Roshila Pillay Estate agencies are up in arms about the new Municipal Services Act which makes property owners responsible for all service charges arrears instead of their tenants. Previously owners were liable only for rates payments and tenants for water and electricity. “I think it puts a huge burden on property owners. I can’t see […]
Chef Dalawar Chaudhry, caterer for the Pakistan cricketers during their tour of England, tells Pete Nichols about Imran Khan, fax orders and paratha breads We first invited the Pakistani team to our west London restaurant, the Tandoori Kebab House, when they were touring in 1974. My father, Abdul-Majid, had always been a very keen cricketer. […]
Bryan Rostron If it’s true that the current election in the United Kingdom is all about style over substance (that is, spin), I should immediately declare an interest (two, actually). For several years I was a colleague of Labour’s powerful prime ministerial spin doctor, Alastair Campbell; then, during a right-wing coup at the mass-circulation Daily […]
The line between affirmative action and racism is a narrow one, which has arguably been crossed by the Road Accident Fund’s new policy to promote black professionals. As we show in this newspaper, the rule is quite simple: no whites can be used in the legal defence of the fund, unless formal permission is obtained. […]
Alec Hogg boardroom talk The brave face South Africa’s micro-lenders put on to last year’s changes in legislation affecting them has started to crack. The naked reality was apparent in financial results released during the past fortnight by three listed micro-lenders Abil, Unifer and Thuthukani which showed that what was once a licence to print […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Any television documentary bearing the name Cliff Bestall is sure to be of distinctive quality. Last week’s Special Assignment was no exception, an extended programme about the so-called numbers gangs that conduct a reign of terror in South African prisons. Any details of the daily brutalities dished out by the gang members […]
Bruce Whitfield Absa’s main focus in the year ahead is to lower its costs and become a more efficiently run business. It has a cost to income ratio of 63%, substantially higher than its retail banking competitors, and CEO Nallie Bosman admits it is “totally unacceptable”. It’s appointed a task team, headed by a former […]
Marianne Merten The legal battle over video recordings of the 1996 murder of Hard Living gang boss Rashaad Staggie moves to London courts next week where Reuters and Associated Press (AP) are opposing renewed attempts to obtain original footage. The Cape High Court on Thursday ruled as inadmissible several videotapes that police had seized on […]
Shirley Kossick The Oxford Companion to English Literature (6th edition) edited by Margaret Drabble Ever since Sir Paul Harvey’s first edition of The Oxford Companion to English Literature in 1932, its place as the standard literary reference work for both students and the general reader has been established. With its extensive revisions, updating and more […]
Pule waga Mabe The shortage of doctors in most rural hospitals is a growing concern within the ranks of the Rural Doctors’ Association of South Africa (Rudasa), which is now calling for the national Department of Health to establish a rural health unit. Rudasa’s concern follows the failure of compulsory community service for doctors to […]
Many of the residents of the Joe Slovo informal settlement do not have a regular source of income, writes Vongani Fungene The 2 000-strong Joe Slovo informal settlement sticks out like a sore thumb, nestled adjascent to modest suburbs such as Westdene, Crosby and Westbury. Smoke billows from the more than 1000 tin shacks, catching […]
SOUTH Africa’s longest surviving HIV-positive born child, Nkosi Johnson, has died in his Melville, Johannesburg home. His foster mother, Gail Johnson was at his bedside when he died on Friday morning. Johnson will be remembered as the Aids activist who challenged the government’s Aids policies and united millions of South Africans in the fight against […]
Barry Streek Minister of Safety and Security Steve Tshwete received a light tap on the wrist this week from President Thabo Mbeki for naming three African National Congress stalwarts allegedly plotting to oust him from the presidency. The most Mbeki would say about Tshwete’s statement, given in a reply to a question in a TV […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo soccer The 2000/2001 season has been one of the longest on record, with many controversial incidents, displays of great soccer and the tragedy of the Ellis Park stampede that left 43 people dead. The championship race is over but the Premier Soccer League (PSL) season is not. There are two games still outstanding […]
In the 1950s severe weather caused worldwide death and destruction estimated at $4-billion a year; by the 1990s that amount had escalated into tens of billions of dollars Charlene Smith Global warming and its effect on the proliferation of infectious diseases has far-reaching implications for areas such as the economy, interstate trade relations and tourism. […]
But unions say training given to teachers on the new curriculum has been pathetic David Macfarlane The massive and controver-sial process of designing an entire new curriculum for South Africa’s state schools is set to take a major step forward as the streamlining of Curriculum 2005 nears completion. But those upon whom the success of […]
PAUL KIRK, Durban | Friday SCHOOL pupils and business people in Durban are being shown shocking video footage of traffic accidents in a bid to make them more responsible drivers – and it seems to be working. Top traffic policeman Principal Provincial Inspector Mervyn Atwell travels with a video camera as well as his copy […]
Hugo Young describes his interview with President Thabo Mbeki Unlike Nelson Mandela, his successor Thabo Mbeki does not in all respects rise above history. Temporally, the apartheid era may have passed, but it remains the formative imprint on the South African psyche and the president never forgets it. A conversation with him reveals the extent […]
Police are using video footage of gory traffic accidents to persuade young South Africans to be more responsible Paul Kirk School pupils and business people in Durban are being shown shocking video footage of traffic accidents in a bid to make them more responsible drivers and it seems to be working. Top traffic policeman Principal […]
Marianne Merten Religious leaders in Cape Town have mobilised against sex tourism following reports that city officials are looking into establishing red light districts. On Wednesday representatives of the Muslim, Jewish and Christian faiths were ready to address a unicity council meeting in support of a motion by the African Christian Democratic Party against sex […]
Thebe Mabanga The annual North West Cultural Calabash has taken a huge leap towards establishing itself as one of the most important cultural events when the 2001 edition was launched with a new format last Friday. “The [Calabash] is fast becoming one of the premier arts and culture festivals in South Africa,” said Mandlemkosi Mayisela, […]
EMSIE FERREIRA, Cape Town | Friday SOUTH African heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard (79), says that regular sex is the best way to keep one’s circulation flowing. Barnard, who now lives in Austria, returned to Cape Town at the weekend with a two-year-old Russian boy who has a constriction is his main heart artery and […]
Poet John Mateer left South Africa at 18, but is visiting the land of his birth for the Poetry Africa Festival. He spoke to Stephen Gray John Mateer’s new collection of poems, Barefoot Speech including many about his native South Africa was launched this week at the popular Poetry Africa 2001 festival in Durban. Born […]
Contenders for the July are out in force this weekend as many of the more doubtful starters among the 61 entrants try to force their way into the final field of 18. The top pair in the July betting, three-year-olds Badger’s Drift and Hoeberg, are also in action in different races. The seemingly unstoppable Hoeberg […]
Barry Streek Cabinet has approved a new human resource strategy to challenge the high degree of inequality in South Africa the second worst in the world. The strategy, tabled in Parliament this week, is intended to improve the country’s Human Development Index. It recognises that poverty-related health issues, including HIV/Aids, will have a significant effect […]
Andy Capostagno rugby If Saturday’s final between the Brumbies and the Sharks was the last Super 12 game then we had better cherish it. Next year, not only are there likely to be more than 12 teams in the competition, but it will probably take place midway through or at the end of the season. […]
Deon Potgieter boxing Following the Hassim Rahman-Lennox Lewis “Thunder in Africa” bill at Carnival City in April, locals have dubbed this weekend’s Jan Bergman world title challenge, the “Bliksem in Brakpan”. Bergman, one of the best local combatants never to have won a world title, gets his third crack at a crown on Saturday night. […]
Shaun de Waal CD OFTHEWEEK Irish rockers The Hothouse Flowers have a history stretching back to the late Eighties, so a Best of album (London/Gallo) is not likely to be understocked. And the format works particularly well for them, with one surging, impassioned song following another in a continuous wave of top-notch rockin’ soul. Their […]
David Macfarlane Former Rhodes University academic Dr Robert Shell has lost his appeal against his summary dismissal in February on a disciplinary charge. Academics are aghast at how Shell has been treated during the two-year saga, and suggest the fallout from the conflict enshrouds not only Shell and Rhodes, but every academic in the country. […]
Bruce Whitfield Investec’s chief investment strategist Piet Viljoen makes some astounding observations with regard to world markets. Did you know, for example, that Zimbabwe’s stock market was the world’s top performing market between March last year and March this year? Not only that, but investors in carefully chosen South African shares would have outperformed many […]
Nawaal Deane and Mungo Soggot The state’s Road Accident Fund has placed a general bar on white professionals both legal and medical specialists handling its cases. The fund, which deals with lawsuits stemming from car accidents on behalf of the state, has instructed law firms acting on its behalf that they too should avoid using […]
Marianne Merten Having a cellphone in jail can either lead to a ban from the tuck shop or another year behind bars as a Pollsmoor prison inmate has discovered. When Allan Boesak, the recently paroled politician convicted of fraud, was found with a stolen cellphone from which he had called his wife, he was banned […]