Vol 43 No 10 | SOUTH AFRICA Mbeki's front line 17th May 2002 In a year of international negotiations and party elections, Mbeki will need loyal friends President Thabo Mbeki's rapid rise in the African National Congress after it was legalised in 1990 surprised many outsiders. Yet for years inside the tent, Mbeki built a...
Vol 43 No 3 | SOUTH AFRICA Watch on the spooks 8th February 2002 The intelligence services look like becoming the President's personal agencies The resignation of the Inspector General of Intelligence, Dr. Fazel Randera, has dealt a blow to the civil oversight of South Africa's intelligence agencies. His departure, hastened by...
Vol 43 No 3 | SOUTH AFRICA Airport turf wars 8th February 2002 Mashudu Ramano, chief executive of the Airports Company of South Africa (ACSA), claims he is under heavy pressure after terminating the contract of a well-connected private security firm....
Vol 43 No 2 | SOUTH AFRICA Crossing the Limpopo 25th January 2002 Zimbabwe threatens the grand African plans of Presidents Mbeki and Obasanjo From the splendour of Pretoria's Union Buildings, President Thabo Mbeki's vision of a resurgent Africa is obscured by the sprawling crisis in Zimbabwe. Almost everything Mbeki wants to...
Vol 43 No 2 | SOUTH AFRICA Managing foreign affairs 25th January 2002 In 2000 South Africa's ministries were grouped in 'clusters', to rationalise policy-making and eliminate contradictions. The Department of Foreign Affairs is grouped with the Departments of Defence, Tourism,...
Vol 42 No 25 | SOUTH AFRICA Helpless about AIDS 21st December 2001 The High Court's AIDS judgment looks good for health, bad for the constitution The Pretoria High Court ruled on 14 December that the government must supply nevirapine, an anti-retroviral drug, to mothers infected with the human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV). The judgment...
Vol 42 No 25 | SOUTH AFRICA Dicing with death 21st December 2001 The prosecution has bungled the trial of a seedy medical spy Wouter Basson, known as Dr. Death, was the former apartheid regime's leading chemical weapons specialist. He headed Project Coast, developing and testing chemical weapons, and is now charged...
Vol 42 No 24 | SOUTH AFRICA Hard pressed 7th December 2001 The media are failing to adapt to changing times – and they're losing money All South Africa's main newspapers lose money. Journalists fear that that their publishers, by sharp cutbacks in editorial staff, will make the papers even blander and limit investigation...
Vol 42 No 23 | SOUTH AFRICASUDAN Guns for hire again 23rd November 2001 A born-again Executive Outcomes operation is at the centre of allegations of a military contract between ex-South African Defence Force soldiers and the Sudanese army. A former director...
Vol 42 No 22 | SOUTH AFRICA Short-pants to no pants 9th November 2001 The former apartheid party negotiates its way to obscurity The New National Party, heir to the old Afrikaner-apartheid tradition, hitched up in June 2000 to the Democratic Party, whose members claim to inherit South Africa's liberal tradition....