Staff Reporter

Mail & Guardian reporter The South African Revenue Service (Sars) set the seemingly arbitrary date of October 1 this year as the date that capital gains tax (CGT) came into effect and the base cost of units is determined. But the date turned out to be anything but arbitrary. As fate would have it, just […]

channel vision Robert Kirby Last week’s Special Assignment on the subject of child prostitution opened with a real stinger. In her usual soulful tones, Annaliese Burgess announced that permission to have themselves filmed, interviewed and transmitted had been granted by a collection of child prostitutes. What seems not to have struck Annaliese or her reporters […]

Some South Africans are hoping to introduce a new religion during census month, like their British counterparts David Shapshak All it took was one e-mail and a new religion has been born. Jedi Knight is now on the list of religions for the 2001 United Kingdom census. What seemingly started as a prank has made […]

Paul Kirk A Durban bus company that has gone into liquidation claims a spate of hijackings crippled it. The government-run KZT Transport – which was the major provider of public transport to blacks during apartheid – was half-owned by the Bantu Development Corporation. The company’s operations in rural areas were later subsidised by the KwaZulu-Natal […]

A tougher test than the Dane is needed before Lewis John Rawling After battering the gallant though outclassed Brian Nielsen to defeat, Mike Tyson said he needed two more fights before he would be ready to attempt to regain the world heavyweight title. He is probably right, but the television powerbrokers who dictate the course […]

Nancy Sephairi was 14 in 1966 when the bulldozers moved in and destroyed the homes of her community at Metsimatshwe, near Kuruman in the Northern Cape. The police dumped the families on a patch of dry veld near Reveillo with a packet of salt, a bag of mielie meal and a tent each. “We were […]

Barry Streek Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils has told his Director General, Mike Muller, to break the law if it is necessary to implement his department’s water programmes. Kasrils admitted in August that there had been underspending on water programmes and said they were being implemented too slowly because of problems with […]

Marianne Merten “Let’s talk about sex”, goes the popular song. But organisers of an international sex tourism conference found the chambers of Parliament are not the place for such frankness. Instead, about 100 delegates – ranging from a matron to an activist, with a smattering of men – relocated to a corner of historic Cape […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni and Jimmy Matyu A distraught Eastern Cape family is suing the provincial blood transfusion service and a doctor at a public hospital after their child was allegedly given a transfusion without their consent – and the blood was contaminated with HIV. The family’s lawyer, Bantu Njamela, claims the one-year-old child was […]

Khadija Magardie Watching her willowy teenaged daughter and her gurgling grand-daughter playing together, Veronica’s* eyes glisten with tears. The soft-spoken woman says simply: “When I see them together, so happy, I ask myself time and time again, why did this happen?” Her daughter, Sibongile, is HIV-positive. So is her six-month-old grandchild, Tinashe. The baby was […]

Ntuthuko Maphumulo Former South African captain Hansie Cronje will be kicking himself all the way to the bank after he lost his high court appeal against a life ban from cricket. The failed application means he will have to pay between R200 000 and R300 000 of the United Cricket Board’s (UCB) legal costs. This […]

Gary Cotterell Levi, Diesel, Nike the Y-Generation is branded from head to toe. With money to burn, these 20-somethings present an attractive slice of the pie for banking strategists. But this market is a tricky one. Dino Fifas, MD of Logistix Kids SA, says the youth market has traditionally been costly for banks maintaining thousands […]

NO blows BARRED Sipho Seepe Had it not been for adverts in the media, the recent International Conference on Indigenous Know-ledge Systems: African Perspectives hosted by the University of Venda would have gone unnoticed. Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) refer to intricate knowledge systems acquired over generations by communities as they interact with the environment. It […]

Leslie Tilley looks at whether there are any safe bets left when it comes to investing Forget previous investment strategies: the world economy has entered a new era and in the process pushed aside the financial tenets of the past. The September 11 attack on the United States has caused a paradigm shift in Western […]

THERE should be strong growth in South African car assembly volumes this year, boosted primarily by growth in export volumes, according to London-based Richard Gane, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ global auto industry partner. He said on Wednesday that domestic sales had grown strongly to September but cautioned that “in the mid-term” South Africa’s “fragile economic situation” could be […]

I have rarely been so surprised in my life as when I saw the advertisement in yesterday’s Die Burger under the headline “Wie is die Coconuts”. It is truly ironic to witness the once-proud African National Congress claiming that so-called “brown” people are selling out the Nats to the Democratic Party. What hypocrisy, what political […]

Deon Potgieter South African heavyweight hopeful Corrie Sanders is on the verge of challenging for the biggest prize in world boxing. When Hasim Rahman knocked out Lennox Lewis at Carnival City in April to win the universal heavyweight championship, Sanders watched with a touch of envy. Sanders had previously given Rahman one of his toughest […]

After a week of high tension over the future role of controversial mayor Peter Marais in the Democratic Alliance, matters come to a head at the party’s national management committee meeting on Friday. DA deputy leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk spoke to Marianne Merten Marianne Merten (MM): Is there a war of nerves and words between […]

Drew Forrest The fascinating African National Congress document targeting an “ultra-left tendency” in the labour movement and the South African Communist Party is the latest broadside in a decades-old battle in the South African left over the role of trade unions. It revives conflicts in and outside the union movement in the 1980s between “populists” […]

THE Federal government in Nigeria has introduced a special food programme which will cost about N6,2-billion ($45-million) in a bid to tackle a possible food crisis in the country, The Guardian reported this week. The programme was set up following the high cost of staple food and the recently released Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) […]

Rural women say the government has failed them on land reform Tara Turkington Diminutive yet fiery Emily Tjale was one of the first to take the stage at a historic assembly of 250 rural women, who gathered to denounce and mobilise against landlessness in Kimberley at the weekend. Tjale is a member of the community […]

David Macfarlane Fundamental conflicts over teachers’ working conditions remain unresolved, despite the averting this week of a strike that would have disrupted the matric exams now under way. The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) remains firm in its refusal to sign the public sector wage agreement. And future negotiations involving teachers and the government […]

REVIEW David Shapshak Quicken 2001 Deluxe, about R429 Once Microsoft has its eye on your particular segment of the software market, you might as well pack up your bags and go home, many in the information technology industry believe. Like its now dominant Internet Explorer, through which Microsoft took on Netscape and won, the feeling […]

Born in Trinidad, he had a breakdown at Oxford but went on to build a reputation as a world-class novelist. More recently, his personal life has come under scrutiny, his views have drawn accusations of racism and homophobia, and he has found himself at the centre of a literary feud. Maya Jaggi on an outspoken […]

CHRISTOF MALETSKY, Windhoek | Wednesday THE Namibian government yesterday pumped N$6-million into the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) to avert a strike at the national broadcaster. The board, management and Namibia Public Workers Union (Napwu) subsequently announced salary increases of between 5,5% and 14% for the 500-odd employees and the looming strike was officially called off. […]

open letter A letter from the International Press Institute to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell Dear Mr Secretary, The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, is becoming increasingly dismayed at attempts by the US State Department to influence the flow of news in the Middle […]

Your article “Draft policy for GM foods” (October 5) implies that we should feel safe about this highly contentious technology as we have a genetically modified organisms (GMO) Act in place. The GMO Act came into effect on December 1 last year. But before these regulations were even in place, at least 20% of the […]

Michael Hartnack Zimbabwe’s in-your-face Department of Information was at it again last week, fulminating on everything from first lady Grace Mugabe’s right to keep secret her abysmal London University law exam results, to the alleged conspiracy of whites behind South Africa’s planned deportation of Zimbabwean farm workers. Playing the race card, an unnamed “authoritative source” […]

ATHLETICS Martin Gillingham Let me tell you a true story. There’s this national leader who approaches the president of a global sports body and pleads him to stage his world championships in his country. “But you haven’t got a stadium big enough,” replies the sports boss. “I know,” says the politician, “but if you give […]

IRANIAN director Tahimeh Milani’s film “Hidden Half” is among the favourites to take first prize in the Cairo film festival, critics said this week. The woman director’s latest work has been widely applauded and won high praise in Arab newspapers after its screening in the festival which opened on October 9, said Jordanian reviewer Najeh […]

After taking over the leadership of the New National Party, Marthinus van Schalkwyk developed a reputation for pragmatism and common sense. He saved his dying party by taking it into the Democratic Alliance. He also accepted, apparently without complaint, the necessity for Tony Leon who was the strength behind the Democratic Party’s phenomenal increase in […]

Themba Khumalo Mankosiphethe Ntuntuma is an elderly woman. She does not know her own age. She lives in the impoverished village of Qhaka, a sparsely populated village near Port St Johns, Eastern Cape. She has never been employed. Her life has always been misererable. That was until last Saturday when the Department of Water Affairs […]