Staff Reporter

Mungo Soggot went to Ogies to visit the man who looks after the world’s largest oil storage facility, apartheid’s oil stash IT is difficult to believe Frikkie Cloete when he points across a bleak mielie field in the middle of Mpumalanga and says “all this is oil – for 6km that way”. But Cloete, manager […]

Andy Duffy NEARLY 17 000 state school teachers have applied for voluntary retrenchment, most of them senior experienced staff disenchanted with government’s education shake-up. More than 13 000 of the voluntary severance applications come from teachers in Gauteng (severance requests from 9% of its teachers), the Western Cape (requests from 17% of its teachers) and […]

The three candidates for the vice- chancellorship made their presentations to capacity crowds. Andy Duffy reports WITS University stretched the principle of transparency to almost painful lengths this week. Searching for a successor to vice-chancellor Robert Charlton, the university put three candidates through public presentations and a grilling by students and a 28-strong selection committee. […]

Lynda Loxton FINANCE Minister Trevor Manuel this week sent a strong signal to errant taxpayers that the time had come for them to pay up – or else. So confident was he that he announced a package of “relief” measures aimed at luring more taxpayers into the tax net even though the state stood to […]

BORIS YELTSIN has blundered into new danger by his inept resolution of the Kremlin power struggle. Security chief General Alexander Lebed may be shrouded in darkness, but so are those who are attacking him. Lebed has at least brought a sort of peace to Chechnya. His principal opponent, Interior Minister General Anatoly Kulikov, had brought […]

Ernie Els is really just one of the boys – except when he’s displaying his exceptional talents on the golf course GOLF:David Davies THE Christian names are Ernest Theodore but, if ever a man was an Ernie, it is the golfer who on Sunday became the first person to win the Toyota World Match Play […]

Mac Maharaj details his department’s new plan to modernise all aspects of South Africa’s transport management WE all take the existence of roads, railways, airports and harbours for granted and only curse the inconvenience when confronted by traffic jams, accidents, ungovernable taxis and airport strikes. Still, in our better moments, most of us believe that […]

South Africa are getting the job of winning done in India, but playing is more than work for the players – it’s a way of life CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar INDIA is undergoing a social, economic and cultural revolution to compare with any in the last decade. In fact, the mother of all change, the French […]

Exposing the dirty deeds of the apartheid death squads was a cleansing experience for Jacques Pauw, writes Angella Johnson ONE of the most poignant moments in Jacques Pauw’s remarkable two-hour television documentary on mass murderer Eugene de Kock was the moment he faced the camera and confronted his own apartheid ghost: the role he played […]

BAFANA KHUMALO travelled to the Karoo to visit the set of the film Paljas, a collaboration between Katinka Heyns and Anant Singh MANY a traveller, in the relative comfort of his train compartment, has rattled past this dusty cell and thanked his god that it was not his home. The house on the side of […]

smugglers Dan Atkinson in London LONDON is at the centre of an $80-million-a- year gold-smuggling racket shipping stolen and otherwise-illegal bullion from Mozambique into Europe. Some of the metal is then refined in the United Kingdom, often in primitive garage refineries. It goes to the jewellery trade. “A lump of gold is a lump of […]

Nelson Mandela has pledged to find the truth of the Mozambican leader’s death. Pik Botha also thinks it would be a good idea David Shapshak FORMER foreign minister Pik Botha says re- opening the Samora Machel crash inquiry may be the only way “to clear up lingering doubts” about the circumstances in which the Mozambique […]

Shared concerns have persuaded South Africa’s editors to unite in one body, writes Anton Harber WHEN Tribute magazine editor S’bu Mngadi told the editors’ unity conference last weekend that the media industry was still racist, it brought a moment of rare silence from the more than 80 senior journalists present. Mngadi’s passionate outburst against those […]

Glynis O’Hara QKUMBA ZOO have lost the “C” in their QCumba – but not the “Q” in their quirk. Arista Records in New York has decided the “K” makes more sense – otherwise people go round saying “QSumba Zoo”, they say. To which one can only reply – what school did these people go to? […]

Andy Duffy AROUND 8 500 Gauteng medical staff are to be redeployed or retrenched in a dramatic shake up of the province’s 35 hospitals. Three hospitals will close by February and seven – including Hillbrow -will be replaced with clinics or maternity centures. Staff at others – including Johnnesburg General and Baragwanath – will be […]

THIS might be seen as the week of the killers as victims. The amnesty committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been hearing five former members of the security branch confess to atrocities they carried out during the apartheid era. And SABC has been broadcasting a two-part documentary on the life story of Eugene […]

Simon Hattenstone talked to Joe Menell and angus Gibson, the men who made the extraordinary filem Mandela, now on circuit. DO you believe film-makers can change the world? Jo Menell: Definitely. If not change the world, at least wake people up, give them something to think about. Angus Gibson: I’m not sure films change the […]

Cape Marion Edmunds THE Cabinet has dispatched a crack team of civil servants and international experts to Bisho to investigate the administrative chaos in the Eastern Cape. The team, which includes a deputy director- general, chief directors and Swedish and British experts, is spending two weeks in the Eastern Cape and will report back with […]

Gaye Davis FREE STATE Premier Terror Lekota this week said he would deal with disciplinary charges to be brought against him by a hostile provincial African National Congress leadership “when they came” and defended comments he made on a radio broadcast as the political row in the province escalated to a new intensity. Lekota also […]

Alex Sudheim SIX years ago Nadine Raal was crooning for her supper in smoky jazz clubs on Durban’s Point Road, serenading inebriated audiences with Blue Moon and Old Man River. “But,” sing Pavement, masters of slanted and subverted country music, “you gotta pay your dues before you pay the rent.” Presumably Raal doesn’t have too […]

Rehana Rossouw MEMBERS of the Seventh Day Adventist Church in the Cape are reeling after white members of their church voted this week to retain its racially segregated structures. Following a two-year unity process, the church put to the vote last Sunday a resolution to abolish apartheid in its Cape structures – called conferences – […]

An alarmed publishing industry is up in arms over the threat of state involvement, reports Gaye Davis A SHOWDOWN is looming between the book publishing industry and the Department of National Education over proposals for greater state involvement in producing learning materials for schools. Bodies representing publishers, printers, paper manufacturers and booksellers met last week […]

Glynis O’Hara `EVERYONE thinks Australia has been conquered, but it hasn’t been conquered. It’s only 200 years ago that the white man came. They think they did it, but they didn’t. The roots of this country are just starting to speak.” The person talking is Mandawuy Yunupingu, leader of Yothu Yindi, the Aboriginal group that’s […]

Nomboniso Gasa writes how as a child in rural South Africa she discovered what abortion was, in an open letter to ANCmembers of Parliament LIKE many of you, it was not at university or as a result of “Western influence” that I learnt of abortion. I was seven years old when I first heard the […]

Lynda Loxton LAWYER Penuell Maduna is coming under pressure from all sides as he gets to grips with his new post as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs. In a frank discussion with the parliamentary mineral and energy affairs committees this week, Maduna admitted that, after four months in the job, he was still on […]

The planned World Bank loan does not signal a departure from government policy, the trade minister tells Madeleine Wackernagel TRADE and Industry Minister Alec Erwin this week dismissed suggestions that the proposed $70-million World Bank loan signalled a deviation from stated government policy. “This is not a new borrowing initiative. We have set borrowing limits […]

Lesley Cowling LAST week saw the unusual (though gentlemanly) spectacle of South Africa’s science councils justifying their work and its relevance to the country in open hearings. The hearings are unlikely to have a significant effect on the councils’ budgets for the 1997/1998 financial year, but the process marks the beginning of a new role […]

An archaeological find that takes us back to our roots 3,5-million years ago is disappearing. But a Cape Town engineer has used a unique method to capture it for the future, writes Lesley Cowling MORE than 3,5-million years ago, three of our ancestors wandered north across the Tanzanian grasslands, following traditional game trails. Like the […]

Rehana Roussouw BANISHMENT to the Clanwilliam Magistrate’s Court kitchen has not dissuaded prosecutor Jonas White from mobilising his community against crime. Since mid-August, White has been stripped of his office and his duties and forced to spend every working day in the kitchen. The University of the Western Cape-trained lawyer, who has been a prosecutor […]

Robin Wright in Luanda UNITED STATES Secretary of State Warren Christopher flew into this war-ravaged capital this week to try to jump-start the process to end one of the world’s deadliest conflicts. But the visit from the highest-ranking US official since Angola became independent in 1975 was marred by the non-appearance of Jonas Savimbi, leader […]

Bennie Bunsee THAT the Pan Africanist Congress has been going through a trying time is well known. But the M&G’s response to the PAC’s recent convention (“PAC convention achieves little,” September 27 to October 3) misunderstands a genuine attempt to correct the organisation’s problems arising from decades of leadership mismanagement. Getting the PAC right will […]