Pat Sidley SOUTH AFRICANS will not be able to see the full effects=20 of the first budget of the government of national unity=20 until the nine provinces present their budgets to their=20 provincial legislatures within the next few weeks. The budget presented in parliament this week reflected=20 the amounts allocated for various national government=20 departments […]
Ann Eveleth A KEY witness in an African National Congress (ANC) court application against the controversial kwaZulu/Natal House of Traditional Leaders was brutally gunned down just weeks after deposing to an affidavit in support of the case, the ANC said this week. ANC organiser Celani Radebe was shot dead in the Ntabamhlope district of Estcourt […]
Estimated expenditure for the Office of the President,=20 which includes President Nelson Mandela’s salary,=20 amounts to R16,3-million, an increase of R272000 from=20 last year, according to the 1995/96 Budget. Expenditure for the office of Deputy President Thabo=20 Mbeki is estimated at R8,8-million, a decrease of R1,2=20 million. Expenditure for the office of Second Deputy=20 President […]
Pace against power in the loose forwards is a question=20 that will be highlighted in the Super 10 clash between=20 Transvaal and Western Province RUGBY: Jon Swift THERE can be little doubt that Transvaal have already=20 taken on the look — and demonstrated the drive in=20 patches — of this country’s preeminent provincial=20 Despite what […]
Jan Taljaard As high courts go, the new Pretoria Supreme Court has had little time to steep itself in history. No smells of previous life-or-death dramas cling to the machine- tooled benches. The lighting is almost overbearingly efficient and clinical, the texture of the wood panelling, if not exactly cheap, symbolises transient society rather than […]
Reg Rumney reports on what the Minister did not do to=20 the tax system. Finance ministers cannot do everything they are=20 expected to do, but the Budget this year has some=20 significant tax reform gaps. One big sin of omission was that no adjustments were=20 made to the tax table to take into account “fiscal=20 […]
This year’s Windybrow Arts Festival tackles inner-city=20 issues in an appeal to the people of Hillbrow. Matthew=20 Krouse reports T HE logistics of running an annual arts festival that=20 caters for all interest groups in Johannesburg and its=20 immediate surrounds continue to be hotly debated. In=20 planning such events, administrators leave themselves=20 as open to […]
With a dose of South African wit and a whipping by the=20 British team, the local brand of rugby league kicked=20 off last week RUGBY LEAGUE: Luke Alfred THE recent test between the Rhinos (the South African=20 amateur Rugby League side) and their amateur=20 counterparts from Britain was the ideal laboratory to=20 test the following […]
The proliferation of nominee companies to obscure=20 ownership continues despite the King Commission’s=20 recommendations to the contrary. “One wonders what will=20 trigger a confrontation,” says the latest edition of=20 McGregor’s Who Owns Whom. “One hopes that the sane international norms will soon=20 replace South Africa’s obsession with secrecy,” says=20 Over the past 12 years the […]
Weekly Mail & Guardian Reporter A SCREENING of the Citizen Kane of Egyptian cinema, The Night of Counting the Years, will open the Egyptian Film Festival next Friday at the Seven Arts Cinema in Norwood. Directed by Shadi Abdel Salam, the film is set at the opening of the tombs of the pharaohs in 1881 […]
Justin Pearce ALAN REYNOLDS looks worried. It’s Wednesday afternoon, and he’s just heard that a Johannesburg newspaper has run a headline announcing a meeting between Winnie Mandela and Thabo Mbeki. Neither he nor Mbeki’s office appears to know anything about the meeting — yet the calls are pouring in. “One of those things,” he says […]
The government will want to send the right signals to investors in next week’s Budget. Reg Rumney looks at its options Will the Budget stimulate the already blossoming economy, depress it, or have no effect? Whether the March 15 Budget will be — to put it in economic jargon — contractionary, expansionary, or neutral is […]
Environmentalists have threatened to interdict the police minister unless he puts a stop to a Natal dagga-spraying operation, reports Eddie Koch A COALITION of civic organisations yesterday threatened to interdict Police Minister Sydney Mufamadi unless his commissioner stops the narcotics bureau from spraying large areas of KwaZulu Natal with a dangerous herbicide designed to stamp […]
Critical Consumer Pat Sidley NEXT week’s Budget will please citizens who have become secondhand tobacco consumers without their consent: the anti-smoking lobby is expecting a tobacco tax increase. This may be between 25c and 40c per pack of 20s. It may not be nearly enough, but at least it’s something. And if the past is […]
A fast rise for the Malagasy lassie TENNIS: Stephen Bierley SUDDENLY and — judging by her performance this week — refreshingly, a talent of quite exceptional ability has emerged from Madagascar. Dally Randriantefy is only 18 but already has poise beyond her years. It would be invidious to liken her to any of the greats […]
LIVE shows and radio and TV will be governed by public indecency laws and the Independent Broadcasting Authority respectively. A new rating system for films and publications –including computer software — envisaged by the new Bill uses four categories. An XX rating bans the distribution of material that * Child pornography; * Explicit, prolonged sex […]
The Markets Jacques Magliolo South African institutions are strong enough to avoid being forced into bankruptcy by a “loose operator”, especially under present statutory regulations. To determine whether a Barings-type financial disaster could happen in South Africa I looked at the exposure of a number of institutions’ to non-equity financial instruments, such as bonds and […]
THEATRE: Guy Willoughby JUST what are Barney Simon and his cast doing in this bad production of a good but dated play about hopelessness in London’s East End? Sad to tell, but Simon — one of South Africa’s most celebrated directors — seems to have lost his way; at the very least, this version of […]
Jacques Magliolo Diamond giant De Beers released its unaudited results for the year to December 1994 this week and promised investors virtually unchanged earnings per share and a mere 4,5 percent increase in dividends. It seemed that the sole focus of the presentation was to voice their annoyance at Russia’s refusal to adhere to signed […]
If Dance Umbrella’s contemporary ballets are meant to be populist, why, asks Stanley Peskin, do they continue to elude understanding? DANCE Umbrella is now seven years old, and during its formative years some bad habits have set in. In the case of children, there are absent fathers, working mothers, lost sons. In the case of […]
A rather unlikely witness gave evidence at the Eugene de Kock trial this week, writes Jan Taljaard AS the prosecution this week trotted out its star witness in the case against former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock, Judge Richard Goldstone’s “Mr Q” turned out to be an incongruously boyish policeman with an itchy trigger finger. […]
Combating discrimination was the main focus of the international Aids conference held in Cape Town this week. Justin Pearce reports BURIED in the agenda of this week’s Cape Town International Conference for People Living with HIV and Aids was a session entitled “Identities”. Delegates split into interest groups — sex workers, heterosexuals, drug users, lesbians/gays, […]
In search of an outside perspective on Johannesburg’s much- mooted Biennale, Ivor Powell spoke to influential visiting ArtForum critic Thomas McEvilley As interviewees go, Thomas McEvilley is more than a little like a chess player: the strategy unfolds according to interior logics that are more telling in their totality than as individual responses to individual […]
Eddie Koch WATER Affairs Minister Kader Asmal this week instructed his officials to investigate pollution charges against the controversial Thor Chemicals factory in the kwaZulu/Natal Midlands. The minister’s move follows a personal inspection of the factory where at least two workers have died of mercury poisoning and scores of others have been exposed to dangerous […]
OPERA: Coenraad Visser DONIZETTI’s comic masterpiece Don Pasquale fares very well in Pact Opera’s restaging of its 1990 production. Against the backdrop of Anthony Farmer’s beautiful sets and with the characters splendidly and sometimes zanily dressed by Lindy Grindlay, Neels Hansen’s production sparkles with many deft comic touches deriving from the music. Hanli Stapela is […]
Clive Simpkins Years of recession and the new reconstruction-and- development-programme spirit have bred a healthy clutch of street intersection entrepreneurs — but buying from them is not for the incautious or the unwary. The bunch-of-flowers brigade are particularly slick operators. I recall a businessman friend of mine with all the Seigel-Sand-nous that comes from eastern-block […]
Super 10: Skilful forwards lay the foundation RUGBY: Jon Swift THERE are times when the performance of a pack of forwards takes your breath away. The famed All Black eight-man blanket is invariably capable of eliciting this reaction. The French rise to these heights when Gallic whim takes them, and of late both the English […]
Moveable Feast Marino Corazza WE’RE all part of the global village — or are we? There are still suburbs (however few and small) where the inhabitants nonchalantly live in their own worlds. Like the Glamour Village, where people on the hoof sport helenca jodhpurs, velour protective hats, that frothy, horsey smell and dung on their […]
Will Kader Asmal’s new disciplinary committee be able to curtail the ‘corrupt and hungry elite’ that has put the ANC into a tailspin? Eddie Koch reports KEY members of the ANC are holding thumbs that a new high-powered disciplinary committee, headed by Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Kader Asmal, will be able to pull the […]
THE deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology should have been the government member with the longest title and the shortest job-lifespan. Instead, her political survival is being assisted by incompetence and prevarication. The South African Police Services may have changed its title, but it still lacks the savvy to know that when you […]
ANTON Harber has been named sole editor of the Weekly Mail & Guardian. Harber has been co-editor since the paper’s launch a decade ago. The other co-editor, Irwin Manoim, has been appointed to head the planning for a new publishing venture that is part of the WM&G group’s development “Changes in South African politics and […]
CINEMA: William Pretorius IF, as Situationist Guy Debord announced would happen in the 1960s, the rise of the mass media has turned society into spectacle, then serial killers are the prime exhibits. They are no longer regarded as murderers, but as gruesome celebrities. That’s why Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers got it right: the movie […]