Staff Reporter

THE African National Congress (ANC) voiced concern this=20 week that the Inkatha Freedom Party’s (IFP) rejection=20 of local government elections in tribal areas will deny=20 the majority of the province’s population the vote. ANC local government head in kwaZulu/Natal Mike=20 Sutcliffe said the IFP still has no plans to register=20 an estimated 2,7-million African voters […]

Insurance agents who prey on the ignorance of rural=20 clients are wasting huge amounts of public savings,=20 writes Jimmy Roth IN the last six months of 1994 the Grahamstown Black=20 Sash Advice office assisted 157 rural people with their=20 insurance policies. In the vast majority of cases,=20 agents misrepresented the nature of the policy to=20 […]

A Zairean businessman has caused a storm=20 with his Berea-based communication network, reports=20 Annie Mapoma AN enterprising Zairean businessman has set up a=20 communication network in a Berea house to connect=20 expatriates to friends, family and businesses back=20 Zaireans are flocking to the offices of Full Business=20 Services, at 87 Honey Street, for fast, cheap=20 […]

Weekly Mail Reporter THE chief does not reign. He rules. He allocates land=20 to his subjects for a fee. He presides over a tribal=20 court to pass sentence on minor offenders. He decides=20 where schools can be built and where boreholes can be=20 The chief is the supreme ruler over his subjects: they=20 either submit […]

ATHLETICS: Julian Drew ON Saturday the country’s top middle distance athletes will do battle to secure a team berth from the remaining places still on offer for the world cross country championships in Durham, England on March 25. But while there may be a welcome respite in the chance to exchange the winter sport of […]

Media and marketing Clive Simpkins THE frequent dissonance between corporate advertising and coal-face contact with an organisation is fascinating. Pretoria, over several months last year, ran a series of press ads designed to woo and seduce the sceptical into accepting it as the home of our Tutu-esque rainbow nation parliament. The campaign extolled the virtues […]

BOXING: Gavin Evans THE notion of a “Great Black Hope” may seem a little odd in South Africa — particularly in a sport where blacks outnumber whites by nine to one — but boxing’s 1995 Prospect of the Year is not shy about embracing this dubious label. Courage Tshabalala shrugs his massive shoulders, nods his […]

The old laager mentality is raising its ugly head again=20 in the form of xenophobia. Eddie Koch and=20 Accadoga Chiledi report SOUTH Africa’s landscape is littered with bronze and=20 stone statues of ox-wagons drawn into a circle to=20 defend those on the inside from a marauding band on the=20 outside. There is no need to […]

Amid the scar tissue of District Six, a new museum is helping to heal its ravaged community. Tony Morphet reports THE buzz around the museums and galleries gets louder all the time. Like a beehive after a long winter, the political spring has suddenly brought a lot of fresh activity. New collections, exhibitions, policies, even […]

Critical Consumer Pat Sidley A PROPOSED new health care system, one of the ANC’s key=20 election promises, is the topic of hot debate at the=20 moment almost everywhere that counts: within the ANC,=20 the government of national unity, parliament, various=20 think tanks on health policy, the Department of Health=20 and among all health care professionals. […]

Justin Pearce in Cape Town ASSASSINATIONS in squatter camps and high-handed=20 manoeuvrings by an Eastern Cape MEC: these two=20 occurrences in the Western Cape in the past week have=20 more in common than meets the eye. Both threaten the process of local government=20 transformation, but in a way that may not be obvious:=20 the National […]

The Urban Foundation closed its doors on Tuesday=20 18 years after it was founded in response to the=20 Soweto uprising. It was a controversial organisation=20 but, writes chief executive Sam van Coller, it=20 changed the way we think — and work SHUTTING down the Urban Foundation, emptying the=20 offices, watching the staff disperse to other […]

Reg Rumney looks at the latest row about how official inflation is measured Once again the official inflation figure supplied by the government’s Central Statistical Services has been called into question. Cosatu said this week a study by the union-aligned research group Naledi confirmed its suspicions that the official inflation figure is inaccurate. The CSS […]

Printers are making a stand against crippling rises in the price of paper, reports Bronwen Jones SOUTH African printers are lobbying government to remove tariffs and curb paper prices that have soared more than 60 percent in the past 12 months and are set to rise much further still. The Printing Industries Federation (Pifsa) has […]

Mapula Sibanda A BUS boycott seems to be the spark that set off last=20 week’s violence at Vaal Reef’s No 8 Shaft in which 12=20 people were killed and 36 admitted to hospital, three=20 with critical injuries; 62 miners were treated for=20 minor injuries and discharged.=20 The boycott started in September last year, after a=20 […]

For new National Commissioner of Police George Fivaz,=20 dealing with the past involves a retreat to the future.=20 He spoke to Mark Gevisser=20 IN private circles, George Fivaz likes to tell the=20 following story: when he was a young policeman and a=20 post in the Security Police was considered a sharp=20 career move, he applied […]

BY replaying his pre-election game of brinkmanship, IFP=20 leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi appears set to wage a=20 fierce campaign to win local government elections in=20 kwaZulu/Natal and ring concessions from the African=20 National Congress (ANC) in the Constitutional Assembly=20 Buthelezi has clearly kept the initiative over a lame- duck ANC in kwaZulu/Natal by announcing plans to […]

CRICKET: Jon Swift THE rightful flurry of concern which has surrounded the injury to Brian McMillan is illustrative of the immense pressures on the modern day Test cricketer. At the heart of the issue which has kept everyone on tenterhooks for the past week, is the fact convenor of the national selectors Peter Pollock has […]

Farouk Chothia TENSIONS surfaced between kwaZulu/Natal safety and=20 security MEC Celani Mtetwa and his colleagues in the=20 Inkatha Freedom Party over the planned graduation today=20 of about 500 recruits into the kwaZulu Police (KZP). Although he has a reputation as a hardliner, Mtetwa has=20 taken a softer line than IFP national parliamentarians=20 Velaphi Ndlovu and […]

Fashionable and cool — or aids to spiritual enlightenment? Malu van Leeuwen investigates Capetonians’ penchant for tattoos `TATTOOS Get You Sex” boasts a T-shirt walking around Cape Town. It’s an old gimmick, using the promise of sex to market the product. But there’s life yet in the tired cliche — because whether it’s piercing or […]

The Foundation for=20 Peace and Justice witheld=20 Danish funding for a Karoo=20 preschool association, reports=20 Justin Pearce in Cape Town AS the investigation into the allegations of misuse of=20 funding by Dr Allan Boesak’s Foundation for Peace and=20 Justice draws to a close, the Weekly Mail & Guardian=20 has obtained further evidence of foreign donor […]

Weekly Mail Reporter ALMOST three quarters of the executives of the Top 100 companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange have no faith in the reconstruction and development programme, the ANC’s grand plan to put right the wrongs left by apartheid. This is the finding of the annual business environment survey conducted by Unisa’s Bureau […]

FINE ART: Ivor Powell I AM assured that it is coincidental, or maybe serendipitous, that Geoffrey Armstrong’s exhibition The Tree should have opened at the Newtown Galleries within a week of Edoardo Villa’s Trees at the Goodman Galley. Nor is it hard to believe that this is the case: beyond the accident of the title, […]

Gavin Evans IT is one of those abiding South African ironies that a=20 man who was banned and house-arrested for supporting=20 independent trade unions should become the key player=20 in rewriting the country’s labour law. But in Halton Cheadle’s case, the story verges from the=20 familiar. There is no “it takes one to catch one”=20 […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin THE opening shot of a lake and mountains in Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors is seminal. Throughout the film it sticks in the memory as an image of a once tranquil world that has been lost. Within a space of a few seconds, the camera tracks back to reveal crowded streets and […]

CRICKET: Jon Swift THE enduring memory of this summer’s cricket will be an incident on the boundary ropes rather than any of the truly exciting things which happened out in the middle. It was the sight of Fanie de Villiers in the middle of the Kingsmead Test following the umpires and their lightmeters off the […]

Critical Consumer Pat Sidley SOUTH AFRICAN consumers should be getting used to the notion of debating critical issues around their health care. But one issue that needs a bit more attention is the rationing of health care. More precisely — who should live and who should die, a question facing hospitals and health maintenance organisations […]

The South African team is on a winning streak but now the players have to prove that they can win away from home as well CRICKET: Jon Swift THERE can be no doubting national cricket coach Bob Woolmer’s intentions as the 16-strong South African side prepare to leave for the one-off Centenary Test against New […]

Residents of Kathorus will get their homes back, writes Mduduzi ka Harvey. But where will the illegal occupants live now? THERE’S a ray of hope for more than 2 000 Kathorus families who were forced to flee their homes because of political violence between Inkatha Freedom Party hostel dwellers and ANC-aligned residents in the East […]

South Africans may never know the truth if the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Bill goes through, argues Paul van Zyl THE recent furore over the clandestine attempt to grant amnesty to 3 500 members of the security forces (including Adriaan Vlok, Magnus Malan and Johan van der Merwe) has strengthened calls for the […]

The Markets Jacques Magliolo ‘WHEN restrictions are lifted, overseas investors will come into our country and clean out our cupboard (of shares),” a shareholder told me at one of last year’s Christmas parties. “We have to keep restrictions and, in fact, strengthen them,” he asserted, in a near state of panic. Immediately, he had an […]

The National Party’s congress was a slick show but it will take more than a good stage performance to restore the NP to its former state, reports Gaye Davis ENERGETIC tannies boogying to township jive, black speakers prefacing their inputs with cries of “Viva, NP, viva!”, the multi-lingual phrase booklet in every delegate’s blue congress […]