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 […]
The science boffins are worried about whether the government will fund their research, or switch the money to RDP work. Jonathan Ancer and Fumane Diseko report Scientists are holding their breath while the government prepares a White Paper laying out plans for research and development. With the new government likely to use its limited resources […]
Stefaans Brummer FORMER police chief General Johan van der Merwe this week hit back at the Goldstone Commission for linking him to “criminal and despicable” police actions before the elections, charging Judge Goldstone with “the rape of the most basic principles of human rights”. Van der Merwe, who retired as police commissioner in March this […]
With most of the stayaway Springboks back in the Transvaal team=20 and the Blue Bulls up and running, the Currie Cup is really=20 starting this weekend RUGBY: Jon Swift IN THE wake of the tidal wave of World Cup enthusiasm and=20 having navigated the trough of a player revolt, South African=20 rugby can truly be […]
‘Papa’ de Klerk is the hero of the National Party youth. Marion Edmunds attended their weekend conference and found a vibrant, energetic collection of New Nats ‘You’re simply the best,” screamed Tina Turner as National Party leader, “Papa” de Klerk, stepped off the stage into the arms of excited members of the Jeug Aksie. Bodyguards […]
Like a castrated bull required to make calves — that’s how Pule Zwane sees the new KwaZulu/Natal Peace THE KwaZulu/Natal Implementation of Peace Bill, gazetted a few weeks ago, is a bid to resurrect the already-dead — and ineffectual — Peace Committee. It is not clear who authored the Bill, as the province’s multi-party portfolio […]
Anne Eveleth Local affiliates of a US-based property group have joined forces with police to fingerprint young children in schools and shopping centres around the country. Welcomed by the South African Police Services as a “proactive measure” to help locate missing children, and lauded by the Electronic Realty Associates (ERA) as a “community service”, the […]
The Mark Gevisser Profile: Inkatha Freedom Party MP Farouk Cassim Farouk Cassim has literary aspirations for himself and his hometown. We sit in his bougainvillea-clad and rambling flat above his father-in-law’s dry-cleaning business on Stanger’s main road. The muezzin from the mosque next door blares, intermittently, as we eat the exquisite bread he bakes each […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin DIE HARD (With a Vengeance), the third of the Die Hard films,=20 reunites Bruce Willis, as maverick New York cop John McClane,=20 with director John McTiernan.=20 McClane is the victim of a trickster who calls himself Simple=20 Simon. Simon’s games are predicated on children’s nursery=20 rhymes and riddles which McClane and his […]
Gaye Davis JUST two years ago, the very idea of a Socialist International (SI) meeting in South Africa would have been inconceivable — so this week’s two-day meeting in Cape Town of the council of the world federation of social democratic, socialist and labour movements in Cape Town was richly symbolic. That it took place […]
“Israeli youth dances to a different drum”) is designed to give the impression that the expansion of Jerusalem was primarily at Arab expense, and that all orthodox Jews are desecrators of the Sabbath. The truth is that the expansion was, for the most part, through development of State-owned land but, in the few cases where […]
Eddie Koch reports on a commission of inquiry into witchcraft killings in the Northern Province CASE 1: Tshavhungwe approached Edward and asked him to find a living person from whom they could remove some parts. A friend of Edward’s suggested they should get one Nthatheni Negota (a young woman in her twenties), who used to […]
FORMER security policeman Greg Deegan this week wrote a poignant and hard-hitting letter to the Mail & Guardian, expressing the fury of the apartheid “footsoldiers” whose generals have run for cover. This is his letter: I was a member of the South African Police Security Branch and stationed for the major part of my service […]
CINEMA: Digby Ricci ‘THE pictures painted on the inner eyelids of infants … are not in=20 paste,” Edna St Vincent Millay memorably understates in her=20 poem Intense and Terrible, I Think, Must Be the Loneliness of=20 Infants, and the most impressive achievement of Peter Jackson’s=20 remarkable Heavenly Creatures is the union of frenzy,=20 sensuousness, picturebook […]
Keith Harper in London Plans to build a 600- to 800-seat “super jumbo” have been put on=20 hold until next year because of high costs and lack of demand. Boeing and its four European partners this week confirmed the=20 technical feasibility of the scheme, which has been developed over=20 two years, but said: “Market studies […]
Marion Edmunds DEPUTY PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki is considering a plan to grant so-called ” professionals” — doctors, prosecutors and accountants — better salaries and a measure of independence from the public service bargaining chamber. The plan was put on the table this week by the Medical Association of South Africa (Masa) in a bid to […]
How did South Africa’s most popular singer end up a sad, semi-destitute occupant of a seedy Hillbrow hotel? Hazel Friedman traces the decline and fall of Brenda Fassie DRUG abuse is not the sole cause of the decline and fall of Brenda Fassie. She suffers from a much deeper malaise: loneliness. It was drugs which, […]
Jean-Pierre Rossouw MOVEABLE FEAST IT seems there’s a rule that applies to seafood when you move=20 away from the coast: the emphasis is no longer on the fish. At the=20 Cape coast, seafood generally refers to those swimming things=20 restaurants call linefish. Perhaps it has something to do with the=20 fact that crawling things need […]
MORE than 54 000 tickets have been sold on the main=20 programme of the Grahamstown Arts Festival. The most popular=20 shows, predictably, are Faustus in Africa, The Island and My=20 Plunge to Fame. Ticket sales for the Fringe are up from last year=20 with more than 15 shows sold out, including last year’s hugely=20 popular […]
After years of silence, archetypal Gothic band The Mission is=20 alive, well — and playing in Johannesburg. FRED DE VRIES=20 THE Mission’s singer/guitarist, Wayne Hussey, has a reputation=20 for being loud and pretentious. His lyrics always used to be full of=20 quasi-religious symbolism; his music often fell on the wrong side=20 of pomp. And in […]
CHILDREN’S THEATRE: Di Mannie A VISIT to the Johannesburg Youth Theatre is fast becoming=20 synonymous with holiday entertainment, each production having=20 its own blend of humour and surprise. For The Emperor’s=20 Nightingale, the main room (or theatre) in this romantic old=20 house has been “turned sideways”, using the length of the room=20 to present the […]
Justin Pearce in Grahamstown National Festival of the Arts: With more events on offer than=20 anyone could hope to attend, the Grahamstown festival becomes=20 whatever its thousands of visitors want it to be CULTURE is still a weapon of struggle. At least, the Wimpy=20 workers seemed to think so when they drew attention to their=20 […]