Staff Reporter

The market is being flooded with students who have “meaningless postgraduate qualifications” David Macfarlane Weak research leadership is perpetuating a cycle of mediocrity in South African research and scholarship. And research-related degrees especially master’s degrees with an up to 50% coursework component have become seriously devalued, so that the market is being flooded with students […]

The NNP has launched a township charm offensive, stressing similarities between blacks and Afrikaners Jaspreet Kindra “They move from one white man to another!” remarked a black journalist in disgust as he watched former Democratic Alliance supporters from three Vaal townships pledge support for the relaunched New National Party in Evaton on Sunday afternoon. The […]

Simon Kuper The blue and white Argentina shirts are familiar, but the name on the back is not. “Basta,” it says. Surely that should be Batistuta? No, “basta” means “enough”, the emotion that the Argentine protesters wearing the shirts are trying to convey. “Basta,” they are telling the country’s politicians, its banks, the International Monetary […]

Thebe Mabanga The South African documentary-making establishment has received a boost from Wits University’s launch last year of its master’s degree in history and documentary film. The degree “fills a gap”, says course coordinator Professor Philip Bonner, head of Wits’s history department. “There is no place on the Reef offering training that combines conceptual, intellectual, […]

Politics might prevent the Sharks coach taking over the Boks Andy Capostagno If the rumours are to be believed, Rudolf Straeuli’s CV is about to become complete less than five years after he decided to augment his player wage with a coaching stipend in the English backwater of Bedford. The media have elected Straeuli as […]

Khadija Magardie The debate over the affordability of providing anti-retrovirals free in public hospitals has taken on a new controversial dimension, after President Thabo Mbeki quoted an International Monetary Fund (IMF) study out of context on national television. The study on the economic impact of HIV/Aids in Southern Africa was cited by Mbeki on last […]

BOXING Maggie Davey In a land survey carried out in 1855 in the town of Ennis in county Clare, Ireland, the unremarkable note was made that one John Grady was renting a house in Turnpike Road in the centre of the town for 15 shillings a month. Around this time, and across the Atlantic, in […]

David Macfarlane With the ink barely dry on proposals that could see South Africa’s 36 tertiary institutions slashed to 21, it is already clear that massive resistance can be expected from universities and technikons the proposals target. And it is equally clear that Minister of Education Kader Asmal now faces a torrid political battle to […]

The NGO Working Group on Reparations represents a number of NGOs concerned about reparation for and the future welfare of victims of gross human rights abuse. One of these concerns has been government’s long delay in finalising policy and payment to victims identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The TRC’s “final” final report must […]

Kevin Scott Eskom health manager Carl Manser spends more than two of every three of his working days dealing with HIV/Aids. Producing and overseeing counselling services, developing education policies and training staff in ethics, human rights and government policy are all part of Manser’s daily routine. Recent research suggests a fifth of the workforce is […]

The first phase of a billion-rand computerised identification system is to be handed over next week Marianne Merten After numerous delays including a probe into alleged tender improprie-ties, redrafted tender requirements and an escalation of costs from R800-million in 1996 to perhaps R3,5-billion the first part of the Home Affairs National Identification System (Hanis) is […]

BOXING Deon Potgieter The irrepressible Baby Jake Matlala will have his last professional fight at Carnival City on March 2. In October 1988 the question was first put to Matlala: “Are you going to retire now?” That was after his fourth defeat in two years, at the hands of Vuyani Nene. “No” said Matlala. “I’ve […]

Glenda Daniels The explosion in media studies over the past few years in a rapidly shrinking market has not made the University of Port Elizabeth (UPE) shy away from introducing a new master’s programme in this field this year. But the course director of the MA in media, communication and culture at UPE, Professor Danie […]

colloquium Pule Radingwana Apartheid was created to further the particular norms and values of the white community. Taxpayers’ money benefited that group at the expense of black people. Since 1994 there has been a misconception that transformation merely means reformation. Transformation should have a political philosophy, with the aim of meeting the needs and aspirations […]

South Africa needs more than Steve Waugh’s one-day axeing to win Peter Robinson Say what you like about Australians, you have to defer to a nation able to enrich the English language with expressions like “cockheads”. All being well, as Steve Waugh (and someone else) and the Australian cricketers trundle around the country, they might […]

Gideon Mendel is currently exhibiting A Broken Landscape as part of the exhibition Positive Lives in the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. This is his body of work depicting HIV/Aids across Africa, shot over the past decade. From February 16 the gallery will be filled with a vibrant installation that will both challenge […]

Bongani Majola In a document entitled Is the Revolution Safe in Your Hands? the African National Congress Youth League has fiercely attacked the party’s Mpumulanga leadership and the national ANC’s management of party affairs in the province. The document, penned on the eve of the Mpumalanga provincial congress, is a clear attempt to assert the […]

analysis Drew Forrest Last Friday I experienced a creeping sensation every hack knows and dreads publication remorse. The Mail & Guardian was spot on when it reported that there is no immediate prospect of cabinet posts for the New National Party in African National Congress-dominated provinces, as provided for in its pact with the ANC. […]

On Friday we heard the grandiose President Thabo Mbeki speaking (in sonorous phrases, with long pauses for effect) about the alleviation of poverty and the awesome gap between his poor black constituents and whites. He will not, of course, speak about the awesome per capita expenditure gap between himself and those same constituents. This is […]

David Shapshak Ultimately, 20twenty’s most famous billboard pay-off line, a quote from Microsoft chief Bill Gates “Banking is necessary, banks are not” has come back to haunt it and most certainly its parent, Saambou. Despite being a rising local Internet star, the virtual bank is now part of the Saambou meltdown. Like Absa last month, […]

It surprises me that businesses are not getting together to fight Telkom on their criminal price increase at the very least businesses and government departments should refuse to pay Telkom until further notice. How can we develop our economy when we have a single entity essentially stealing millions from the public? Every year Telkom spins […]

Three Southern African countries have sold out the region’s peasants in favour of quick profits and short-term political expediency, a new hard-hitting academic study warns Sizwe samaYende and Justin Arenstein The University of the Western Cape’s school of government claims the systematic betrayal of small-scale and subsistence farmers in Mozambique, South Africa and Zimbabwe is […]

Dear Agony Aunt Honours is over, I have a great idea for a master’s dissertation, and I’ve scraped up money for fees. But am I good enough? Will they accept me? Should I apply to my old university where they know me, or should I change? What about the stress? Is a humanities research degree […]

A 29-year-old Fidelity Security guard was killed and another wounded during an attempted cash-in-transit robbery on the Roodepoort Road in Soweto on Tuesday morning, police reported. Superintendent Richard Luvhengo said an unknown number of gunmen travelling in three vehicles, a Mercedes Benz, BMW and a bakkie opened fire on the guards at 6.30. The cash-in-transit […]

Lagos | Wednesday AUTHORITIES in Lagos threatened on Tuesday to sue CNN over its coverage of recent ethnic clashes which claimed at least 100 lives in the city. “I have asked the state attorney-general, Yemi Osibajo, to assess the extent of collateral damage suffered by the state because of the CNN report,” Lagos State Governor […]

AUTHORITIES in Lagos said on Tuesday they have postponed, for the second time in a week, a mass burial for unclaimed bodies of those who died following last month’s arms depot inferno. The burial, originally fixed for last Thursday, was later shifted to Wednesday. It has been postponed once more, to Saturday. “Saturday is the […]

SOUTH African police have recovered more than a quarter million dollars’ worth of anti-cancer drugs that were allegedly stolen at the Johannesburg international airport. Police representative director Henriette Bester said: “Police acting on a tip-off pulled off a car at a roadblock and recovered 36 boxes of medicines worth R3,5-million ($307 500/351 000 euros).” The […]

PETRUS Balt (37) has been appointed as Absa’s treasurer, responsible for the markets and trading activities of the bank. Absa said in a statement on Thursday that Balt would also be a member of the executive committee of the bank. Balt, formerly group treasurer at Mondi Limited, a full subsidiary of Anglo American plc, joined […]

A 17-year-old boy has been arraigned before an Islamic court in the northern Nigerian city of Sokoto in the murder of his stepmother and faces execution if convicted, local radio reported Tuesday. He would be the second to be executed under Sharia law, the strict Islamic code that has been reintroduced in many northern Nigerian […]

A MOTORIST who was convicted of shooting down the highway at Park Rynie on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast at 204km/hour was fined R20 000, SABC radio reported on Friday night. Traffic spokesman Phillip Maskell said the driver had to make an immediate payment of R10 000, and the remainder would have to be paid over […]

Pietersburg | Tuesday THE Northern Province capital of Pietersburg looks set to be renamed Polokwane meaning place of safety on Thursday. The ad-hoc committee on the renaming of Pietersburg on Monday held a public hearing in the city at which it heard suggestions and arguments. “The committee will present a list of recommendations to the […]

Johannesburg | Tuesday ZIMBABWEAN journalist Basildon Peta on Tuesday denied he had admitted fabricating stories about his arrested and incarceration in Harare recently, the South African Independent Newspapers group’s foreign service reported. “I did not admit to fabricating anything… I’ve never fabricated anything in my life,” he said in response to British newspaper reports that […]