HEADLINES in some South African newspapers this week – “Madiba back from Asia with billions” – reflect the obsession South Africa has with the quick fix. Faced with massive social problems the country longs for a magic formula, or simply a magician, to conjure up instant solutions. The Sultan of Brunei is the richest man […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
Stuart Hess and Mungo Soggot finally got to see the report that caused all the trouble THE dossier which prompted a government inquiry into rugby and this week’s high court battle between rugby supremo Louis Luyt and Sports Minister Steve Tshwete contains little more than press clippings and court papers. Documents handed to Tshwete by […]
JONATHAN ROMNEY speaks to cult Hollywood director Tim Burton about his freaks, frailties and fame – and his latest film Mars Attacks! TIM BURTON’S Mars Attacks! seems like a sure-fire recipe for box-office success – hordes of evil aliens, a cult director with a berserk visual imagination, and a prodigally illustrious cast (Nicholson, Close, DeVito, […]
Iden Wetherell in Harare PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe this week led a high-powered team to London to drum up investment in Zimbabwe’s faltering economy. Government sources in Harare have been upbeat about the interest shown by British companies. But it remains to be seen whether this will translate into money and jobs. Investment is vital to […]
Need computer information in a readable form? Try these PCReview books, writes BARBARA LUDMAN THE boffins who write the Mail & Guardian’s PCReview supplement have now turned out an entertaining series of guides to the computer age. First up is Irwin Manoim’s Buying the Right Computer (R49,95); next comes Mish Middelmann’s The Lowdown on Windows […]
What exactly is South Africa doing in its new, state-of-the-art Antarctic research base? Lesley Cowling reports PICTURES of Antarctica show a pristine wonderland: stunning white snow and poster- blue seas, penguins in their zoot suits, the wildest cleanest place on earth. But it’s also the coldest, windiest place on earth. In winter there’s no light, […]
A fund set up to encourage banks to finance housing in high-risk areas has not been used, reports Mungo Soggot THE government agency set up to entice banks into lending money for housing in high-risk areas has concentrated on areas where it admits there is no risk. In its two years of existence, the Mortgage […]
Jan Raath in Harare INVESTIGATIONS into allegations that former Zimbabwean president Reverend Canaan Banana repeatedly raped and sexually abused at least one police aide-de-camp have begun “in full seriousness”, a police source said here this week. “The commissioner [of police, Augustine Chiuri] said inquiries would begin immediately, and they did,” the source said. He would […]
Glynis O’Hara THE Independent Broadcasting Authority’s (IBA) seven new radio licences announced this week are set to breathe life and diversity into the airwaves. Allowing for specialist and group interests, they avoided adding yet more pop music stations to that over-tired parade. The three FM stations in Gauteng went to Classic FM (classical music and […]
Running at altitude, South African athletes are going to struggle to beat the qualifying marks for the world championships ATHLETICS:Julian Drew SOUTH AFRICA’S top athletes go to Potchefstroom’s peculiarly shaped Kenneth McArthur Oval this weekend knowing that a national title along with a performance which betters Athletic South Africa’s (ASA) qualifying standards will automatically gain […]
TEN lucky readers of the Mail &Guardian – and their partners – can get to see a preview of Anthony Mingella’s film of The English Patient, which received an impressive 12 Oscar nominations, before everyone else. Based on Michael Ondaatje’s Booker Prize-winning novel, the film stars Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas. The preview will […]