Staff Reporter

THE government’s planned tax holiday scheme will be up and running by the end of the month, says the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). The regulations outlining the Act will be finalised by the end of the month and published in the government gazette. The tax holiday scheme will, in essence, provide for a […]

Africa Investments Ltd, in THE MARK GEVISSER PROFILE Rhodes, Rupert, Ramaphosa WHEN Nthatho Motlana ann-ounced that Cyril Ramaphosa was to join his New Africa Investments Ltd (Nail) and lead the bid to acquire Johnnic from Anglo American, the Sowetan – wholly owned by Nail – put out a 40-page souvenir edition to commemorate the fact. […]

Maurice Hamilton charts the line of succession of Sunday’s rivals for the Formula One world championship as they prepare to dice wheel to wheel in a make-or- break charge for glory in Japan GRAHAM HILL and Gilles Villeneuve did not race in the same era, never mind being team- mates and fighting for the world […]

The escape of nearly 1 000 prisoners this year highlights fault lines in the over- burdened criminal justice system. David Shapshak reports THE parlous state of the South African Police Service was underlined yet again this week with the release of figures showing that more people escaped from police custody this year than from all […]

An operation code-named Skrik vir Niks was a lost opportunity which could have saved the country four years of bloodshed, political unrest and economic damage, reports Marion Edmunds A SECRET document which throws new light on the origins of the reform process and undermines the reputations of key reformists in the National Party has been […]

Stefaans Brmmer SOUTH AFRICA has joined the body of nations agitating for a complete ban on the production, stockpiling, transfer and use of anti-personnel landmines – but campaigners say South Africa should prove its bona fides by legislating a complete ban locally. Jackie Selebi, South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, last week […]

ANDREW WORSDALE visited the famous African film director Idrissa Ouedraogo EMINENT film director Idrissa Ouedraogo, born in Burkina Faso and based in Paris, is currently in the sixth week of shooting his first English-language film in Zimbabwe’s Domboshawa, a rustic area outside Harare. Domboshawa has duly been dubbed “Dombowood”, location for several of the recent […]

THIS new weekly section in the Mail & Guardian will highlight the scientists, technicians, researchers and engineers whose work will decide whether South Africa forever lags behind the global economy, or can move to the cutting edge. Statistics released by the Foundation for Research Development (FRD) this month show that South Africans score badly in […]

Current government communications was lambasted by Comtask, reports Anton Harber GOVERNMENT communications will go through a massive overhaul and fundamental restructuring if the recommendations of the task group on government communications (Comtask) are accepted. Comtask, which outlined the findings of its eight-month investigation at a conference in Caledon in the Western Cape last weekend, was […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN went to two exhibitions that explore the latent art of historical documentation SO many stories to be told. So few ways of really telling them. This is the conclusion some viewers will draw after seeing Roger Meintjies’s visual essay on the Suez/Aida Project and Chinchona Project. Now don’t get me wrong. Meintjies, a […]

Angella Johnson THE government is to lift its two-year ban on recruiting new police officers following a public outcry over escalating violent crime and the continued haemorrhaging of manpower from the South African Police Service (SAPS). The first batch of candidates is expected to start training early next year, ending a moratorium police claim has […]

consultants Lynda Loxton THE government is finding that trying to get to grips with the booming consultancy industry is as difficult as wrestling with an octopus. This emerged in the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee when it considered the special report by Auditor General Henri Kluever on consultancy services. The committee heard this week that although […]

A healthy dose of chutzpah could transform the civic organisation into a leading empowerment company, writes Mungo Soggot THE South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) has stopped throwing stones and is going into business. The radical anti-apartheid civic organisation is poised to move into the heart of capitalism when it branches out into direct insurance, […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson ACTORS Greg Melville-Smith and Karin van der Laag deserve medals, not only for excellent performances, but for coping every night for an hour and a half with visionless direction and a clich-infested script. As the first tangible production from the Civic Theatre’s 1996 New Stages project, Please Hold I’m Coming, written by […]

Not only did Shahid Afridi break the world record by scoring 100 from 37 balls, but he was also the oldest 16-year-old ever to play international cricket CRICKET:Neil Manthorp INTERNATIONAL one-day cricket has to produce something unbelievable these days to excite the pressbox. Generally, it’s all been seen before. And I mean genuinely unbelievable, not […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN meets the Springbok Nude Girls, the Boland rockers set to share a stage with Bjork BOY toys for the thinking babe, Nineties musos sans machismo, in touch with their feminine sides and all that crap. That’s just some of the hype surrounding the Springbok Nude Girls – a band that was born only […]

Eddie Koch EUGENE DE KOCK’S autobiography, hand-written in his cell, is being kept under wraps by the colonel and his lawyers because it contains deeply personal details about the man who became apartheid’s most ruthless killer. It describes his upbringing in a right-wing family on a plot near Springs. He attended the Baanbreker Primary School […]

With the South African selectors choosing two touring teams, and with their eyes firmly on the 1999 World Cup, young players have the chance to prove themselves RUGBY:Jon Swift ANDRE MARKGRAAFF, our national rugby coach – though this is perhaps too simplistic a title given his new exalted status – has made no secret of […]

For some companies aid is big business, as Robert Lacville discovers on a visit to World-Aid 96 in Geneva ACCORDING to Norway’s Trygvie Nordbye, chairman of the International Council for Voluntary Agencies (ICVA), 300-million people are hurt by war, earthquake or famine each year. The 1996 world budget for emergency relief and rehabilitation is $8- […]

THE new Russian threat is no longer the massive weight of the Red Army but its pitiful weakness, while the enfeeblement of the Russian leadership is no less alarming. There is a sense of governing by mirrors as President Boris Yeltsin reassures the nation from his hospital bed. To be really heartened by the message, […]

Roger Cowe SAINSBURY and the Co-op signalled the start of a new era in British high-street retailing last week when they launched a project to transform their trading relationships with Third World producers. The two grocery groups have teamed up with the Fairtrade Foundation to develop codes of conduct that should result in improved conditions […]

Nelson Mandela’s autobiography has been filleted and served up in a new, shorter and cheaper version. PHILIPPA GARSON reports IF reading President Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom is still on your “things to do” list, chances are the century will draw to a close before his bestselling tome gets taken off the shelf. […]

IT seems that a good place to find South African literature these days is on the radio. Especially for those who aren’t able to read the latest and best locally produced works, SAfm’s various programmes featuring South African fiction must be a boon. Presently being read in over the air in the 10pmslot, Mondays to […]

Chris McGreal in Nairobi PAUL MUITE has been accused of a few things in his time. There was the conspiracy to recolonise Kenya and the plot to overthrow the government. But the opposition leader and other members of Kenya’s elite are braced for a new charge: consorting with the devil. And the government has an […]

THE MTN Champions Tournament starts at Sandton Square, Johannesburg on Wednesday and although they’re a good few years older than when they lit up the courts around the world with their talent with a racquet, hopefully these players still retain many of the skills that made them such great champions. ORDER OF PLAY: Wednesday October […]

Coverage of the Dunblane tragedy – a massacre of children in a small Scottish town – raised serious questions about media intrusion. But a new report casts a gentler light on the old Grub Street image, writes Peter Preston THE newshound of myth and legend has a soft smile and a hard heart, a grey […]

Joshua Amupadhi SOUTH AFRICANS seeking fortunes in Angola’s fabled diamond fields have fallen foul of the government’s crackdown on illegal immigrants as the ruling party, the MPLA, tries to prove it has stopped using South African mercenaries in ongoing skirmishes against the opposition, Unita. This is one reason given by the Angolan government for what […]

Shirley Kossick THE MATCH by Ben Temkin (New Millenium, R65) BEN TEMKIN is the author of several non- fiction works, mainly in the field of finance. This is his first venture into comic fiction, but his sense of humour can be glimpsed in the witty title for his study of two stock exchange swindlers – […]

Ancient lore, modern art ONCE upon a time, Qauqaua, a beautiful San woman, murdered her husband in revenge for his murder of her mother. Clytemnestra, who in Greek legend killed her husband Agamemnon in revenge for his killing of their daughter, would have identified with Qauqaua. The two women are probably in some sort of […]

Mungo Soggot THE puzzle surrounding possible South African involvment in a United States satellite phone system took another twist this week when it emerged the system might not be geared to work above South Africa. A report compiled by the University of Colorado indicates the Ellipso satellite phone system will not function south of 20 […]

Medicine Prize TWO scientists were awarded the Nobel Medicine Prize this week for a discovery 23 years ago in Australia. Australian Peter Doherty (55) and Swiss Rolf Zinkernagel (52) received the award for joint work at the John Curtin School of Medical Research in Canberra, between 1973 and 1975. The pair discovered how the immune […]

NEWS that three of the world’s largest oil companies are discussing a merger of their refining and marketing operations in the United States signals a huge shake-up of the industry. The talks, which could lead to a merger of operations by Shell Oil, Texaco and Star Enterprises – a joint venture of Texaco and the […]