Madeleine Wackernagel HOW to keep spending under control without dramatically raising taxes? Trevor Manuel seems to have managed to walk the Budget tightrope with relative ease, although next year’s revisions may tell a different story. Expenditure in the 1997/98 Budget increases by 6,1% over last year’s revised spending total to R186 747-billion, while revenue is […]
tangible benefits Lynda Loxton IT could take 10 to 15 years for the government’s strategy to promote small and medium-sized enterprises to start paying off in tangible terms, Trade and Industry Deputy Minister Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said this week. Replying to the debate on the parliamentary trade and industry committee’s special report on small business finance, […]
Alan Gray, chief executive of the Mpumalanga Parks Board who led the controversial Dolphin natures reserves deal, has wide business interests in the area, reports Justin Arenstein THE man who led Mpumalanga Parks Board into a controversial nature reserve deal with the Dubai-based Dolphin Group owns companies that hold lucrative contracts with the parks board. […]
GWEN ANSELL talks to a new generation of jazz composers involved in Our Music Our Voices at the breakthrough 1997 Windybrow Arts Festival IN a tiny, sweaty rehearsal room at the Windybrow Theatre an improbably large band of musicians pounds its way through McCoy Mrubata’s Sangoma Blues. In the middle, in the few square feet […]
Rebels are advancing on Zaire’s third- largest city but sceptics in the West are resisting France’s calls for an intervention force, writes Chris McGreal FRANCE is pursuing a lonely campaign to revive plans for an international force in Zaire to halt the rebel advance and prevent what it says is a genocide in the making. […]
Marion Edmunds THE Presidential Review Commission, created a year ago to help in the reform of the public service, was set up for failure and should be abolished, one of its own members says. Professor Fanie Cloete, of the School of Public Management at the University of Stellenbosch, has accused the government of manipulating the […]
Pirate CD producers in Eastern Europe could bring the European recording industry to its knees, reports Stuart Miller from London THE European recording industry has launched a frontal assault on the large- scale illegal production of pirate compact discs in Eastern Europe, which is costing companies and their artists billions of dollars in lost revenue […]
The CNA Literary Award is no more. SHAUN DE WAAL looks back at its successes and failures, and asks some questions about a future prize AFTER 35 years, the CNA Literary Award has come to an end. Some might accuse this paper of having helped to kill it – after all, Sarah Ruden, who won […]
collection Manuel has tinkered with income tax, but we’ll have to wait for the Katz Commission report for a more holistic approach, reports Madeleine Wackernagel ONE of these days, South Africans may enjoy a more equitable income tax system – but not yet. In its pre-Budget presentation, the South African Chamber of Business estimated that […]
Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE Daily Dispatch’s circulation has grown in leaps and bounds, thrusting this small East London-based player into the ring with some of the big boys of print media. Gavin Stewart (54), who took over the newspaper’s helm three years ago, has stealthily changed its format and content into an explosive formula which has […]
`Peace’ initiators are said to be holding peace to ransom, reports Ann Eveleth THE decision by the KwaZulu-Natal government to sit on a damning report linking key politicians in the province to hit-squad activity has raised fresh concerns about the region’s embryonic peace drive. A South African National Defence Force (SANDF) report leaked last week […]
Denis Staunton in Berlin and Ian Traynor in Bonn A SENIOR adviser to Chancellor Helmut Kohl has called on him to admit that Germany would not pass the test this year for a single European currency and urged a delay in the launch of European Monetary Union (EMU). But as Herbert Hax – head of […]
Stuart Hess THE Gauteng health department could save R1-billion if it accepts cost-cutting proposals made by health workers’ unions, including centralising services, eliminating private nursing in public hospitals, and scrapping private security, the unions said this week. The figure is almost double the R550- million the Gauteng health department said it could save when it […]
The hunt is on for informants in the ANC, report Ann Eveleth, Rehana Rossouw and Peta Thornycroft THE African National Congress is sitting on information linking one of its prominent provincial members of Parliament in KwaZulu-Natal to the former South African Security Police. The allegations about the MPP first surfaced in 1994 following the death […]
Marion Edmunds THE paper trail stemming from secret six- figure payouts to senior staff at Stellenbosch University led to the rector’s office this week. Professor Andreas van Wyk, who until now has kept silent on the payouts, is being challenged on his campus to confirm or deny whether he handed himself a windfall of R160000. […]
Thomas Mallon SELECTED STORIES by Alice Munro (Chatto & Windus, R110) ALICE MUNRO’S deeply imagined, almost awesome Selected Stories turn William Faulkner’s famous musing about the past’s not really being past into an understatement. In Munro’s world, the present is scarcely present; the moment we live in is just a flask in which the past’s […]
South African artists continue to exist in a cultural vacuum that gives too little recognition too late, writes Hazel Friedman THERE is an ancient Greek proverb that says the soul of a nation will be judged by the way it treats its artists. If this is so, then South Africa has much to answer for. […]
Chris Taylor THERE was a time when clubs in Rio de Janeiro needed look no further than the nearest side street, car park, beach or backyard for the next crop of football talent. Young players seemed to sprout like the weeds in the wasteground where they would hone their skills until it was too dark […]
South Africa is such a popular refugee destination that Home Affairs is swamped,reports Marion Edmunds THE Department of Home Affairs is swamped with so many applicants for political asylum it is contemplating setting up reception centres around the country to accommodate them while they wait for their cases to be heard. More than 800 people […]
SO, the first black finance minister presented his first Budget and the sky did not fall in. After a year of faux pas and financial market fiascos, Trevor Manuel did the impossible: he nigh on pleased all of the people, at least for a few hours. Parliament applauded, and the markets rewarded him with a […]
Ann Eveleth THE creation this week of black-owned Khulani Springbok Patrols consummates a long-standing relationship between the Inkatha Freedom Party and a 35-year-old family security business. Security industry sources said this week the sale by the Bartmann family of a R50- million interest in Springbok Patrols to IFP-aligned Khulani Holdings – and the appointment of […]
Would this year’s Bandslam follow the triumphs of last year? MALU VAN LEEUWEN was at the River Club concert APOLOGISTS for the so-called South African Music Explosion are probably going to hate me for this, but it’s so corny it’s worthy of a Leon Shuster gag – except the man has more taste than to […]
Another international women’s magazine, Marie Claire, is launching a local issue, but the interests of most women in South Africa are still being neglected, say local black editors. Gillian Farquhar reports COMPETITION is hotting up in the magazine market with internationally acclaimed French title Marie Claire poised to launch its local edition in May. Coming […]
Confessions by five former policemen have revealed the devious operations of the security police, including the murder of a man working clandestinely for the military. Peta Thornycroft reports FORMER northern Transvaal security policeman captain Jacques Hechter has the dubious honour of admitting to more murders than any other confessor to the truth commission. In his […]
Mungo Soggot THE foreign merchant banks handed the contract to help sell a R6-billion chunk of Telkom have secured government agreement that their fees, to be paid by the taxpayer, remain under wraps. The Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Ministry this week refused to disclose how much money was paid to SBC Warburg, which was employed […]
Hazel Friedman A MILESTONE in educational programming on television and radio has been reached with the SABC’s new Learn `N Live initiative, giving independent producers an unprecendented opportunity to make their mark by replacing the SABC’s traditionally stodgy fare. Learn `N Live, a joint initiative between the SABC and the Department of Education, not only […]
THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW SHE sits across the table, carving enthusiastically into a large steak. “Garlic, love it, but it’s bad for business.” Tonight Sandy van der Toorn is off duty. There will be no fondling in the jacuzzi, no whipping clients hanging like carcasses from pulleys in the ceiling, no naked massages and definitely […]
DANCE: Swapna Prabhakaran WHY did they call it the Dance Umbrella? For two weeks now, there’s been a gentle but persistent rain over the city of Johannesburg, adding its own peculiar drumming to the rhythms of dance at the Wits Theatre. The grey downpour outside the Braamfontein building drew a motley crew indoors to share […]
Jim Day THE knife in his hand was a good 15cm long. But he was pleasant when he said, “I don’t want to hurt you. Just give me your money.” His buddies surrounded me, four or five of them, pulled me back and to the ground and started grabbing at my pockets. They didn’t beat […]
LESLEY MARX revisits The Space theatre and some of its stalwarts and memories in time for the 25th anniversary celebrations ARTHUR BENJAMIN has a huge warm wicked generous laugh. It erupts as he tries to explain why Brian Astbury was, for him, an inspirational figure at The Space Theatre: “He got you to do things […]
Stefaans Brmmer TRANSKEI Attorney General Christo Nel will prosecute casino magnate Sol Kerzner – provided Kerzner’s pre-emptive attempt to stop him fails. Nel, who has waged an often single-handed campaign to have the R2-million bribery and corruption charges against Kerzner tested in court, was restrained in an 11th-hour interim interdict this week from arresting Kerzner […]
Tangeni Amupadhi reports on an inquiry into Northern Province property deals that have earned a fortune for an amiable Greek millionaire TO the politicians and community leaders of the Northern Province he is a fatherly figure, a kind of patron saint of Phalaborwa. Dimitri Kourtoumbellides, known to his friends as Jimmy, has on various occasions […]