Vista University is an animal with seven bodies and no head. The resignation of the university’s entire top management structure — rector, vice-rector and two registrars — in August last year has left the seven- campus institution floundering with no proper Executive functions have been taken over by a special committee of the university council. […]
IT took three days of court argument, three-and-a-half months of deliberation and 244 pages of opinion for the Constitutional Court to re-establish the sanctity of life in South Africa by declaring invalid the death penalty. This week’s decision is a major break from the past. It brings to an end South Africa’s long-standing dominance of […]
SOCCER: Gerald Combrinck UMTATA Bucks boss Chain Vilikazi refers to them as the unholy three, and by Sunday there will be only two left, because one of either Sundowns or Kaizer Chiefs will be out of the Coca Cola Cup. The remaining part of the pact, Orlando Pirates, face a tough task when they visit […]
Shirley Kossick ELECTRICITY by Victoria Glendinning (Hutchinson, VICTORIA GLENDINNING is an accomplished and highly regarded writer, best known for her authoritative biographies of Rebecca West, Vita Sackville-West, Edith Sitwell and Elizabeth Bowen. Her most recent biography — on Anthony Trollope — was published to widespread acclaim in 1992 and re-affirmed her status as a thorough […]
GOLF: Jon Swift A HUGE test awaits reigning US Open champion Ernie Els at Shinnecock Hills next week when the South African has to shake off all the momentous events of the past 12 months … and start all over again. In many ways this will be a welcome factor for Els. For, as all […]
ANC deputy secretary general Cheryl Carolus applied for life insurance — and discovered how HIV sufferers are The experience of buying our first home has been turned, for my husband and I, into a face-to-face confrontation with the irresponsible and discriminatory way in which the insurance industry continues to deal with HIV and Aids. It […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin JAMES LEVEN’S film Don Juan de Marco offers a refreshingly different viewpoint of a patient/psychiatrist relationship to the grim one taken by Peter Shaffer in Equus. Almost perversely, Leven eschews reality and opts for fantasy. In the course of 10 days, the patient Johnny/Juan not only transforms, with wonderfully serpentine subtlety, his […]
David Campese, the world’s great non-conformist, is facing up to a giant-sized challenge RUGBY: Mick Cleary ON THE horizon the cloud of dust tells of the stampede heading his way. Up above the birds are circling, ready to pick off the carcass. As he has always done, David Campese merely watches and waits. The young […]
Jacques Magliolo Barlows’ latest financial results highlight the benefits of a major conglomerate unbundling its assets and turning a lumbering giant into a lean and streamlined organisation. Last week the group released its interim results and showed profitability unsurpassed in the last decade. With improvements coming from almost all its operations, the refocused Barlows has […]
Olive Shisana, special adviser to the minister of health, in The Mark Gevisser Profile When Olive Shisana was appointed special adviser to the minister of health exactly a year ago, she found herself dreaming the same recurrent nightmare that had dogged her through her first five years of exile: “I am locked up in the […]
A new ‘RDP bureaucracy’ has come in for some sharp criticism, reports Reg Rumney No one in government actually knows how much of the money in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) fund has actually been spent, say two academics who have been monitoring the RDP. Their criticism of the government’s role in the ANC’s, […]
Rehana Rossouw DRAFT legislation spelling out the powers of the Gender Equity Commission has been prepared by the Department of Justice, giving the body the same teeth as the Human Rights Commission to perform its tasks of ensuring gender equity in Parliament and society. The Parliamentary Commission on Gender Equity met on Wednesday to grapple […]
Aspasia Karras interviews Judi Priday, the managing director of newly formed Quantum Insurance Newly launched Quantum Insurance is breaking new ground in the corporate risk management industry. Not only is it the first major insurance company to appoint a woman managing director, Judi Priday (32), but it uses a different approach to combat the market […]
President Nelson Mandela has been ill-advised in allowing his political opponents to score so many points around the Shell House massacre. He would have done better to clear the air around that terrible incident a long time ago. What is emerging, at least from the full eyewitness account that we carry on Page 7 was […]
Justin Pearce Aspirant community radio broadcasters are furious with the Independent Broadcating Authority (IBA) for apparently favouring religious evangelists and rightwingers in the granting of licences. The loudest objections come from organisations trying to set up stations aimed at black communities, who feel sidelined both by the IBA’s manner of operating, and in its choice […]
Barbara Ludman EIGHTY percent of black South Africans and about 40 percent of whites cannot read or compute at a Standard Five level, according to a report released this week. In the first-ever nationwide study of literacy, Indian respondents showed the highest average literacy levels. Coloured participants scored, on average, between black and white literacy […]
Pat Sidley WEDNESDAY — D-day for health warnings on tobacco advertising — was an ultra-light affair: * Many radio stations were exempted from broadcasting cigarette ads with health warnings. * Warnings on cigarette packs did not appear after being given a stay of execution * Some tobacco companies simply withdrew their ads from the marketplace. […]
Justin Pearce Those who’ve been worried about a return to PW Botha- era broadcasting can sleep peacefully once more. The government’s request for airtime on SABC radio and television is unlikely to get past the SABC board when it comes up for discussion next Wednesday. Although the matter has not yet been formally presented to […]
The upcoming season of labour protests will make or break the labour movement, argues Eddie Koch DO or die. That’s how a union shopsteward this week explained The Congress of South African Trade Unions’ decision to stage a 1980s-style programme of mass action around the Labour Relations Amendment Bill. Although unintended, his statement may just […]
Ann Eveleth SENIOR Inkatha Freedom Party leaders this week closed ranks around party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi and engaged in a concerted damage-control exercise following the untimely leakage of the contentious “20- point plan” last week. While African National Congress leaders accused the party of launching a bid to secede KwaZulu/Natal from the rest of the […]
Eddie Koch A SPECIAL police unit this week arrested Colonel Louis Botha — the man who masterminded covert security police backing for Inkatha in the 1980s — and charged him with several political murders carried out at the Sources close to the Independent Task Unit (ITU), a team of detectives who operate out of Safety […]
Feel strongly about something in this newspaper? Want to question a reporter? Want to say something to the editor? Now’s your chance, with a new radio talk-back show starting this week. Mail & Guardian reporters, editor Anton Harber and other guests will be in the SAfm studio with Will Bernard this Friday morning (June 2) […]
Both the pro-life and pro-choice viewpoints were forcefully expressed as the abortion issue was discussed in parliament, writes Rehana Rossouw IT’S BEEN a brutal time for the parliamentary committee listening to public submissions on the abortion issue. Over the past two weeks pro-lifers have assaulted them with bottled foetuses and gory slide shows of abortions […]
ANC MP kicks dust in the faces of those who want to stop the Saldanha steel mill, reports Rehana Rossouw African National Congress MP Jenny Schreiner this week hit out at “arrogant” conservationists for trying to stop Iscor from building a steel mill in the environmentally sensitive Langebaan lagoon area at Her broadside came as […]
Stefaans Brummer FRESH evidence of South African arms fuelling civil wars in the killing fields of Rwanda, former Yugoslavia and Angola is threatening to eclipse the long-awaited findings the Cameron Commission is about to present to President Nelson Mandela. The report Judge Edwin Cameron, appointed last year to investigate irregular arms deals since 1990, is […]
Rehana Rossouw Spanish shipbuilder Joaquin Coello left South Africa on Tuesday night an extremely disappointed man, after months of lobbying failed to secure a decision from Cabinet to give his company a contract to build four corvettes at the cost of R1,69- billion. Coello said he was assured by contacts in the Ministry of Defence […]
Age: Born in 1959 when it was still fashionable to name your children after Eastern Bloc communist leaders. Has this been a liability? Only after he returned from exile in 1990, when even computers were anti-communist and spell checks would advise his name be changed to “Tits” or “Veto”. Present occupation: Minister with a Mission […]
Mike Loewe For Glenn van Loggerenberg, the earnest and upbeat station manager of Rhodes Music Radio, the angry old days of confrontation are an anathema. The new language, he insists, is sweet, slick music — much like the stuff that is coming through the walls as we Underneath the baggy pants and flowing jersey lurks […]
In the wake of our report last week on South Africa’s close relationship with Indonesia, Simon Ratcliffe says there should be even greater concern over our relations with Sudan Between October 1990 and September 1992 I lived and worked in Khartoum, Sudan, for the United Nations Development Programme. I was witness to acts of extreme […]
Bafana Khumalo With all the bitching about English as she is spoken on SAfm, wait till you hear the Voice of Soweto. It’s promising not to broadcast the queen’s English when the station comes on the air in spring. But in a spirit of reconciliation, the Voice promises not to slam the phone down on […]
As Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s adviser, Mario Ambrosini, is employed by the government, but he has been accused of planning to tear it apart, writes Ann Eveleth MARIO AMBROSINI, the American lawyer suspected of masterminding Inkatha’s “secession” strategy leaked last week, is on the government payroll earning more than the country’s Chief Justice. The African National Congress […]
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the unsolved assassination of Matthew Goniwe and his three Cradock comrades. Jonathan Ancer visited Goniwe’s home town Among the simple graves and the old, weathered headstones one polished tombstone looms large in the Lingelihle Cemetery. It stands watch over the remains and memories of Matthew Goniwe, Fort Calata, […]