Marion Edmunds A special National Intelligence briefing to the Cabinet on how to deal with sensitive and potentially embarrassing information and prevent leaks has been leaked to the Mail & Guardian. Concern about security leaks and sabotage of government plans prompted National Intelligence to brief Cabinet on how to safeguard sensitive information. A document on […]
Pat Sidley MICROSOFT boss Bill Gates needed a bit of help from the Salvation Army for his mega-launch of Windows 95 this week. His competitor, IBM, helped a bit too — although they would deny it. Johannesburg commuters have been greeted all week by an army of unemployed men carrying signs saying: “It’s coming …” […]
Hugh Masekela, Pact assistant CEO, in The Mark Gevisser ‘Seventh floor!” shouts a voice in campy, elevator-lady pitch as the crowded State Theatre lift bumps to a halt. Its occupants lower their eyes embarrassedly as a grim Pretoria cultural apparatchik pushes his way forward and the voice continues, “ladies underwear and apparel!” As the lift […]
Rehana Rossouw MALAYSIA’S Prime Minister, Dr Mahathir Bin Mohamad, acknowledged Malaysian roots in South Africa when he and a powerful business delegation swept into the country on a four-day visit this week. “The people of Malay descent in Cape Town are of some interest to us — it is good to re-establish the linkages broken […]
It has been well said that South African journalism has been reduced to a wasteland during the apartheid years — censorship and oppression driving some of its brighter talents out of the industry, or out of the country, and Bantu Education doing its best to ensure immediately succeeding generations were ill-qualified to fill the vacuum. […]
RUGBY: Jon Swift IT IS not surprising that the focus of attention in this weekend’s Currie Cup matches will be on a man in the chasing pack rather than on the first-half leaders his team face in kicking off the second half of the The country has been through the agonies of a lead-in to […]
Despite a Constitutional Court ruling, children are still being sentenced to whippings as punishment for petty offences, writes Annicia Reddiar WHIPPING of juvenile offenders has not stopped in all of South Africa, in spite of a Constitutional Court ban more than two months ago. And fingers are being pointed at Justice Minister Dullah Omar for […]
It would be nice to be able to congratulate Tito Mboweni on having produced the first truly plain- language bill of the new dispensation. The new draft of the Labour Relations Bill has been re-written, not just so as to incorporate the deals struck by labour, business and government in the National Economic, Development & […]
Karen Harverson Construction of the R205-million Sandton Hilton will be the first concrete result of Malaysian investment interest in South Africa. Construction will begin at the end of the month with completion due by June 1997. The project is a 70/30 joint venture between Malaysian businessman Amin Shah and local consortium Team Development Concepts and […]
The African National Congress has produced a discussion document on minerals and energy policy which proposes that legal rights are given to informal miners, like Zamzam Shongwe. This form of mining is seen as fundamental to the developing other related enterprises in the surrounding areas. A Small Mines Bureau would be established and its role […]
SOCCER: Lungile Madywabe COFFEE is the only instant thing Orlando Pirates’ new coach, Joe Frickleton knows. According to him, football is about hard work, patient development of the team, formulation of a winning combination and finding good strikers to put the ball into the net. Frickleton recently came back to Gauteng after nine years with […]
Eddie Koch It took the Pondo sangoma, Mercy Manci, exactly 40 minutes after walking through a thicket of thorn trees at the entrance of the Klipriviersberg nature reserve south of Johannesburg to locate a plant called ugobo whose root bulbs are used by members of her profession to treat sexually transmitted diseases and to collect […]
Out-of-work miners are scratching a dangerous and illegal living through small-scale gold mining in the Eastern Transvaal, writes Fumane Diseko Retrenched miners in the Eastern Transvaal are risking their lives for gold, digging their own tunnels into the hills around Barberton to find the ore that can support them and their families. The narrow tunnels […]
While politicians argue about political solutions to the KwaZulu-Natal conflict, violence monitors say only the justice system can end the violence, reports Ann Political violence has left at least 5 000 people destitute in KwaZulu-Natal over the past four months — and those are the survivors. More than 1 200 have been killed in the […]
South Africa’s foreign policy is a tug of war between realists, who are concerned with getting investment, and radicals, who want us to take the moral high ground, argues international affairs expert Jack Spence THE conventional widsom holds that a country’s foreign policy requires the definition and ranking of national interests based on the “immutable […]
Rowan Callaghan Directors at South African Breweries (SAB) and Rainbow Chicken Limited this year lead the pack in awarding themselves increases, a survey of 26 companies by Business Mail shows. A study of the annual reports of the companies — all in the top 150 and all with financial years ending in February and March […]
Jo’burg Art Gallery has found an unlikely audience — in street-photographers and their clients. RUTH SACK THE Johannesburg Art Gallery has for years expressed the desire to become meaningful, relevant and, perhaps, useful to its immediate neighbours — the people who occupy and commute through Joubert Park. Well, it’s happened — though not in the […]
Members of the Springbok World Cup squad became almost instant millionaires, but what about new players called into the team? RUGBY: Jon Swift IT IS the concentrated nature of sport as a mirror of life which tends to highlight the human existence. Big is not always best. The quickest do not always win. And so […]
THIS week, millions of people all over the globe will be falling over themselves to buy a product that hardly any of them will ever see. It is a revised set of instructions to run the basic functions of IBM- compatible computers. The product is not innovative (its rival has been selling something similar for […]
A non-government official used official government forms to authorise importation of toxic waste to the country, writes Eddie Koch DEPUTY Environment Minister Bantu Holomisa this week announced an independent commission will investigate the toxic waste scandal that has rocked his ministry — amid new evidence that officials from the Department of Environment Affairs were this […]
Duncan Mackay explains how the dash for cash is manipulated by the world’s top athletes A FUNNY thing happened to Moses Kiptanui on his way to winning a third 3 000m steeplechase title in Gothenburg recently. He suddenly slowed down when he realised he might break the world record. “I want to save that for […]
South Africa’s performance at the Beijing Conference could suffer because of poor preparation, reports Marion Edmunds The leaders of the South African delegation that will be going to the Beijing Conference next month put on brave faces this week, and said they were confident that South Africa would contribute meaningfully to the But, at the […]
September sees the arts come alive in Johannesburg, report JUSTIN PEARCE and ITUMELENG OA MAHABANE ARTS ALIVE 1995 will be smaller than last year. But the organisers of what is still Johannesburg’s biggest arts event promise it will be better organised and more focused than ever before, with a mix of South African and foreign […]
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 […]
Competition Board chairman Pierre Brooks is sharply critical of a culture of anti-competitive behaviour in South African business, Reg Rumney reports Tougher competition policy is necessary and is on the way, promises Competition Board chairman Pierre Brooks. In an interview with Business Mail this week Brooks sharply criticised the pervasive disregard for anti- competitive behaviour […]
FINE ART: Ivor Powell THE Johannesburg art world is in a condition which might be compared with a crisis in the stock market — where bullshit leads to bearishness. The centre of gravity has shifted; the game is no longer being played inside this country. Our art is increasingly perceived and marketed as an export […]
Coloured people are examining their identity in a non- racial South Africa, writes Gaye Davis RHODA Khadalie describes her ethnicity as “purely incidental”. Her grandfather, a Malawian, came to the Cape where he married her Cape Malay grandmother. Had they returned to his homeland, she too would have been a Malawian. As it was, they […]
Dr NS Kekana SOUTH Africa needs a foreign policy which will allow it to emerge as the leader of Africa. It is now a year since a Minister of Foreign Affairs was appointed, but he has yet to point out the direction that should be taken in foreign policy. The failure of the minister to […]
With a bio-kineticist in charge of their health and fitness, South Africa’s under-24 cricketers are eating, drinking and sleeping the game CRICKET: Ahitisham Manerjee MIKE TYSON gently cuffed his “opponent” on the ear for the fifth or sixth time in 90 seconds and the whole pathetic, disgusting episode was over. What a joke. And amazingly […]
Karen Harverson Gencor’s Impala Platinum (Implats), the world’s second- largest platinum producer, is looking at projects to increase the amount of platinum it recovers from ore. This is cheaper than increasing the amount of ore The group produces more than a million ounces of platinum a year from both Merensky and UG2 ores. Implats is […]
White doctors spoke out vociferously against the ‘Deeble plan’ for national health insurance. Black doctors, however, are upset that this plan is being diluted, reports Pat Sidley JOHN Deeble’s virtues, or lack of them, are in the eye of the beholder. To many general practitioners in this country, the Australian health care expert’s original ideas […]
Marion Edmunds Labour Minister Tito Mboweni lobbied all political players this week — from National Party leader FW de Klerk to the African Christian Democratic Party — in a bid to save the Labour Relations Bill from unravelling in Parliament. The round of meetings with political parties came in the wake of a decision by […]