THE crime of hijacking has been fiercely denounced over the years by many governments. One should not, it is said, give in to hijackers’ demands or offer concessions which might encourage others to try the same path. Granting asylum to the Iraqi hijackers who hijacked a Sudan Air Airbus to Britain this week would reward […]
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 […]
The tie-up with Kagiso Invesment Trust does not mean overnight changes at Perskor. The process of transformation will take time, Eric Molobi tells Madeleine Wackernagel Eric Molobi, head of Kagiso Trust Investments, is not about to upset nine months of delicate negotiations with strong-arm tactics: “We have no immediate plans to change the existing management […]
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. […]
Mungo Soggot A man who claims he was a victim of police torture will seek a place in South African legal history when he applies to the Constitutional Court next month for R200 000 in damages for the police’s invasion of his constitutional rights. Ntandazeli Fose says he was tortured by members of the Vanderbijlpark […]
A century after HG Wells’s War of the Worlds, ERIC KORN asks what happened to sci-fi vision? HOW the aliens must have hated it, being told for so long that they were a political neurosis. Perhaps it was embarrassment about it that has made them so reclusive. Imagine how we will feel, when we land, […]
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 […]
The sale of Anglo’s Johnnic stake has finally come off, with a considerable discount to boot, report Madeleine Wackernagel and Tebello Radebe The National Empowerment Consortium (NEC) has pulled off a considerable coup — control of Johnnic for a minimum amount of cash, at a 12% discount to the market price. While the NEC’s starting […]
Journos don’t deserve a pedestal Our legal columnist takes a swipe at those — including this newspaper — outraged at the Section 205 notices served on journalists The responses to the notices served in terms of Section 205 of the Criminal Procedure Act on journalists and newspaper editors last week were predictable: the journalists let […]
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 […]
THESE are just some of the recent cases reported in the press of policemen who have fallen foul of the law. * Three members of the flying squad at Thabong near Welkom in the Free State goldfields have been arrested in connection with a robbery at a hostel in the township. They allegedly stole R450 […]
laundering Tebello Radebe Justice Minister Dullah Omar is confident that several key laws to curb the easy pickings made by embezzlers, thieves, insider traders, and fraudsters will be in place before year-end. “This will be the culmination of a process we started two years ago to review our legal system because we inherited many laws […]
Rehana Rossouw Shocking information about children in prisons in the Western and Northern Cape emerged this week. Julia Sloth-Nielsen of the Community Law Centre at the University of the Western Cape visited Kimberley Prison and found most of the children there were not being held for serious crimes. In terms of the law, they should […]
Nick Cave takes a break from the horror to duet with Kylie Minogue in London. SAM TAYLOR was there THE moment is so perfect, it might have been choreographed. Nick Cave, rock’s prince of darkness, ambles on stage at London’s Brixton Academy and is suddenly caught in the spotlight’s glare. His knees buckle, he covers […]
closet Ann Eveleth Joseph Mdluli’s death in detention in Durban 20 years ago made international headlines. His son, who was in detention at the time, later told a judge during the trial of the late Harry Gwala he had heard the name “Joseph” being shouted round the prison one night. It was only later he […]
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 […]
Julian Drew THE opening ceremonies of both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games used Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to portray the lofty ideals to which they aspire. But it is the Paralympics and their constant struggle against the stereotyping of disabled people with which King would probably have identified most. […]
time At Stellenbosch, blacks are running for office. And that’s not the only thing that’s different about this year’s student elections, report Joshua Amupadhi and Thandi Lewin In a first for the new South Africa, political parties — the African National Congress, the National Party and the Freedom Front —are taking part in student elections […]
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 […]
sixes CRICKET: Jon Swift ONE of the inevitable things about sport is that as the seasons change, so do the faces of the men out there in the middle. And so it is with the composition of the two cricket sides announced by the South African selectors this week. Adrian Kuiper, once such a vital […]
Pronounced guilty, Eugene de Kock will now have his turn to incriminate members of the old security forces, writes Eddie Koch The day of judgment had come. Yet there was no air of anticipation in the courtroom. No murmurs of approval in the gallery as the judge delivered his verdict. Not a single family member […]
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 […]
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 […]
Mungo Soggot Reserve Bank Governor Chris Stals’s key annual address this week drew consensus among economists that South Africa’s top banker is caught between a rock and a hard place. But while there was agreement that the economy’s vital statistics — huge imports, a shaky balance of payments, and crippling debt levels — were far […]
of cocaine INSPECTOR Jacques Swanepoel is not an exception within a police force widely perceived to be teeming with rogue cops. Swanepoel (33) has been charged with murder, assault, possession of cocaine and defeating the ends of justice. He was granted R1 000 bail. A member of the hard-pressed South African Narcotic Bureau (Sanab), it […]
Robert Mugabe’s marriage to his former secretary has changed the face of Zimbabwe’s political hierarchy forever, reports Iden Wetherell WHEN President Robert Mugabe returned to Harare last weekend from his brief honeymoon in Cape Town and an even briefer South African Development Community summit stopover in Maseru, it was immediately clear that things would never […]
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 […]
The most vulnerable groups in South Africa — the poor, the elderly, the disabled and the abandoned — are being hit hard by burgeoning problems in social security offices across the country, as they struggle to claim their state grants from demoralised, ill-informed and sometimes deceitful civil servants. This year, the implementation of the new […]
sword’ Lynda Loxton Rembrandt chairman Johann Rupert this week shrugged off the growing anti-tobacco lobby in the United States but warned the South African government against trying to milk more excise duty from the local industry. When asked at the annual meeting in Stellenbosch what the recent court ruling against US company Brown and Williamson […]
CRICKET: Mike Selvey IF ever there was an illustration of the vast chasm that English bowlers must cross before they can compete with the best in the world, it came late last Monday afternoon. Wasim Akram had taken 298 wickets in Tests and with two more English wickets there for the taking, was keen to […]
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: […]
Mungo Soggot SASOL has won an extraordinary case against a magistrate who ordered the synthetic fuel company to disclose documents relating to a devastating mining accident which killed 53 workers. A commission of inquiry into the explosion — which took place at the company’s Middelbult colliery in 1993 — was suspended last year when the […]