Karen Harverson South Africa will not accept foreign aid unless it can=20 afford to finance the follow-through infrastructure or=20 it will end up like the rest of Africa — full of half- built hospitals and unfinished roads, said Finance=20 Minister Chris Liebenberg.=20 Speaking at a recent business breakfast, Liebenberg=20 said South Africa had a reputation […]
Parliament is too big for its building and most political parties believe that the number of MPs should eventually be reduced, writes Marion Edmunds SIZE does count — especially when it comes to organs of government. Many people believe that the national Parliament could function more effectively if the National Assembly and the Senate were […]
CRICKET: Jon Swift KRISH MACKERDHUJ and the United Cricket Board (UCB) he=20 heads are faced with a problem shared with the majority=20 of nations in the cricket-playing world. It is simply this: how to fill the empty stands over=20 five long days of a Test match. “People had become too=20 used to the one-day game […]
Gauteng’s Security MEC Jessie Duarte is ready to defy the Constitution — if that’s what it takes to halt the spiral of taxi warfare, reports Jonathan Ancer Warring taxi drivers were warned this week that they would be denied bail if arrested. Speaking at a conference of the South African Long Distance Taxi Association (Saldta), […]
A behind-the-scenes battle is raging in the government as state communication agency Sacs fights for its life, reports Gaye Davis A battle for the heart and sole of government communications policy is underway. The first shots have been fired in a series of behind-the-scenes skirmishes between government spokespeople and the central state information agency, the […]
This weekend’s IFP national conference will look at ways for the party to consolidate its power in KwaZulu/Natal, report Ann Eveleth and Mehlo Mvelase The rumour mills have been peculiarly quiet this week in the run-up to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) national conference opening in Ulundi tonight. Party sources poured cold water on earlier […]
Bruce Cohen Government is disorganised, if the stationery used by various cabinet ministers is anything to go by. Every ministry which responded to our letter has its own unique letterhead in terms of design, typography, logo, choice of colours and paper. The logos range from the extravagant gold or silver foiled coat of arms (Finance […]
Justin Pearce South Africa is lagging way behind its neighbours in committing itself to internationally recognised human rights agreements — and Amnesty International (AI) has urged the government to rectify the situation and make the promotion of human rights a cornerstone of its foreign policy. “South Africa has a tremendous reputation and prestige in the […]
Anne Eveleth Pietermaritzburg Mayor Rob Haswell’s call this week for the Durban-Maritzburg corridor to become South Africa’s 10th province — divided by soft boundaries from the rest of conflict-ridden KwaZulu/Natal — has struck at the heart of the incessant demarcation wrangles stalling Durban’s local government process. Won by the African National Congress in last year’s […]
In this further extract from the manuscript of former security policeman Paul Erasmus, he describes his experiences in then-South West Africa, where he did border duty working alongside Koevoet ONE day, our group was given supposedly reliable information of a suspect “terr” weapons smuggling network, which was using sympathetic Ovambo long- distance drivers to convey […]
SOUTH Africa was a delegate at the International=20 Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in=20 Cairo in September 1994. The conclusions emanating from=20 that conference have ramifications for planners not=20 only within governments but for marketers as well,=20 particularly in the light of our own Reconstruction and=20 Development Programme.=20 Given the shifts in thinking as […]
M&G reporters After battling to integrate former enemies into South Africa’s National Defence Force, the SANDF is now facing an even bigger challenge: how to demobilise 30 000 soldiers. Jakkie Cilliers, Director of the Institute of Defence Policy (IDP), says it was a mistake to integrate before demobilising. “Now, after they have decided who joins […]
Anne Eveleth Thirteen people, including two children, were rushed to hospital this week after inhaling petrol fumes following a pipeline leak in the Durban South Industrial Basin. Residents of Merebank complained on Monday of strong odours from an underground pipeline connected to the South African Petroleum Refineries of Shell and British Petroleum (Sapref) in their […]
Justin Pearce African Satellite Entertainment Corporation (Asec), the dark horse of satellite broadcasting in South Africa, is to announce a broadcast package next week which could pose a serious challenge to rivals MultiChoice. There is speculation that Asec has secured South African broadcast rights to Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV — which offers a wide variety […]
Jean-Pierre Rossouw MOVEABLE FEAST MANY classic yarns begin at the seaside, a weathered=20 jetty leading into the water, a few gulls screeching on=20 the bollards. Add a thin wind and a few locals casting=20 hand-lines over the edge, and you’ve got the setting=20 for a great adventure. Now put yourself in the scene=20 and, because […]
Marion Edmunds President Nelson Mandela’s office has intervened in the selection of Land Claims Court judges in a bid to include women on the shortlist of nominees. Presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana confirmed this week that the office would be asking the Judicial Services Commission to discuss new candidates, despite the fact that public hearings to […]
Reg Rumney Between 1990 and 1994 the income of squatters in=20 Gauteng declined in real, or adjusted-for-inflation,=20 terms while that of hostel residents stayed much the=20 same and those living in houses were much better off. This is the finding of a Unisa Bureau of Market=20 Research report on income and spending of black=20 households […]
RUGBY: Jon Swift YOU can hardly blame the average rugby supporter for=20 being a bit confused about the future of the game. On the one hand, you have the International Rugby Board=20 (IRB), which meets in Paris next month to attempt to=20 sort out — among a host of things — the=20 dissatisfaction among the […]
Reg Rumney The South African Chamber of Business (Sacob) has=20 cautioned against bringing in “dedicated” taxes and=20 levies such the one suggested to fund a new health=20 Opposition to such taxes is set out in the chamber’s=20 submission on corporate tax to the Katz Tax Commission,=20 released this week. “The whole rationale for dedicated taxes […]
The process leading to the acceptance of the new Labour Relations Bill is more important than the outcome, argues Andrew Levy In terms of a long-running show, with episodes regularly ending with the parties close to the edge of the cliff, the negotiations over the draft Labour Relations Bill seem to have (for the time […]
Nelson Rashavah WE still have a lot to learn about the good and bad=20 aspects of soccer, we are told. Good quality=20 performances are judged not in pre-season friendlies,=20 but in competitive full-blooded battles of the English=20 Premier League or the UEFA Cup. The bit that comes with competitive football might be=20 absent but with […]
The Mail & Guardian recently wrote to cabinet ministers asking an innocuous question. The replies, or lack of them, were rather enlightening … Minister of Public Enterprises Stella Sigcau is the winner of the Mail & Guardian’s first Cabinet Efficiency Test (CET). The CET was conducted to measure the speed and competence with which cabinet […]
AECI’s biotechnology research gives rise to two new=20 chemical projects, reports Karen Harverson ANGLO American Industrial Corporation (Amic) subsidiary=20 AECI may soon be involved in projects worth more than=20 R700-million which, with its R300-million lysine=20 project already in progress, have the potential to add=20 about R500-million a year to the company’s R5,5-billion=20 All three ventures […]
Mick Cleary meets Brian Mitchell, the trainer=20 championing Soweto’s ghetto blasters BRIAN MITCHELL drives a white top-of-the-range Corvette=20 sports car. There are many places you might choose to=20 park it in Johannesburg at night. The suburb of=20 Booysens is not one of them. But there, on the main=20 road to Soweto, alongside the shuttered windows, […]
Eastern Transvaal Premier Mathews Phosa, in The Mark Gevisser Profile When Mathews Phosa was at high-school in Acornhoek in the early 1970s, he and a group of students were given a chilling ultimatum after disrupting a Parents’ Day event: they could choose between expulsion or being stripped naked and lashed with a hippo-hide sjambok. “Our […]
THEATRE: Mark Gevisser FAUSTUS in Africa! is a work of inventive genius; a=20 total vision fashioned by artist/film-maker/director=20 William Kentridge and puppeteers Adrian Kohler and=20 Basil Jones. As with Woyzeck on the Highveld, these=20 three collaborators have used a classic German text –=20 this time Goethe’s Faust — as an excuse, really, to=20 invent a […]
FINE ART: Ivor Powell BARELY a year ago, painter and collagist Sam=20 Nhlengethwa was being hyped as the future of South=20 African art. His collages, it seemed, fitted into an=20 important cultural project: the reclamation, via the=20 found object, of an authentic urban African experience=20 from the distortions of history. His latest exhibition, at the […]
The work at this year’s Grahamstown Festival rejoiced=20 in cultural freedom — and shied away from socio- political issues, writes Justin Pearce FOUR African men speaking algemeen beskaafte Afrikaans,=20 while a rainbow-nation audience convulses with laughter=20 as they impersonate traffic cops, tsotsis, and the Paul=20 Kruger statue. It all adds up to a vision of […]
Jonathan Ancer Rasping Rocker Joe Cocker could be the nemesis of Riani De Wet, North-West Province’s MEC for Media, Arts and This week, the 27-year-old ANC MEC was battling for her political survival amid allegations that she had used government funds to hire a plane to take her and her friends to Joe Cocker’s concert […]
Chris Ball, CEO of the Cape Town 2004 Olympic Bid=20 Company for one month now, talks to Julian Drew about=20 the current state of the bid CHRIS BALL believes the 2004 Olympic Games “is quite=20 simply the biggest economic opportunity that South=20 Africa will ever have”. It is for this reason that he decided to […]
Karen Harverson A draft Non-Profit Organisations Bill aimed at=20 improving and regulating the legal, policy and funding=20 environment for development organisations, such as non- governmental organisations (NGOs) and voluntary=20 associations, is to be finalised this month and=20 submitted to Parliament in February next year. The draft Bill calls for the scrapping of existing=20 fund-raising laws […]
South Africa may have to forego its high-tech medical achievements in order to meet the needs of its many citizens. Rehana Rossouw reports Have a heart, says the head of Groote Schuur Hospital’s transplant unit, Dr Del Khan, to health authorities who are considering clamping down on high-tech surgery across the country. “Most people might […]