The new 112 number will cut across provincial and municipal boundaries and be able to reroute calls to the relevant emergency services Jubie Matlou In less than a year a three-digit telephone number 112 is going to be the country’s common number for the public to access emergency services. The new number will integrate all […]
David Beresford another country The defeat of the recent initiative to have Cape Town’s cathedral corner Adderley and Wale streets named after former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk comes as a great relief. Attempts to memorialise the living always smack of self-interest. Such tributes are also tainted by an appearance of indecent haste, […]
Mail & Guardian Reporter Banks and other financial institutions have no excuse to refuse loans to people in the low-income category, if survey results released by the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) are anything to go by. The survey, conducted in five provinces, targeted people in the R1 000 to R6 000 monthly income group. […]
It’s almost certainly the beginning of the end for De Beers as a listed firm. But what of the Oppenheimer bid’s strange omissions to shareholders ahead of its victory? Stewart Bailey The bid by the Anglo/Oppenheimer-led DB Investments (DBI) consortium to take De Beers private seems a dead certainty after the South African Reserve Bank […]
whipping boy ‘Horseracing on its last legs” screamed headlines in The Citizen the day after newspapers announced the closure of Newmarket racecourse in Alberton. Yes, it was a slow news week, but the story is not entirely trumped up. Until recently, the cliques that controlled racing from their private dining rooms and bars, while charging […]
Nawaal Deane In a circus of events, Athletics South Africa (ASA) is embroiled in allegations of corruption, but documents handed to the Minister of Sport and Recreation, Ngconde Balfour, this week show only a paltry sum in comparison to original claims that R9-million is allegedly unaccounted for in the ASA account. The documents were handed […]
Jakkie Cilliers a second look White farmers and rural blacks perceive themselves to be under attack the former by what they consider to be a political campaign to drive them off their land and the latter by unemployment and, sometimes, racial assault. To be sure, our commercial agricultural system is under threat. Jobs are being […]
Bruce Whitfield The JSE Securities Exchange has found sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation by the Financial Services Board (FSB) into insider trading at listed furniture retailer Profurn. It has handed its file containing the outcome of its own probe into the allegations to the FSB, but it could take several months before shareholders discover […]
England vs Pakistan at Lord’s is the start of a 10-year world cricket championship Neal Collins The longest-lasting league championship in the history of the world started on Thursday with South Africa very firmly in the running for a brand new R350 000 trophy. When Pakistan turned out against England at Lord’s, the 10-year International […]
Glenda Daniels The Office of the President is expecting the first application for a presidential pardon for a woman who killed her abusive husband. The application is currently with the Department of Justice. Four more applications will reach the president’s office in the next few months. Should these applications be successful, it would set a […]
Shaun de Waal review OFTHEWEEK Two enjoyable drag shows now on in Johannesburg cover the range from mainstream comedy to the engagingly trashy, with variable results. British Ceri Dupree is visiting the Civic Theatre with Eager Divas, a show of impressions of famous female figures such as Camilla Parker-Bowles, Tina Turner and Mae West. The […]
Guy Willoughby theatre Evita Bezuidenhout, aka Pieter-Dirk Uys, has been so much a part of our cultural landscape for 20 years as ever-present as death, corruption and taxes that it comes as a surprise to discover that (according to Uys’s programme notes) s/he has not had her own stage show since 1990. Perhaps that tells […]
Marianne Merten TELEVISION It’s a slice of real prison life not the Hollywood glamour lock-down peppered with special effects, nor the gold-studded rap glorification of being a bad “muthafucka”. It’s about the reality of violence, rape, beatings and gory facial tattoos behind bars where the prison numbers gangs have dominated since the turn of the […]
John Young The South African cricket team don’t spend a lot of their time reading the local newspapers so they won’t know that their first visit to Port-of-Spain caused quite a stir. On the day the cricketers’ plane landed, two days before the second Test, the Trinidad Guardian published as its Thought for Today a […]
The Face of Africa fashion show on May 26 will be a landmark in the career of acclaimed composer Zwai Bala Thebe Mabanga The music scene is littered with tales of acts it’s inappropriate to call them artists who promise much but fail to live up to the hype. The scene also has a number […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The South African National Gambling Board, the statutory body charged with the regulation of the gambling industry, has spent hundreds of thousands of rands on developing legislation aimed at regulating Internet casinos. The gambling board confirmed this week it paid more than R900 000 to an Australian firm, DGS, to develop […]
Mboniso Sigonyela Turbulent stock markets and falling rand exchange rates ensured that the number of dollar millionaires in Africa remained flat. But the World Wealth Report 2001, compiled by Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, says South Africa has confirmed its position as the continent’s economic powerhouse. According to the report, South Africa […]
Having found ‘special’ players it is important to develop them Andy Capostagno It is traditional for Springbok selectors to produce at least one shock in every squad. In 1992 the first post-isolation touring team included the then unknown Western Transvaaler Botha Rossouw. In 1995 Kitch Christie took a chance on Transvaal scrumhalf Bennie Nortje, although […]
Marianne Merten Guilty of tax evasion? Call on the People for Justice to raise public support while your appeal is pending. Dozens of posters sprang up in the Cape Town CBD on Wednesday in support of reputed crime boss Colin Stanfield, who is out on R100 000 bail pending his appeal against a six-year jail […]
The PSL title looks destined for one of the two Soweto giants Ntuthuko Maphumulo The race for Premier Soccer League (PSL) title will not be over until the fat lady sings but the first notes sounded for defending champions Sundowns after their 0-0 draw with Orlando Pirates on Wednesday. The Mamelodi outfit still have a […]
The Film and Publication Board has passed the video version of the French arthouse film <i>Romance X</i> for general distribution without cuts. The film, which features several scenes of explicit nudity and sex will carry an age restriction of 18, which means that it may only be rented or sold to adults.
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Thursday NAMIBIAS politically influential Council of Churches (CCN) wants to meet President Sam Nujoma after he called Christianity a “foreign philosophy”, the council’s general secretary said on Wednesday. The CCN’s request comes after a recent meeting between Nujoma and farmers where he also accused 19th century Finnish missionaries to the desert […]
TIMBER production in Congo is expected to reach 850_,000 tons this year as compared with 650_000 tonnes in 2000 because peace has returned after years of civil war, a top forestry official said on Wednesday. The forecast of a 200_000 ton rise in production is based on resumed logging in the central Niari and Lekoumou […]
THE Anglo American-Oppenheimer family deal to delist South African diamond giant De Beers is a “wonderful opportunity for South Africa,” South African Reserve Bank (SARB) Governor Tito Mboweni said on Thursday. Speaking on independent radio station 702, Mboweni said that the SARB would buy as much of the $3.5bn inflows as possible and would use […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Noupoort | Thursday A TEENAGER from Moreleta Park in Pretoria has died in a “detention camp” at a Christian care centre in Noupoort for drug and alcohol addicts, apparently after being chained by his neck in a disciplinary cell, Beeld newspaper reports. The centre, run by clergymen, has accused the police of “unprofessional […]
A SPAT is brewing between leading dial-up Internet Service Provider M-Web, and Absa Bank, which three months ago introduced its own free ISP service. On Monday, M-Web sent out a press release saying that Absa and its Internet partner Affinity, are misleading the public in suggesting that their free ISP service will survive. M-Web chief […]
LIBYAN leader Colonel Muammar Gadaffi has told German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s chief foreign policy adviser, Michael Steiner, that Libya was behind the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco in which three people were killed, the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported on Tuesday. The newspaper reported that a law practice which represents survivors of the attack […]
NINE armed bandits were killed Monday and one was injured and captured during a camel-back clash with police in West Sudan’s remote Darfur State, a Khartoum newspaper reported on Tuesday. Reporting from Darfur, Al-Rai Al-Aam daily quoted Kabkabiya province commissioner Hassan Kuna Azraq as saying the police force retrieved 25 cattle looted by the gangsters […]
KENYAN police have arrested more than 1_000 people and shot dead four armed suspects since the weekend in a crackdown on rising crime in Nairobi, a senior police official said on Tuesday. Five guns, 19 rounds of ammunition and stolen items, including three cars, have been recovered from the suspects during the operation, which began […]
TUNISIAN soldiers are preparing to join the United Nations peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the Tunisian defence ministry. President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali discussed the deployment, set for Saturday, with Defense Minister Dali Jazi in a meeting Tuesday, officials said. The soldiers, thought to number 200 though the […]
THE chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunal dealing with Rwandan genocide suspects, Carla Del Ponte, on Wednesday rejected charges of racism from several court prosecutors whose contracts were not renewed. “These attacks of racism are absolutely ridiculous,” said Del Ponte’s spokeswoman Florence Hartmann. The only criteria for not renewing the contracts was efficiency, she […]
Race argument at genocide tribunal Seven black prosecutors at the UN tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, have raised issues of racism after not being reappointed by chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. The BBC ‘Extinct’ plants found in N Cape Botanists from the Royal Botanic Gardens’ millennium seed bank have found healthy specimens of two plants […]