Absent talent: Super 10 and World Cup keep top players=20 away from festival in Hong Kong RUGBY: Barney Spender IT’S that time of the year again when, for one mad=20 weekend, the serious business of grinding 15-man rugby is=20 put on the back burner and in its place hops the rather=20 frisky and entirely unserious […]
The textile industry will have to shift up a gear if it=20 is to cope against foreign competition, reports Jacques=20 THE scrapping of import surcharges in last week’s Budget=20 tolls the death knell for protectionism and import=20 substitution, destroying a complacent way of life for=20 South African industrialists and manufacturers alike. While the scrapping of […]
Critical Consumer Pat Sidley IT IS a commonly held view that South African consumers are ignorant, apathetic and don’t stand up for themselves. There is good reason for thinking this at times — particularly when well-educated, well-heeled consumers who know the ropes of life don’t take up the challenge of bad service, sue for medical […]
GOLF: Terry Dennis NOT completely satisfied with establishing himself as the=20 world’s number one golfer, Nick Price is planning to=20 achieve something that has been beyond the reach of the=20 all-time golfing greats from Byron Nelson through to=20 Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus. For all of their success, none of them ever quite got=20 round […]
New evidence has surfaced suggesting links between Armscor and Ulster loyalist paramilitaries, reports Stefaans Brummer Top South African lawyers returned this week from Belfast in Northern Ireland with fresh evidence of collusion between Armscor and Ulster paramiliary groups. Now the Cameron Commission, which is investigating irregular Armscor deals, will be asked to extend its probe […]
RUGBY: Jon Swift THERE is little doubt that, right now at least, if you=20 asked Kitch Christie for the loan of his life, he would=20 willingly sign ov er a long-term lease on it. Such have been the frustrations and fumblings of our top=20 players over the past few weeks, that the national coach=20 must, […]
Weekly Mail & Guardian Reporters Coloureds are being discriminated against in the private sector’s affirmative action (AA) scramble for African faces, particularly in lower level jobs, say leading personnel agencies. Although AA theoretically benefits all disadvantaged people, the majority of companies want Africans, and agencies often use factors like language, place of residence, education, and […]
Weekly Mail & Guardian editor Anton Harber, a former Wits student, believes the university administration has been too clever for its own good The University of the Witwatersrand is providing an early-warning barometer of pressures we can expect in the rest of our society. The campus has often served this role. In the 1970s, it […]
Moveable Feast Marino Corazza IN time I’ll have the guts to rip Africa out of my heart.=20 I have this strange romantic notion that I’ll retire in=20 Sardinia. Not as the Aga Khan’s neighbour on the Costa=20 Smerelda, but at some forgotten spot on the coast,=20 surrounded by silver granite, fragrant woods, craggy=20 reefs, emerald-clear […]
Glenn Adler argues that workers and management alike should overcome their instinctive suspicion of the plan to create workplace forums THE proposal to create workplace forums — in the new Labour Relations Act (LRA) — is an attempt to bring South Africa’s move to political democracy into the workplace. Political democratisation has created the opportunity […]
THERE could hardly be a more exciting time to start a=20 revamped national radio service in South Africa. Just=20 look at us! We no longer stink like a polecat. The=20 president jets all over the place receiving hero’s=20 welcomes. The Queen of England comes to dinner. In=20 Washington, President Clinton of the United States shakes=20 […]
ICE HOCKEY fans are in for a treat — the Pool C World=20 Championships, featuring top new teams such as Lithuania=20 and Croatia. Between this week and the end of the month, 10 teams will=20 fight for places in the semi-finals and finals at the=20 Carlton and Krugersdorp rinks. “From a purely competitive point of […]
PAC President Clarence Makwetu used Sharpeville Day to remind people that nothing much had changed in South Africa. This is an edited version of his speech The day Comrade Mandela was inaugurated in May last year, we watched with interest the fly-past. Here was the South African air force demonstrating its might. Here was the […]
The people of Namaqualand didn’t just want to see the queen, they wanted to ask her for help, writes Justin Pearce The people from Namaqualand didn’t wave flags to greet Queen Elizabeth on her arrival in Cape Town on Monday. They waved placards. The only obviously dissenting voices in the crowd, they had travelled 500km […]
Jacques Magliolo Engen has intensified its thrust for exploration and=20 production of oil in West Africa in an attempt to stem=20 declining profits and to rectify a free-falling share=20 The chemical and oil giant’s 1994 financial year saw a=20 13,6 percent drop in earnings per share and its share=20 price has fallen from a 1993 […]
The auditor-general’s report to parliament on the Transkei Public Debt Commission is a litany of corruption and incompetence, writes Gaye Davis SPARE a thought for Eastern Cape premier Raymond Mhlaba, for he has inherited the shambles left by the administrative collapse of Transkei. Spare a thought too for taxpayers, for they will be footing the […]
As increasing numbers of coloured people become disillusioned with the big political parties, a new group has stepped into the breach, writes Stefaans Brummer ‘THE brown man’s struggle did not end when Nelson Mandela was freed. Our struggle is against a new form of slavery which hangs over us like a black cloud,” is how […]
The actions of a British paper led to the arrest of a mercenary accused of third force killings. Did they double-cross a murderer for the sake of a good story? Eddie Koch reports THE London Sunday Times is facing controversy over its role in the arrest of a mercenary who was its source in an […]
Gaye Davis A TRIUMPHANT Winnie Mandela is weighing up launching a civil suit for damages against Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi, sources close to the deputy minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology indicated this week. She consulted with her lawyer, Templeton Mageza, on Wednesday to “discuss the way forward” after the Rand […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin LEGENDS of the Fall has the look and feel of a film made=20 in the 1950s. Its emotionally overwrought style, replete=20 with biblical echoes, is resonant of Elia Kazan’s self- important adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden=20 (1955) in its treatment of sibling rivalries and love.=20 Most of the characters have […]
The ANC is being forced to address growing divisions between coloureds and Africans, reports Gaye Davis. Tensions between coloureds and Africans within the ANC in the Western Cape are paralysing the movement and jeopardising its chances of regaining political ground in the local government elections. Western Cape ANC leader Reverend Chris Nissen was to meet […]
EGYPT is the third-largest movie producer in the world,=20 earning the country the title of the “Hollywood of the=20 Middle East”. The Egyptian Film Festival, which begins=20 today at the Seven Arts Cinema in Norwood,=20 Johannesburg, will present eight of the country’s=20 landmark films, made between 1968 and today.=20 The films, presented by the Egyptian […]
CDs/Malu van Leeuwen SWANS: The Great Annihilator (Young God) MICHAEL GIRA must be the most depressed individual in=20 the galaxy. “I am insane,” he intones on I am the Sun,=20 with Jarboe warbling somewhere from the third ring of=20 Saturn. Still, if Gira ever cheered up, scores of Swans=20 devotees would sink into irreversible melancholia. […]
Critical Consumer Pat Sidley CONSUMERS needing glasses and looking for cheaper or quicker alternatives to traditional optometrists may have noticed a growth in new and different forms of doing business among some optometrists. They’ve been at it a while — and hassled by officialdom for doing it. But their type of practice appears to be […]
Phil Collins combines good music with all the right=20 political credentials, writes Pat Sidley FOR those with their hearing (and purses) still intact=20 after the Rolling Stones blast, the best reference for=20 the Phil Collins concerts has come inadvertently from=20 the Stones’ own publicist, who thinks Collins’ concert=20 is one of the best on the […]
South Africans eager to get housing could learn a lot from the way Afrikaners used co-operatives, argues James McGregor All of South Africa’s citizens are aware of the challenge ahead in aiming to house the nation’s lower- income population. The recently published White Paper quantifies the problem: 40% of all households earn less than R800/month; […]
Annie Mapoma THE government’s decision to rename “Sharpeville Day” on March 21 as Human Rights Day, has infuriated the Pan Africanist Congress. March 21 has for 35 years been an unofficial stayaway day for black South Africans marking the 1960 Sharpeville massacre, when police shot dead 69 people and wounded 177 others during a pass […]
So cautious was this week’s budget that the finance=20 minister has been dubbed the Kepler Wessels of finance=20 ministers, writes Reg Rumney It could be described as a Banker’s Budget, cautious=20 and conservative to a fault. Indeed, one humourist this=20 week described Chris Liebenberg as the Kepler Wessels=20 of finance ministers. To be fair to […]
Clive Simpkins With all the brouhaha about a national health scheme,=20 the whole issue of marketing safer sex to ill-informed,=20 superstitious and suspicious communities is in danger=20 of being eclipsed, or altogether lost. Get ready for an=20 unpopular and un-PC but vital series of observations. The recent international Aids conference in South=20 Africa highlighted some […]
With his strong union and civic background Thozamile Botha is well-placed to tackle the problems in the Eastern Cape, writes Shadley Nash THE man whose job it is to turn governance in the Eastern Cape from “crisis management” to “strategic management of change” was one of the founders of the civic movement. But Thozamile Botha, […]
It is incumbent upon legislators to pen their semantic outpourings in a manner comprehensible to the populus … Sorry, government language should be simple, argues Justin Pearce ‘ESSENTIAL budgetary reforms, linked to the enhancement of systems and institutional management and the improvement of professional practice, will bring major equity, efficiency and productivity gains, amounting to […]
Economists believe the all-important Budget=20 deficit is still too high. Reg Rumney reports Finance Minister Chris Liebenberg did not go far enough=20 in cutting the projected Budget deficit to 5,8 percent=20 for the 1995/96 financial year.=20 This is the feeling among economists canvassed by the=20 Weekly Mail & Guardian. They felt the Budget does not […]