Jacques Magliolo reports on the ground-breaking JSE proposals to put more power in the hands of shareholders SHAREHOLDERS are set to obtain greater control of companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange if proposed changes to disclosure and listing requirements are implemented next year. A draft consultation document has been released and sent to companies, […]
Nombuyiselo Maloyi JESUS CHRIST is being carried by dancers, two by two, across a cement floor covered with a worn-out carpet in an eight-by- four rehearsal room that looks like an attic. The music changes and he disappears under a bundle of bodies as the dancers lift their hands from waist level to sky high. […]
Selectors plan to drop Wessels and replace him with Cronje CRICKET: Paul Martin KEPLER WESSELS is to be removed as South Africa’s Test and one-day cricket captain and replaced by Hansie Cronje. This drastic and controversial step has already been decided on even though the selectors only meet officially in mid- September to announce the […]
Old Mutual’s policyholders have profited from the surge in the stock market. Reg Rumney reports on the assurance giant’s views about the future of share investments DESPITE interest rates that are high — and might go higher — and nervousness about the effect of a possible scrapping of exchange control, giant life assurer Old Mutual […]
Wiseman Khuzwayo DR NEIL Barnard, director-general of the department of constitutional development and former chief of the National Intelligence Service, is considering taking up an offer of an academic post with the University of Potchefstroom. Barnard confirmed this week that the university recently approached him to apply for the post of head of the department […]
Mark Gevisser visits Soweto’s Mzimhlope Hostel and finds the beginnings of a new political tolerance — thanks to two extraordinary women IF Rita Tandy and Nonhlanhla Masondo were seen together a mere few months ago, both would have been in mortal danger. You wouldn’t know that now if you see the two women meandering together […]
Joe Cocker, Sting, Vaya Con Dios… Local bands are having a rough ride in their wake, reports Fred de Vries AS foreign stars flood into South Africa, local bands struggle harder to attract small crowds. Last weekend saw Live Jimi Presley doing two gigs at Tandoor’s in Rockey Street, Yeoville. Friends had been praising LJP […]
We can expect a triple B on our investment report card, writes Simon Segal A TEAM preparing South Africa’s country credit rating, vital for the country to be able to raise money abroad less expensively than it has done, is in the country. The team should have a rating within the next few weeks. Most […]
A FILM crew who followed Nelson Mandela to Oslo last year found him, on the morning he was to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, making his own bed.
Estelle Randall EIGHTY-FOUR-year-old Andries Radebe is one of almost 3 000 people who were removed from Crimen in the 1970s and resettled in Ezakheni, near Ladysmith. Radebe and 98 other landowners had the added pain of seeing their land lie unused for 11 years, before being sold to a private owner. After efforts to get […]
Stefaans Brummer PRESSURE is building in New Zealand over the presence of a former South African security police captain implicated in the brutal slaying of his first wife. New Zealand’s immigration service is now reviewing its file on Michael Bellingan, who left Johannesburg on May 29, three weeks after a Johannesburg inquest court found there […]
Sibusiso Nxumalo ATTEMPTS by the Mail & Guardian to establish the credentials of an unknown union which emerged as a role player in this week’s protest by truck drivers have raised more questions than answers about the Turning Wheels International Workers’ Union. A telephone number listed on membership application forms handed out to striking truck […]
The End Conscription Campaign has demobbed. Its success lay in individual creativity, counter-cultural inspiration and youthful anger. Gavin Evans reports THE launch of the End Conscription Campaign 11 years ago was one of those rare moments of creative inspiration that happen so seldom in protracted political struggles. Not only did it play a major part […]
The conviction of a Noupoort policeman has resulted in civil claims against the minister of safety and security, writes Gaye Davis A KAROO policeman who extracted “confessions” from suspects by suspending them, handcuffed and blindfolded, from a pole and shocking them with electrodes, has been convicted in the Graaff-Reinet Regional Court of assault with intent […]
Amid the illusion of free, fair elections, democracy and good journalism, Malawi is heading for secessionist misery, reports Bruce Cohen ‘ASSASSINATION plots galore — ruling party associated with the evil act,” trumpeted the headline in last Saturday’s Malawi News, one of a dozen newspapers that have sprung up to face the challenge of Africa’s newest […]
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew ATHLETES and spectators alike will be hoping for calm weather in Durban tomorrow morning as a classy field takes to the road in the Ohlsson’s Great South Run. The race, which acts as the South African half- marathon championships from which the teams for the world half- marathonchampionships to be staged in […]
STANDING rules for the national assembly refer to people not directly involved with parliament as “strangers”. The ANC wants to change this. There are no strangers, it says, only “non-members” — after all, parliament represents the country’s people. A drive to involve the public in law-making has seized the new parliament. Holy cows of the […]
AFRICA Lionel N’gakane, who left a lifetime ago to make films, returned to South Africa this month — to promote the building of cinemas to show them in. He spoke to William Pretorius Lionel N’gakane has the sort of deep, authoritative voice you would expect to hear on the stage — he trained as an […]
Sometimes called the Detroit of South Africa, the Port Elizabeth-Uitenhage economy is reeling from the effects of the automobile strike, writes Steuart Wright IN Tambo Village, a shack settlement outside Uitenhage, Prudence Ndika (35) doesn’t know how she is going to feed her family of four. A month ago her husband, Fezile Ndika (39), a […]
This is the first in what will be a weekly column by Clive Simpkins focusing on the media and marketing world REG LASCARIS (of Hunt Lascaris TBWA) and Nick Green (of Markinor) have long argued the case for recognising “value bands” in people’s thinking. They stress that it’s not just demographics (where they live, how […]
The Markets Jaques Magliolo WILL investors never learn that an extra percentage point is not worth the risk of losing all one’s hard earned savings? The problem, say the experts, is that most South African investors do not understand or believe they can protect their investment better than anyone else can. “Stockbrokers, analysts and portfolio […]
SOCCER: Clinton Assari WITH the talk of bugged telephones, cartels and shady deals in the corridors of the FNB stadium over for the moment, the action moves back on to the field with the last 32 of the Bobsave Superbowl Knockout Competition this weekend. There will be five all-first-division matches which will see some of […]
Despite some disappointments the South African team has performed creditably at the Games, writes Julian Drew WITH a return of four bronze medals at the halfway stage in the Commonwealth Games, a success-hungry South African public may have felt a little disappointed at their team’s performance in the opening five days of competition. The truth […]
The wheels are back on, but the truckers’ blockade was a costly protest. Farouk Chothia reports DAVE MARTIN (44) has hauled freight for the past 10 years. “I’m not married. I can’t find a girlfriend. I’m treated like a filthy, stinking truck driver,” he said during this week’s unprecedented protest action by thousands of striking […]
The Lesotho prime minister’s request for aid was the reason behind the suspension of his government, writes Wiseman Khuzwayo A REQUEST from ousted Lesotho Prime Minister Ntsu Mokhehle to Southern African leaders for a peace-keeping force to quell an army uprising lay behind King Letsie III’s dramatic suspension of his government, the Mail & Guardian […]
Annie Mapoma FOR some refugees, South Africa is not the land of milk and honey. “We would rather go back and die in our country than stay here and suffer,” said two Rwandans being counselled this week by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Johannesburg. Alexis Nzigimana (23) and Just Matata (22) are […]
Michael Sekuneke CIVIL servants in the Northern Transvaal are threatening mass action to force premier Mgwako Ramatlhodi’s administration to honour his pre-election promises. They are expected to bring the province to a standstill on Tuesday when thousands of government employees in the former Lebowa, Venda and Gazankulu homelands take to the streets to highlight their […]
Anton Harber talks to Cyril Ramaphosa, the man in charge of rebuilding the ANC THERE are not many people who could reduce their workforce by 300 people and say it had “worked out marvellously”. Certainly not former trade unionists. But then there are not many people who would turn down a cabinet post, opting instead […]
BUT YOU COULD LOSE YOUR FRIENDS More irksome status symbols than BMWs, cellular phones demand their own set of rules for users. Reg Rumney reports on cell phone etiquette YOU are lying on the beach, soaking up the sun’s pleasant if carcinogenic rays and listening to the soothing susurration of the sea’s waves. But what’s […]
Chris Louw reports from Parliament Behind the NP grumbles about unfair treatment lies a belated discovery: the cabinet’s no longer the seat of power PARLIAMENTARY power is shifting inexorably away from the cabinet of national unity to the ANC-dominated standing committees. And since the NP based its negotiating strategy on shared power in the cabinet, […]
As the outcry over MPs salaries continues, a research report will be discussed by the ANC’s national executive committee, reports Chris Louw SALARIES paid to members of parliament will be debated at an ANC national executive committee (NEC) meeting in Cape Town this weekend in an effort to stop accusations that MPs live like “fat […]
They are completely surrounded by a Defence Force battlefield, but the Khosis refuse to move. Stefaans Brummer reports on a land dispute involving the ANC, the army and the residents A TINY Northern Cape community clinging to what is left of its ancestral lands in the middle of a South African National Defence Force battle […]