Staff Reporter

Good leaders will do anything to maintain morale, which is the only apparent explanation for President Nelson Mandela’s enthusiastic assessment of this week’s Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit. It must be conceded that they did approve the Sappigmou (the Southern African Power Pool Inter-Governmental Memorandum of Understanding, for those who do not keep up […]

The Independent Broadcasting Authority report released this week is an important step towards a healthy and open broadcasting system. The juggernaut SABC is to be reduced to a manageable size to allow space for other broadcasters. Local content regulations will stimulate the television production and music industries without being unachievable. Cross-media ownership limitations should help […]

Karen Harverson Local coal producers will be vying to clinch the=20 remaining coal contracts for Eskom’s R10-billion Majuba=20 power station which, when completed, will consume some=20 13-million tons of coal a year. =20 The power station, which has a design capacity of 40=20 036 megawatts, will entail the construction of six=20 sets, each consisting of […]

Philippa Garson THE proposed closure of the central unit of Wits University’s Academic Development Programme — which offers support to educationally disadvantaged students — has met with dismay in some student and staff circles and raised questions about the direction being taken by the university on its academic development The decision to close down the […]

The only possible threat South African banks face is=20 foreign competition.=20 Reg Rumney reports Foreign competition is the biggest threat to the=20 margins of the banking industry — but foreign banks=20 are unlikely to want to upset the domestic applecart. Alan McConnochie of broker Ed Hern Rudolph, writing in=20 accountancy firm KPMG’s 1995 Banking Survey, […]

Ann Eveleth The pressure is on KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally after a Durban Supreme Court judge this week ordered investigations into senior Inkatha Freedom Party and KwaZulu Police officials. Judge Nick van der Reyden said the State had failed to disprove allegations by hit-squad accused Romeo Mbambo, Gcina Mkhize and Israel Hlongwane that they […]

An official probe into ivory and rhino horn smuggling has pointed a finger at the South African Defence Force, reports Ann Eveleth The South African Defence Force (SADF) used funds from poached ivory to recover some of the costs of supplying Unita Forces with provisions during South Africa’s secret war with Angola. South African taxpayers […]

The South African Citizenship Bill is an inadequate piece of legislation which requires attention, writes the Black Sash’s Sheena Duncan When Mr M, a South African citizen born in the Eastern Transvaal, was deported to Mozambique as an illegal alien for the second time, he approached the Black Sash Advice Office in Pretoria for assistance. […]

Eddie Koch The Department of Environment Affairs is being pressed by the Australian government to help weaken a proposed international ban on shipments of hazardous materials from industrialised to non-industrialised countries. The department has already been rocked by news that its consultants have allowed consignments of hazardous waste into the country, despite an official prohibition […]

CINEMA: Justin Pearce KEN LOACH’S Raining Stones is the cinematic equivalent=20 of protest theatre — only without the protest. After a=20 decade and a half of Tory government, working-class=20 council housing estates in the north of England are not=20 happy places, and Raining Stones is an account of the=20 misery created by unemployment, a broken-down […]

NO national commercial licences on FM. A number of=20 private radio stations will be licensed at a regional,=20 provincial and local level on both FM and MW. According=20 to an IBA official these could be licensed “within nine=20 Regional windows should also be provided for on public=20 service radio stations (duration unspecified). Several =20 radio […]

Short-term insurers have performed well this year so=20 far, despite crime and surging claims, reports Karen=20 Short-term insurance companies have reported surging=20 profits for the first half of 1995 but this doesn’t=20 mean premiums will be lowered, or even stabilised. For the six months ending June 1995, net income=20 reported by SA Eagle was R116-million, […]

Members of Parliament paid fines of R22 500 for absenteeism last year. And, according to the register, which is known to be inaccurate, a number of MPs may pay up this year as well. IFP MP Dr DR Madide was away for 37 days between February and June this year, and the ANC’s chief whip […]

Now in their seventh year, Not the Midnight Mass’=20 slightly sleazy edge is still razor-sharp, writes HAZEL=20 WHAT can you say about a troupe of actors-turned- singers who transformed an unemployment pit-stop and=20 after-hours slot between tits’n’bum time into an=20 institution? It’s pretty much been said before: the=20 eulogies to their Addams Family antics, their […]

Athletics fans can look forward to seeing one of the=20 greatest milers of all time when Noureddine Morceli=20 takes part in the opening of the new athletics=20 stadium in Johannesburg ATHLETICS: Julian Drew GROWING up in a country which was soccer crazy and had=20 little tradition in athletics it would have been hard=20 for Algeria’s […]

FINE ART: Ian Tromp THE Sasol New Signatures Competition is open only to=20 artists who have not previously held a solo exhibition,=20 so the majority of those whose work is on exhibit at=20 the Pretoria Art Museum are students. Such exhibitions=20 are often a useful barometer of the directions in which=20 art is moving. Although […]

Meshack Mabogoane The road to a full-scale market economy in Mozambique=20 is, like peace, “irreversible”, President Joachim=20 Chissano said in Sandton recently when he addressed a=20 special meeting of businesspeople. He said joint ventures for the development of major=20 infrastructure were the “only policy option available”=20 and “we may no longer guarantee the development of […]

BALLET: Stanley Peskin IN Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty (presented by=20 Pact Ballet at the State Theatre), there are three=20 potent centres of power: the king and the ceremonious=20 nature of his court; the evil fairy Carabosse, who,=20 performed en travestie, makes a parody of the=20 christening rites at the beginning of the ballet; and=20 […]

Gaye Davis KEY recommendations of a major report, proposing sweeping changes to South Africa’s unequal schooling system, will be implemented next year, ushering in a new deal for education. Education Minister Professor Sibusiso Bengu was handed the report of the Review Committee on School Organisation, Governance and Funding on Thursday. His major challenge now will […]

The Constitutional Court is about to decide on the legality of banning porn, writes Justin Pearce Pornography will be in the dock next week when the Constitutional Court considers whether a section of the Indecent or Obscene Photographic Matter Act of 1967 should be scrapped in terms of the free speech provisions and other constitutional […]

The Education Minister, slated for the slow pace of change in education, promises to set the ball rolling, reports Gaye Davis UNDER fire for not driving the pace of change in education hard or fast enough, Education Minister Professor Sibusiso Bengu says he is now poised to prove to his critics that he can deliver. […]

An exhibition at Museum Africa reveals how South=20 African history as we know it was constructed through=20 text and images. RUTH SACK reports WAKE up, Thomas Baines, your time has come around=20 again. Or so a visit to the exhibition Frontiers — now=20 relocated from the Gertrude Posel Gallery to Museum=20 Africa in Newtown — […]

Stefaans Brummer THE irony of their own attendance at Monday’s Southern African Development Community summit could not have been lost on Constand Viljoen and Pik Botha. A succession of regional leaders made sure they had no Both men sat attentively in the large but select World Trade Centre audience when three presidents, including Nelson Mandela, […]

Ann Eveleth UNIVERSITY of Durban-Westville officials are mystified by the bugging of a campus union official and a mysterious “investigation” of campus affairs by suspected National Intelligence Agency (NIA) agents, who apparently claimed they were sent by President Nelson Mandela. The conversation-monitoring device was discovered by private investigators in the office of Combined Staff Association […]

Jon Swift IN A week of momentous change for world rugby, the=20 opening of the professional gates by the greybeards of=20 the International Rugby Board has been overshadowed by=20 the concussion of Chester Williams in a tackle on James=20 Small, and the subsequent two-step across the stricken=20 winger’s back. It cost Williams his place in […]

CRICKET: Jon Swift THERE is something vaguely intimidating about coming=20 face to face with a living legend, even one as openly=20 receptive to the advances of lesser mortals as cricket=20 great Sir Garfield Sobers. At 59, the hair is greying and the lines demarcating=20 the edges of the mouth more deeply embedded than in his=20 […]

Molefe Matlou Students at Tladi Comprehensive High School in Soweto studied in classrooms with broken windows, doors and leaking roofs, had no toilet facilities and had to crowd together in the four decent classrooms when it rained. But, despite these conditions, the school was never placed on the Department of Education and Training’s priority list […]

The Centre for Applied Legal Studies has produced a draft Bill on prostitution for the Department of Health, reports Rehana Rossouw South Africa’s growing sex industry offers consumers sex in books and magazines, on pornographic videos and over sex chat lines, but the law still prohibits them from buying the real thing. This anomaly should […]

Gaye Davis CLAUSES in the interim Constitution governing education are impeding the African National Congress’ ability to deliver and should be expunged from the new Constitution, says Blade Nzimande, chairperson of the National Assembly Portfolio Committee on Education. The collapse of mass-based organisation was also threatening transformation, he said in an interview this week. “You […]

Cash donations made by developers to the civics organisation are to be investigated by police, writes Stefaans Brummer THE South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) acknowledged this week its relationship with business donors was “open to manipulation” following charges that the movement had accepted bribes from developers in the Free State. Free State MEC for […]

Rehana Rossouw South Africa will once again have sex police, like it did when police shone torches into bedrooms hunting people having sex across the colour line, if the draft Bill prepared by the Centre for Applied Legal Studies succeeds, a sex worker organisation warned this week. “We are going to need policemen in brothels, […]

According to the as yet unreleased IBA report, the SABC will be divested of one of its channels, to be sold to private interests, reports Justin Pearce The South African Broadcasting Corporation will lose one of its three television channels at the end of 1997, to make room for South Africa’s first privately owned, free […]