Nigel Bruce If there is any area of agreement between business and labour in this country it is that the government’s macroeconomic policy, Gear, is not working. The growth, employment and redistribution strategy has produced some favourable and essential financial ratios (such as a low deficit before borrowing) and forced greater efficiencies by removing protection, […]
Barry Streek The Cape Town City Council’s rules committee is meeting today and is expected to clear suspended mayor Peter Marais, allowing him to be reinstated by Monday. Should Marais be reinstated in this manner, major conflict within the ruling Democratic Alliance is likely to burst out into the open and could eventually lead to […]
Census 2001’s ultimate success depends on what the government does with the results, writes Evidence wa ka Ngobeni On Wednesday September 10, 85 000 workers from Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) will fan out across the country for the start of Census 2001, with only three weeks to record the details of more than 10-million […]
Mungo Soggot and David Macfarlane Health authorities in Tanzania have not approved controversial tests of an alleged new HIV/Aids treatment that South African researchers are conducting on Tanzanian soldiers. It has also emerged that the coal-based substance, oxihumate-K, that has been administered to HIV-positive Tanzanian soldiers for the past 18 months is used in the […]
Phone calls from space, or through your fridge, are possible through a new telephone technology, writes David Shapshak Making history as an astronaut seems par for the course, but American astronaut Marsha Ivins took a giant leap for mankind earlier this year by making the first phone call in space. In February Ivins had a […]
Jaspreet Kindra The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) leadership is working to forge a common front with South Africa’s church leaders to fight the government over its stance on HIV/Aids. Of particular concern to labour is the government’s refusal to acknowledge the Medical Research Council (MRC)finding that Aids is the country’s biggest killer. […]
You suggest you are “starting to feel sorry” for Minister of Home Affairs Mangosuthu Buthelezi, for the delayed enactment of the Immigration Bill (September 28). It is probably true to say that no piece of legislation has come under more intense public scrutiny and stonewalling tactics in the history of the new democratic dispensation. While […]
Jaspreet Kindra Tensions between Mpumalanga Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu and Fish Mahlalela have spilled over in an extraordinary Constitutional Court challenge by the premier to his former MEC. The case highlights deepening conflict between the executive and the legislature in the province. Now an ordinary MPL, Mahlalela was removed as local government MEC by Mahlangu in […]
Paul Rees When the Barbarians take on Australia in Cardiff at the end of next month, it will be the last time the invitation club meets a touring side unless it agrees to donate a significant percentage of the profits to developing nations. For the past 54 years, the Barbarians have traditionally brought down the […]
Thabo Mohlala Residents in Zandspruit, an informal settlement in Honeydew north of Johannesburg, are living in fear after marauding hoodlums went on the rampage and assaulted “foreigners”. According to residents the attack followed a brawl at a shebeen where a Xhosa-speaking man was allegedly shot by a man of Zimbabwean origin. Other Xhosa-speaking residents then […]
Glenda Daniels Congress of South African Trade Unions affiliates in the public service have accused the government of flouting bargaining procedures by making an improved pay offer to non-Cosatu unions outside the official bargaining forum. As a strike by potentially 500 000 public servants loomed, state officials hotly denied this, accusing Cosatu of having missed […]
Pride in environmental awareness is what drives a school in northern KwaZulu-Natal, writes Niki Moore It’s a school in the forest the indigenous Dukuduku Forest on the verge of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park. The school is called Ubuhle bemvelo (the beauty of nature) to reflect its location within a World Heritage Site. The […]
Tony Twine A well-known local economist recently reminded an audience of economists and media writers that participants in currency markets are myopic and have no memory whatsoever. It was less a sideswipe at traders than a reminder that in the heat of trading room battles, the luxury of a cool, calm and holistically collected economic […]
Many Americans are blaming new technology for aiding terrorism, writes Duncan Campbell As United States forces converge on Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone has not been cut off. But calls to his satphone relayed via an Inmarsat satellite 40 000km over the Indian Ocean are going unanswered. His number 00873 682505331 was disclosed during […]
The ruling elite may have missed out on lessons in reasoning NO blows BARRED Sipho Seepe It is difficult to look back at my schooling with fond memories. How could I, when the philosophical grounding of education was to ensure that schools were conducted in such a way that “the natives will be taught from […]
Washington | Wednesday A PLAN for Sudan to arrest Osama bin Laden in 1996 fell through when the United States found it unable to put him on trial and failed to convince Saudi Arabia to take him, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The newspaper said the US administration of then-president Bill Clinton had secretly […]
A second Look Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela There are many troubling questions raised by Sipho Seepe’s article (“Where are the so-called leaders?” September 21 to 27), not least the question of the extent to which fear has paralysed those in leadership and silenced them from speaking out against some of the indefensible statements made from the president’s […]
Howard Barrell and Jaspreet Kindra The HIV/Aids epidemic has taken on “shattering dimensions” and now accounts for one-in-four of all deaths, according to the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) report into the virus that has been suppressed by the government. The report, in the opinion of many the most authoritative of its kind into the effects […]
Duncan Mackay After years of steady improvement, women’s distance running has finally come of age. When Japan’s Naoko Takahashi set the world marathon record of 2hr 19min 46sec in Berlin on Sunday she achieved a landmark that had long been the holy grail for every female runner. A sub-2hr 20min time had been a target […]
LIBYAN leader Muammar Gadaffi on Tuesday questioned the legitimacy of the United States leading an international campaign against terrorism, and also accused Britain of being the country sheltering the largest number of terrorists. In comments published on the official Libyan government website, Gadaffi warned against a two-speed policy towards states accused of harbouring terrorists. “It […]
Peace protesters hold it aloft as do the advocates of war. The Right rallies round it but so do radicals. It’s now a flag of defiance and of mourning. Ed Vulliamy explores the many meanings of the Stars and Stripes In a landscape smothered by the dust of death Pompeii in our lifetime three New […]
Gregory Mthembu-Salter South African National Defence Force (SANDF) troops may be heading for Burundi, despite the absence of a ceasefire in the long-running and bloody civil war. The SANDF troops are likely to form part of a special protection unit (SPU) for Hutu politicians returning from exile to join a new transitional government, scheduled to […]
SOCCER Neal Collins These are tough times for Bafana Bafana’s big defender Pierre Issa. South Africa’s former Marseille player, who went on loan to Chelsea and made no impact last season, has now linked up with Gianluca Vialli’s Watford. But if he expected life to be easier in the second level of English football, he […]
TEACHERS at the Lagos State University have launched strike action to press for higher pay and better conditions. The strike began on Tuesday and “is total and indefinite”, said the chairman of the ASUU teachers’ union, Gbola Aderibigbe. The union leader accused the Lagos State government of not paying outstanding salaries and allowances, and of […]
CRICKET Peter Robinson If you hadn’t heard of the Summer Spice Series, fear not: you’re about to hear an awful lot about it over the next few weeks. This is the name dreamed up mainly to cover India’s travels around South Africa for the next two months but which also encompasses Kenya’s visit to this […]
Khadija Magardie South Africa’s controversial draft anti-terror legislation will remain on the back-burner at least until the middle of next year In the wake of the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, speculation has mounted that the government is under pressure to show its commitment to ending global terrorism by pushing through draft […]
analysis Khulekani Mathe Who sets the agenda for Adult Basic Education and Training (Abet) in South Africa? Before 1994 the agenda was set in Pretoria by the National Party government. Underpinned by a theory of uneven development based on racial discrimination, apartheid produced an education system that relegated black people to the bottom of the […]
THE Tamazight or Berber language is to be officially recognized in Algeria, with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika due to change the constitution which currently only recognizes Arabic. Officials said the decision was announced to representatives of village committees and tribes from the Kabylie region who met Prime Minister Ali Benflis. Kabylie in the northeast is the […]
Excluding HIV-positive pupils from school is unlawful and unconstitutional, Minister of Education Kader Asmal has said.
ANGELA QUINTAL, Cape Town | Thursday TONY Yengeni on Thursday announced his resignation as his party’s chief whip in Parliament, but said he would remain an ordinary MP pending his trial for corruption arising from investigations into the multi-billion arms deal. His successor will be decided upon at a meeting of the ANC’s national working […]
CLAIRE KEETON, Johannesburg | Thursday THE repercussions of the September 11 attacks on the United States are hitting South Africa hard, with the rand plunging 9,5% against the dollar since then. “Now we have a rolling crash … a steady looting of South Africa,” said Patrick Bond, an economist at the University of the Witwatersrand […]
SUDANESE authorities ordered the suspension of two daily newspapers on Wednesday for publishing articles deemed offensive to other journalists, Suna news agency reported. The country’s National Press Council slapped the one-day suspension on Alwan and Al-Usbu for articles written by their chief editors, saying they violated a code of honour endorsed by the Sudanese journalists’ […]