Staff Reporter

Marion Edmunds and Rehana Rossouw CABINET ministers are likely to come under fire from the African National Congress’s senior cadres this weekend over government failings in meeting its most ambitious election promise – a better life for all. It is difficult to divine how bitter the discussions at the lekgotla, which began on Thursday, will […]

Confusion surrounds the sale of Transcell after Stella Sigcau stepped in to prevent the deal taking place, reports Max Gebhardt Privatisation has been dealt yet another blow following the intervention by the Minister of Public Enterprises, Stella Sigcau, in the proposed sale of Transnet’s loss-making cellular phone division to MTN. A ministry representative issued a […]

If you want to stick your fingers up the nose of the biggest guy on the block, you must at least have a good reason for risking a bruising. Pious declarations about the sovereign right to sell weapons of destruction to whomsoever we choose, or solidarity with that noted democrat Hafez al-Assad, do not justify […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on a stormy debate raging in Grahamstown around the appointment of a foreigner as the new head of Rhodes University’s fine arts department ‘The Department of Foreign Relations.” That’s what angry staff and students have dubbed the Fine Arts Department at Rhodes University. They are reacting to the controversial appointment of British […]

Apple is arming itself to fight future commercial wars. Jack Schofield reports from London IN 1991, Macintosh evangelist Guy Kawasaki wrote in his Macworld column: “Our greatest technical challenge is creating a computer that leapfrogs Macintosh just as Macintosh leapfrogged the IBM PC … In the next five to seven years Macintosh technology will be […]

Rebecca Smithers and Owen Bowcott THE ambitions of Princess Diana to become an ambassador for Britain suffered a severe setback during her visit to Angola this week after she was accused of straying into the political arena by failing to back the British government’s policy in her call for a worldwide ban on anti-personnel landmines. […]

GENERAL Jac Buchner, former police commissioner in the old KwaZulu homeland, has been implicated in running large supplies of war matriel to Inkatha paramilitaries in the early 1990s by former members of the police special forces unit that operated out of the Vlakplaas base near Pretoria. The evidence has been presented by former Vlakplaas agents […]

If you take your fashion lead from Britain, this is what the stylish will be wearing in 1997, according to SUSANNAH FRANKEL THIS year will go down in history as the year British fashion came into its own. John Galliano unveils his first couture collection for Christian Dior later this month; 27-year-old Alexander McQueen will […]

The Angella Johnson Interview Soli Philander’s patience is wearing thin. It is 3pm and he has been on the phone virtually non-stop all day, asking anyone and everyone for advice on how to clear his “baby brother” Anwah (18) of charges connected to a vicious gang rape. The present target is some poor lackey in […]

A new report shows that US efforts to open up Japanese markets have been largely unsuccessful, writes Paul Blustein in Washington THE organisation representing United States business in Japan this week issued a downbeat appraisal of Washington’s efforts to open the Japanese market over the past 16 years, asserting that less than a third of […]

Highveld Stereo’s new managers are grappling with change, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy Former Highveld Stereo managing director Eon de Vos has left the radio station after an association of 17 years. De Vos and some of the new owners of Highveld differed on the strategy that should be used to take Highveld into the next century. […]

Four years after the Zambian national side was wiped out in an air disaster, the players’ widows are living in hopeless poverty while the government refuses to reveal the cause of the crash. Tim Exton reports LAST weekend thousands of fans jammed their way into Independence Stadium, a decaying concrete bowl perched on a windswept […]

Anthony Egan THE SPIRITS SPEAK: One Woman’s Mystical Journey into the African Spirit World by Nicky Arden (Henry Holt, R103,95) BORN in Durban, Nicky Arden emigrated to the United States in the 1960s, disillusioned with apartheid South Africa. On a visit home, she met a sangoma who told her she was being called by the […]

Marion Edmunds THE Home Affairs Department’s control over immigration and migration should be handed over to a new ministry, recommends research carried out by a government task team. The task team – chaired by Wilmot James, the Institute for a Democratic South Africa’s executive director – was appointed by Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi last […]

several instances in which executives get their way for no apparent reason other than their high status, with lesser status executives showing the same deference of young roosters making way for the cock-of- the-walk. One study reported that when managers of a company targeted for a takeover had lower status than outside directors of the […]

difference CRICKET: Jon Swift THERE is no real mystery about an umbrella being turned inside out by a sudden, unexpected gust of wind. Cricketing fortunes surely must work on this same inverted parabola. So it has been with the current test series against Sachin Tendulkar’s Indian tourists that reaches its finale at the Wanderers this […]

Mungo Soggot A SUPREME Court judge has been reported to the chief justice after ordering a leading campaigner for gender equality to adopt her husband’s name before he would grant her a divorce. Loretta Jacobus, the African National Congress MPL who chairs Gauteng province’s committee on gender equality, says she was stunned and “disgusted” when […]

Only one research body managed to avoid a government funding cut, reports Lesley Cowling The Foundation for Research Development (FRD) has been rated top of the science councils for its research support division, and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has ranked last. The ratings, in points out of 10, were determined by a panel […]

BRETT PYPER argues for and against maintaining and funding national symphony orchestras in South Africa An outcome to the question of how South Africa’s existing symphony orchestras will relate to the imperatives of a multi- cultural democracy has been a long time in coming. Last week’s announcement that the SABC will discontinue its funding of […]

The controversial Syrian arms deal seems to have been leaked in an attempt to scupper it, reports Stefaans Brmmer THE government’s handling of the partially approved R3-billion arms deal with Syria has exposed deep divisions in official thinking on the crucial foreign policy area of arms control – and the leak of Cabinet minutes appeared […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy speaks to the people behind the sweeping changes in current affairs programmes The launch this week of a new current affairs programme – Question and Answer (Q&A) – marks the revamp taking place within the SABC’s television news department. It has taken the new head of SABC-TV’s Current Affairs division, Sarah Crowe, less […]

There are so many stories to be told on TV. BAFANA KHUMALO looks one of the latest attempts – Flat 27 In the past a lot of us used to talk about the post-apartheid society, a society where – among other things – we would be able to tell our own stories. This would be […]

Entry-level cars are proving to be the motor industry’s success story as new vehicle sales face a difficult year, reports Max Gebhardt After four successive years of buoyant sales, the motor industry is steeling itself for this year’s slowdown in the economy. While car-makers remain bullish for future prospects in the industry, 1997 should see […]

Benoni boy Philip Holiday has hit boxing’s big time with his recent win over Ivan Robinson BOXING: Gavin Evans Quiet Benoni boy Philip Holiday has suddenly emerged as one of the heavy hitters – financially speaking – among the lightweights of world boxing. He raised the stakes in his division with his emphatic points win […]

The culture in the newly integrated army is still white, causing widespread racial problems. Rehana Rossouw reports AT least four soldiers in the South African National Defence Force are currently being court-martialed on charges of alleging that their commanding officer was racist. The prosecutions appear to reflect widespread race problems in the newly integrated SA […]

Joseph Hanlon PEACE has not brought prosperity to Mozambique. Four years after the end of the civil war, the poorest country in the world is growing poorer. The reason is that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has ruled that annual inflation must be brought below 15%t before there can be significant post-war reconstruction. This policy […]

Despite the gold price hitting a three-year low, Anglogold chair Bobby Godsell tells Max Gebhardt that he is upbeat about the mining industry At a time when negative sentiment is ruling the market, there is a strange, yet welcome sense of optimism at Anglo American’s gold and uranium division in its Main Street headquarters in […]

circles Marion Edmunds Tension is rising between the intelligence services and their parliamentary watchdog, the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence, over the government’s bungling of the appointment of the country’s first inspector general, Louis Skweyiya. As government officials and parliamentarians cast around to find a scapegoat for Skweyiya’s premature resignation – before he had even […]

Rupert Murdoch is way ahead of his media competition. Henry Porter wonders if anybody realises his power IN Full Disclosure, Andrew Neil’s telling account of his life as a Murdoch editor, he reveals that Rupert Murdoch’s presence is so strong in News International that he appears to his executives in their dreams. It’s a pity […]

The Eastern Cape may have a lot of natural riches, but maladministration makes it a holiday in hell, writes Aspasia Karras The minutes of a staff meeting at the Dwesa nature reserve provide ample proof of the extent of the Eastern Cape’s shambolic state. The final meeting of 1996, which began at 8.30 on a […]

Golf: Jon Swift It is one of the inevitable facts that, having placed the focus on making the FNB Tour part of the European Circuit, that the major focus on professional golf will centre on three weeks in February. In truth, there is little else that the South African PGA could have done but to […]

Marion Edmunds Pragmatism has defeated romance at Villiera Wine Estate just outside Stellenbosch, where wine-maker Jeff Grier has swapped natural corks for synthetic stoppers to seal his cheaper bottles of wine. While some wine aficionados have decried the move as a tragedy for South African wine drinkers, others are praising Grier for bravery. They are […]