general to investigate the R185-million Mpumalanga Housing Project, the largest yet under the government’s housing subsidy scheme. In a hastily called press conference on Thursday afternoon, Housing Minister Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele denied Cobbett had been fired, saying he had asked […]