This week at the world indoor championships in Paris another male bastion fell. Duncan Mackay tells the unfinished story of pride and prejudice WOMEN are allowed to serve in the armed services, pilot aeroplanes and run the country. But they are still considered too fragile to compete in some athletics events. Ever since Baron Pierre […]
Gavin Dudley THE first second of the year 2000 will see your personal history vanish forever. At least as far as your bank, government and insurance company are concerned. And perhaps it is typical that these bureaucracies do not seem disturbed at this prospect. More than 80% of the computers controlling the obvious and invisible […]
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 […]
Coaches of South African teams don’t have it easy, but coaching Nigeria’s Super Eagles is even harder SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi PERHAPS there are more difficult assignments than coaching the Nigerian national football team. Swimming a crocodile-infested river or walking blindfolded across a minefield spring to mind, but the list is pretty short. So when former […]
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 […]
Lynda Loxton FINANCE MINISTER Trevor Manuel this week took the bit between his teeth and announced a sweeping relaxation of exchange controls, much to the delight of the markets. “The changes in the exchange control regime … are profound,” Manuel said in his Budget address on Wednesday. In a joint statement with Reserve Bank governor […]
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 […]
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 […]
The financial magazine has threatened to sue Business Day and M&G for publishing allegations of unethical behaviour about its owner, reports Mungo Soggot THE battle of the media industry’s financial gurus intensified this week as Finance Week threatened legal action against its rival Business Day and vowed to publish a personal attack on its editor […]
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 […]
Letsholo THE Botswana government has dismissed as “lies” reports from Bushmen in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve that they are being pressured to leave their ancestral lands with verbal promises of hard cash. The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Elridge Mhlauli, said this week that he was still in the process of answering […]
Enriched uranium once intended for South Africa’s nuclear weapons is now helping medical science, writes Lesley Cowling THE Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC) is using enriched uranium to fuel a research reactor that now produces medical isotopes for international export and local use. But the uranium was enriched in a process designed by AEC scientists in […]
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 […]
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, […]
Rip Hopkins IN the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo, thousands of children live on the streets. Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world and the capital sees the extremes of its poverty. The children, some as young as six months old, survive in gangs of 30 or so. Some sleep in skips or […]
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 […]
Gustav Thiel CRITICS of Cape Town’s 2004 Olympic bid who say housing should come before sports would find fuel for their argument in the sports hall in nearby Paarl. For the past three months, the tiny hall has served as a temporary shelter for more than 400 homeless people, over half of them children. They […]
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 […]
The Bushmen of 31 Battalion fought on the losing side and now they are paying the ultimate price, writes Adam Alexander IN the Karoo desert, the sun is setting over an army camp unlike any other in the world. This is the time when the sea of mudbrown tents called Schmidtsdrif springs to life. The […]
THE X-FILES has been a huge international hit since it launched in the US three years ago, and it has just won three Golden Globe awards. Now its creator, Chris Carter, has taken an even bigger risk with his new series, Millennium. In Britain, Alan Yentob, director of programmes at BBC-TV, asks Carter about the […]
Stephanie Pain in London SCIENTISTS are increasingly being forced to get into bed with big business. The change is partly out of necessity: government funding for research is dropping and scientists have to finance their work. But it means that where research was once mostly neutral, it now has an array of paymasters to please. […]
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 […]
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 […]
The ANC dissident has invited two disaffected politicians to join him in discussions about a new political party, reports Marion Edmunds AFRICAN National Congress dissident Bantu Holomisa is inviting both Rockey Malabane- Metsing and former Bophuthatswana president Lucas Mangope, to his consultative conference in June in anticipation of setting up a new political party. Holomisa […]
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 […]
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 […]
As expected, the Budget held few surprises. But one thing is sure, this has to be the year of delivery, writes Madeleine Wackernagel TREVOR MANUEL is not the only optimist on the state of South Africa’s economy: the latest edition of The Economist magazine states: “A real turnaround seems to be under way.” And Manuel’s […]
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 […]
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 […]
Education gets more money but too late to prevent stringent cost-cutting and student unrest, report Tangeni Amupadhi and Carien du Plessis THE Ministry of Education may have succeeded in securing more money for tertiary education, but it has come too late to prevent stringent cost-cutting on campuses across the country. Several universities and technikons contacted […]
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. […]
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 […]