Staff Reporter

Mail & Guardian Reporter Former judge Rex van Schalkwyk said this week he is planning to head north to the tranquil chambers of the newly formed Arbitration Foundation of Southern Africa. The move should ease the financial blow of leaving the Bench, for Justice Minister Dullah Omar’s refusal to grant him an official discharge means […]

The battle for District Six in the Land Claims Court promises to be as bitter as the fight against the forced removals from the area, writes Rehana Rossouw THEY’LL be on opposing sides in the Land Claims Court (LCC) in October, but Basil Davidson and Anwar Nagia agree on a fundamental issue: the Restitution of […]

SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi THE arrival of Nigerian champions Shooting Stars this week heralds the start of a hectic period of international activity involving Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates. On Sunday at the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, the Buccaneers continue their defence of the African Champions’ Cup with a quarter-final tie against highly-rated Stars. The […]

South Africa faces the prospect of segregated urban slums, where people are separated not by race but by the way the sewerage flows in post-apartheid cities, with social and environmental conditions worse than those created by the old government’s housing policies. This hard-hitting argument is contained in a critique by the National Institute for Economic […]

Marion Edmunds THE government is considering “outsourcing” all its departmental computer divisions, in a bid to get the public sector online and providing a better service. The contract, to be awarded to a single company, could be worth between R1,5-billion and R1,8- billion. State Expenditure Director General Hannes Smit has confirmed that discussions are under […]

Andrew Worsdale THIS Friday sees the South African release of Crash, a movie so controversial it has not yet been News, features, released in the United States or the other services United Kingdom. Local distributors Nu-Metro are leading the international market with computing their bid to release the film completely uncut, but with a “no-under […]

WHEN it was announced that the SABC was to sell six of its regional radio stations everybody cheered. Government rubbed its hands in anticipation of receiving a huge whack of much needed revenue. Potential bidders were finally in with a chance of becoming rich as well as famous. Even the public agreed that 70 years […]

New car-tracking technology may lead to more fatalities, reports Angella Johnson HAVING an anti-hijack tracking device on your vehicle may help get it returned but it could also get you killed. A Johannesburg businessman discovered this paradox after he was kidnapped and left for dead along the roadside. Ian Mirk, managing director of Panasonic Business […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman – PHILIP BADENHORST’s exhibition would make interesting “reading” were it not for his desire to make his mark as a neo-expressionist high-tech symbolist. Ultimately that is what one retains of his work – the mark – violent slashes of reds, blues and black. And while vibrant, colourful and certainly evocative, it […]

Gaye Davis AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS chairman Jacob Zuma is emerging as a strong contender for the position of deputy president of the organisation. President Nelson Mandela’s announcement that he would step down as ANC president at the organisation’s conference in December 1997, and as the country’s president in 1999, has paved the way for Deputy […]

David Macgregor MORE than 28 000 cattle valued at about R75-million have been stolen in the Eastern Cape this year as organised syndicates increase their supply of cut- price meat to the townships. Several farmers have thrown in the towel as the cattle-rustling figures have already doubled what they were for the whole of last […]

Mungo Soggot THE rise in international oil prices triggered by the United States missile attacks on Iraq could have important ripple effects on the South African economy, analysts warned this week. Increases in key international oil prices are expected to boot up the petrol and diesel pump prices next month, which will hit inflation and […]

Marion Edmunds SOUTH AFRICAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION journalists, along with about 250 of their colleagues from around the world, were holed up in a compound in Libya this week, unsure when they would be allowed to leave the country to return to their homes. According to Current Affairs Executive Producer Freek Robinson, a producer, Kotie van […]

Even the police in Mpumalanga are afraid to testify against local gangs, report Sharon Hammond and Justin Arenstein STATE-SPONSORED gangs, who used government patronage to build criminal business empires, featured prominently during Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) sittings in Mpumalanga this week. Although state support for the thugs officially ended with the dissolution of the […]

Catholic schools in Gauteng are outraged by a 30% retrospective subsidy cut, reports Max Gebhardt INDEPENDENT Catholic church schools which cater for thousands of disadvantaged black schoolchildren will be the first to suffer in the wake of cutbacks in their subsidies by the Gauteng Education Department. Religious and independent schools in Gauteng have been plunged […]

Minister of Welfare and Population Development Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi responds to a recent M&G article AS in other parts of the world, the issue of whether to provide social assistance to permanent residents has come to the fore in South Africa. The article entitled “No pensions for permanent residents” by Marion Edmunds (August 16 to 22) […]

Gaye Davis ON November 17 the public will be able to scrutinise a special register concerning MPs’ financial interests. MPs, senators and President Nelson Mandela himself will have to detail earnings, gifts and other benefits on special forms. This follows the adoption earlier this month of the Code of Conduct in Regard to Financial Interests. […]

Crash is set to take South Africa by storm. JONATHAN ROMNEY first saw the controversial movie at the Cannes Film Festival – THROUGHOUT the Cannes press screening of Crash, someone in the row behind me muttered a refrain of “Sick … sick …” There was a whiff of scandal in the air a full week […]

Pressure to change the Usury Act is growing now that the government has called on the public to suggest improvements to the law, writes Tebello Radebe THE “David and Goliath” battle concerning overcharging by the banks, spearheaded by the Financial Research Foundation (FRF), rages on even though the principals do not seem to differ on […]

A COMMISSION set up to determine what salaries and benefits public representatives should receive has employed consultants to do just that — at a cost of more than R1-million. Sakkie Olivier, secretary of the Commission on Remuneration of Representatives, said KPMG Global Edge’s tender of R992 000 to investigate and make recommendations on salaries and […]

Max Gebhardt Senior management at First National Bank (FNB) are worried about the future of lucrative provincial government banking accounts because its managing director Barry Swart is widely perceived as guilty of nepotism at worst and foolishness at best. Senior management fears were compounded by calls this week from the South African Commercial, Catering and […]

Good journalism is grounded in a dislike of special privilege, a contempt for anyone who suggests that they stand above the law, a deep-rooted scepticism of special pleading of any kind. This being the case, journalists can hardly claim professional privileges which other citizens do not enjoy; the rights and responsibilities of the media and […]

Anthony Egan Portraits of Power: Profiles in a Changing South Africa by Mark Gevisser (David Philip, R59,99) Readers of the Mail & Guardian will need no introduction to Mark Gevisser’s profiles of South Africa’s powerful, famous and infamous. Regular readers of his column may, in fact, wonder whether they deserve a re-reading . The short […]

Written some 90 years ago, a group of ‘not quite right’ poems by the young TS Eliot has been rediscovered. ERIC GRIFFITHS examines the verses IN 1927, TS Eliot politely turned down a batch of manuscript poems which the young WH Auden had sent to Faber & Faber, where the senior poet was an editor: […]

crime wave to fight crime with corruption A policeman is shot while allegedly robbing Eastgate … the head of a car- theft unit is caught in a stolen car … Angella Johnson investigates rife police corruption EVIDENCE is mounting that corrupt police officers are at the heart of the country’s escalating crime-wave, with worrying signs […]

and chair of Comtask, in The Mark Gevisser Profile Author in need of healing ‘However far apart our bodies may be / Our souls are locked together in perpetual embrace.” So concludes a poem by Ben J Langa, written to his younger brothers Mandla and Bheki after they went into exile, and published in Staffrider. […]

KAREN DAVIES finds out what Yvonne Chaka Chaka has been up to between starting a limo-hire service and receiving a songstress of Africa award in Zaire SHE was chosen above Madonna to launch Pepsi in Nigeria. Flowers were strewn on the road from Entebbe Airport to Kampala in Uganda for her visit there and she […]

Larry Elliott reports on the cynical attempt to blame economic failings on the poor and unemployed ONE of the things we have had to learn over the past 17 years is that nothing is ever the British government’s fault. The Arabs and the unions were to blame for the first Thatcher recession. The Germans and […]

TWO months before his arrest for allegedly taking part in a huge vehicle fraud syndicate, the branch commander of Rustenberg’s police car-theft unit bought himself a house. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just an old family dwelling down the road from the police station for him, his wife and four children. How much of it […]

Ian Katz in New York The American rock group REM, unremarkable looking thirty-somethings whose catchy tunes are hummed by teenagers, have become the highest paid group in the world after signing a record $80-million contract with Warner Brothers. The deal could trigger a rush of “me, too” demands from other established artists, just as a […]

Old habits seem to die hard as NSL officials continue to operate with too much secrecy and too much control SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi ONE sometimes wonders what leading South African soccer officials read during their leisure hours. Tales of Central African dictators from days gone by, perhaps? There certainly seems to be a longing for […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter SERVING judges who dotted South Africa’s law books with inane judgments in the name of apartheid might not be out of the woods as far as the truth commission is concerned. Desmond Tutu’s spokesman said this week that although the commission does not have a hit list of apartheid judges, he […]