Staff Reporter

Strong medicine, negotiated by all stakeholders, has been prescribed to salvage the taxi industry, reports Karen Harverson THE embattled taxi industry may be on the road to recovery following the interim report of the National Taxi Task Team (NTTT) which was presented to Transport Minister Mac Maharaj The report’s recommendations — which could cost the […]

HOME Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi came close to being arrested and charged with the KwaMakhutha murders, according to sources involved in the investigation. Buthelezi’s name appears several times in the documents that describe events leading to the formation of the Caprivi 200, the hit-squad unit whose members allegedly massacred 13 civilians in 1987. Most important […]

Philippa Garson THE crisis at Wits University around suspended deputy vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba has taken on national proportions as direct ministerial intervention becomes increasingly Yesterday Minister Sibusiso Bengu met with vice-chancellor Robert Charlton and other university stakeholders in an attempt to put the brakes on Wits’ rollercoaster ride into disaster. Political squabbles have now erupted […]

Western Cape Local Government MEC Peter Marais, whose boundary demarcation plan was rejected in court this week, is at the centre of a new election controversy, reports Rehana A NEW local government row is looming in the Western Cape over Local Government MEC Peter Marais’ refusal to prepare new legislation for rural local elections or […]

Gaye Davis THE man in charge of compiling the document which will lay the basis for South Africa’s future foreign policy was in charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs’ “image- building” section at a time when sanctions were beginning to bite hard. Dr Gerrit Olivier returned this month from his posting as South Africa’s […]

ROCK/POP: Chris Roper JOURNALISTS eager to gain space on the shelf allocated to “world music” have expended many words documenting the emergence of new “ethnic South African music”. But few seem to have noticed a metamorphosis taking place in a heretofore Eurocentric area of local music: the white male rock band. Yep, even these colonial […]

Justin Pearce ALEXANDRA’S Far East Bank squatters will soon be back in court, when Johannesburg’s Eastern Metropolitan Substructure tries, where the provincial government failed, to have the squatters evicted. Last week, after a blaze of publicity condemning the squatters as “land invaders”, Premier Tokyo Sexwale’s government failed in a supreme court application to have the […]

RARELY in South African public life can a document have been produced which is as politically explosive as the 64-page indictment (including addenda) presented last Friday in the Magnus Malan case. What makes it paradoxical is that there are, as of yet, no political repercussions. The explanation, of course, is that it is an indictment […]

The Internet is the latest target of Richard OA Day in the Life’ Smolan, writes Annicia ON February 8 1996, more than 100 professional photojournalists from around the world will be working on a 24-hour project to find the pictures that tell the story of how the Internet has changed people’s lives. This is Rick […]

Lynda Loxton SOME analysts were somewhat sceptical this week about the much-publicised decision by the Rupert family empire to merge their tobacco interests in Rembrandt Group Limited (Remgro) and Swiss-based Richemont Securities AG. The merger will create a new, unlisted global tobacco giant, to be known as R&R Tobacco Holdings, which will incorporate Remgro’s tobacco […]

Leon Perlman FOLLOWING the move to electronic on-line communication with the masses, pioneered by the Constitutional Assembly, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, African National Congress MPs and the Constitutional Court, the offices of the president and deputy presidents have also become neophyte technophiles. A paperless office system is being implemented along with use of […]

_ght English ice The icy resolve of Mike Atherton and the English to avoid defeat needs to be combatted with the fire of unbridled enthusiasm the South Africans seem to have lost CRICKET:Jon Swift IT IS not stretching the imagination too far to believe that the greatest attributes of the game of cricket are drawn […]

The apartheid years have laden South Africa’s public service with civil servants who are unable to reform local government departments, writes Lynda Loxton NEARLY two years after South Africa’s April elections, many government departments are still struggling to rid themselves of the detritus of apartheid and emerge as sleek and efficient operations. The process, unfortunately, […]

In the final extract from his autobiography, Joe Slovo recalls the beginnings of the ‘people’s war’

Malan trial: Before the KwaMakhutha massacre, there was the Mpophomeni massacre. Both were connected to the SADF’s military support of Hazel Friedman THE murder of three union shop stewards on a lonely road near Mpophomeni on the night of December 5 1986 will be remembered as the beginning of the most violent period in this […]

Ann Eveleth A COALITION of KwaZulu-Natal mental health and human rights organisations has warned that the start of the Truth and Reconcilation Commission next year could escalate rather than ease tension in the volatile province, unless the commission is adequately equipped to deal with the social aspects of the process. In a submission to Justice […]

Last weekend’s National Choir Festival reflected waning interest in an important art form, writes VUYO MVOKO MOST South Africans, even those who claim to have the interests of the arts at heart, probably won’t bother to try and understand why the National Choir Festival at the Standard Bank Arena in Johannesburg almost flopped last weekend. […]

Ann Eveleth THE shooting deaths of two political leaders in KwaZulu-Natal this week sparked a war of words between the African National Congress and Inkatha Freedom Party, with each party accusing their opponent of the attacks and calling for stronger “self-defence” measures. The IFP said the murder on Monday of IFP Impendle constituency chair Mgudeleni […]

An amended tax act has removed certain lucrative tax benefits, reports Rowan A NUMBER of tax consulting firms have had to scrap a company car scheme which they marketed as part of their attractive executive employment packages, after amendments to the Income Tax Act. Gareth Beaver, a tax consultant at Ernst & Young explained the […]

OPERA: Coenraad Visser FIRST KwaZulu-Natal gave us a Zulu Macbeth. Now, with equally striking effect, it gives us Mozart’s The Magic Flute in an African setting. This production is the fledgling Opera Africa’s debut. It is entirely fitting that it should transfer from the Playhouse in Durban to the Roodepoort stage, where so many enterprising […]

Rehana Rossouw DISTRICT surgeons in the Western Cape who still practise racism are to be rooted out of public service in terms of new proposals devised by provincial health authorities. MEC for health and welfare Ebrahim Rasool this week said district surgeons were one of the first “bugbears” he faced in office. He had been […]

BADMINTON: Julian Drew HE might not have had quite the same impact on his chosen sport as Paul Adams did when wreaking havoc on the English batsmen in Kimberley, but Michael Adams (no relation) is certainly making plenty of waves of his own in the badminton world. Adams is also 18-years- old and hails from […]

‘Former consultant to the ANC newspaper project Moeletsi Mbeki argues that the ANC did not welcome Tony O’Reilly into South Africa to monopolise the English-language media AS one of the people who have been intimately involved in the African National Congress’ efforts to create diversity in our country’s mass media, I welcome Bruce Cohen’s contribution […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman AT the opening of the Wits Technikon Students’ Exhibition at the Market’s Rembrandt Gallery, several guests hovered around a table laden with brown paper bags — neatly arranged and filled with popcorn — not knowing whether to acknowledge the “installation” with their eyes or their mouths. Given the nature of most […]

CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale YOU can relax. Pierce Brosnan makes a fine James Bond in Martin Campbell’s GoldenEye, an otherwise disappointing foray into moviedom’s most successful franchise — 007. The story revolves around schemers and baddies in the post-Soviet world who are intent on worldwide cataclysm ( as usual ), and that’s the major problem with […]

For the first time in years, Rockey Street, the pulse of trendy Yeoville, is free of drug pushers loitering on corners, writes Janine Lazarus IT has taken the murder of restaurateur Ridley Wright to clear the streets of pushers who had turned this colourful suburb into the newest drugs mecca of South Africa. Wright was […]

COSATU, the largest-ever federation of independent trade unions in South Africa, is to be launched in Durban tomorrow under the banner “One Federation, One Country”. With 33 affiliates, a signed-up membership of over 500 000 and 430 000 paid-up members, the Congress of South African Trade Unions overtakes the Trade Union Council of South Africa […]

Urban planners, white suburbs, and the homeless are locked in a struggle of competing needs, writes Justin Pearce POLITICAL squabbling has halted Johannesburg’s plans to house its homeless. Shack settlements have proliferated in the city while municipal and provincial authorities have failed to reach a universally acceptable plan to accommodate squatters in formal housing. At […]

Rehana Rossouw and Ann Eveleth THE civil war in KwaZulu-Natal has created a destitute class of people who have converted pavements in the centre of Durban into an informal camp site. Most of the single mothers and children who have turned the crannies of the city into their home are refugees — over the decade, […]

Vuyo Mvoko ‘THE World in Soweto” — a project to be launched today by President Nelson Mandela — will give foreign governments the chance to make their mark on one of South Africa’s biggest and most famous townships. According to the project’s founder and co- ordinator, Zelda Mantle, it is envisaged that a foreign country […]

Hazel Friedman ‘GOD has blessed us,” says single mother Mavis A year ago she was about to be dumped on the pavements. Today she and 434 tenants from seven buildings in the highrise slum of Hillbrow are home-owners through a unique scheme that could solve the inner city housing problem. Called the Seven Buildings Project […]

Politicians calling for the reimposition of the death penalty are more interested in buying votes than in curbing crime, argues Dennis Davis ONE might have expected that the death penalty would have been settled after the decision of the Constitutional Court handed down earlier this year. Unfortunately, however, that tenacious and consistent advocate for human […]