The Sunday Independent (South Africa) back issues from February 2007:
Recent data warm up positive sentiment and cool rate hike fears.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Ethel Hazelhurst Johannesburg - Ten days ahead of the Reserve Bank's monetary policy meeting, the outlook for interest rates is looking a little better than it did two weeks ago. In the absence of really good news, the recent release of data that were better ...
Tata has history of proving sceptics wrong.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Andy Mukherjee New York - The most dramatic change in Indian business in the past decade has been the surge in ambition. Take Ratan Tata, the Mumbai-based tycoon who this week won the race to buy Britain's Corus Group, beating his Brazilian rival, Benjamin Steinbruch, in ...
Fidentia's lost R689m may be hard to track.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: RONNIE MORRIS Cape Town - Dines Gihwala, a Cape Town attorney, and George Papadakis, a forensic accountant, have their work cut out for them tracking down R689 million of R2 billion that was allegedly stolen from Fidentia Asset Management and two subsidiary companies. ...
The journey of an aspiring black entrepreneur: Part 1.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The black student who travels along the path of being a professional, who will ultimately function in the South African economy as an entrepreneur, faces an interesting journey. The starting point of the journey finds the student in a tertiary institution with, perhaps, a ...
Private hospitals called to cure nursing shortage.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Tonny Mafu Johannesburg - The country's private hospital groups were not contributing enough to the training and development of nurses despite the contribution of these professionals to their huge profits, the Democratic Nurses Organisation of SA (Denosa) said on Friday ....
Teta's exposure amounts to R245m.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Johannesburg - The Transport Sector Education and Training Authority (Teta) said on Friday that all its invested surplus funds, amounting to R245 million, had been exposed in the Fidentia misappropriation case. Fidentia, an asset manager with funds amounting to R1.6 billion ...
According to the economic clock, now may be the time to take something off the table.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Raymond Goss Tick tock ... Another day on the market passes, another new high, another private equity, merger or acquisition deal, another oversubscribed new listing (with construction stock euphemisms all over the prospectus) ... and it would appear that we are yet ...
SA designer collections to get platform in Germany.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: staff reporter Johannesburg - Three of the country's top fashion designers - Terrence Bray, Craig Native and Karen Ter Morshuizen - will showcase their winter collections at the prestigious Igedo International Fashion Fair, which starts today in Dusseldorf, Germany. ...
Big Mac index shows SA costs getting beefier.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The cost of a MacDonald's Big Mac burger, as measured in dollars, increased significantly in South Africa from $1.34 (R9.65) to $2.14 in the past seven years, the Economist's Big Mac index has revealed.This means the price that consumers are currently paying for the Big Mac has gone up by ...
Profit wins on new-look board games.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Heather Burke New York - Shannon Lewis owns the classic version of Hasbro's murder mystery board game Clue and one based on the Simpsons TV show. Now her 12-year-old niece is teaching her how to use the DVD edition. Toy makers have turned around flagging sales ...
Fuel prices fall on Wednesday.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The government would cut the petrol price by 23c a litre on Wednesday, Sapa reported on Friday, citing the department of minerals and energy. It ...
Investors give Harmony the cold shoulder on profit slide.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Stewart Bailey Johannesburg - Shares of Harmony Gold Mining, the world's fifth-largest producer of the metal, declined the most in four weeks on Friday after second-quarter profit missed analysts' estimates because production dropped and costs rose. The ...
Profit taking melts gold price down from six-month high.(Business Report Weekend)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Gold prices in New York fell the most in almost a month on profit taking, after speculation that a rally to a six-month high was overdone. Gold rose 3.9 percent last month. The metal climbed to $667.20 an ounce (R154 218 a kilogram) on Friday, the highest since August ...
'Whiteman' Africa of a second-rate imitator.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... To the outsiders who have tried their luck in Africa, when it comes time to write a novel about it, the first struggle is with political realism. Should their story be set in the actual African country where they did their deeds or, more delicately, in a territory that bears all the clues, ...
Energy regulator could fine Eskom for blackouts.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Edwin Naidu The National Energy Regulator is conducting its own investigation into the countrywide power cuts, according to Kabelo Mothobi, the NER's executive manager of corporate affairs. He said Eskom had given reasons for the blackouts, but the regulator ...
Fine record of Brutus's achievement as a poet and global activist.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Published in his 83rd year, Poetry and Protest brings together articles, interviews and speeches by Dennis Brutus, together with a broad selection of his poetry, some of which, shamefully, has been out of print for years. Other material is published for the first time - for example, |a ...
A novel in which Mumbai is the most captivating character.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The critic Walter Benjamin called Paris the capital of the 19th century. New York was the capital of the 20th century and Mumbai may well be the capital of the 21st, if good writing is anything to go by. There have already been two masterpieces in recent years about Mumbai: ...
Soweto rising; Turning a township into /a conventional suburb is no easy feat. However, /a plethora of exciting projects and developments are changing Soweto into /a desirable 'hood', /writes Mary Corrigall.(Life)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Soweto has rarely been thought of as an enviable part of Johannesburg. Historically, it wasn't a suburb that people chose to live in. Since the first settlements in Soweto |in the early 1900s, it has been a neighbourhood of squalor and ramshackle corrugated tin shacks. ...
Competitions, questions and reader riffs.(Life)
Feb 04, 2007 ... No CD review today. Instead, |I thought I would try to answer a few questions from readers. I am often asked why I don't write "bad" reviews, wherein I criticise the artists or the music. The answer is that I receive enough albums to allow me to pick those that |I consider to be ...
Flight from Baghdad brings little comfort; Wisam Ibrahim hit the road and left his hopes/for a free Iraq behind him, writes Heidi Kingstone.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The horrors of modern-day Iraq are of such biblical proportions that refugees are flooding into the Syrian capital. Wisam Ibrahim's trip to Damascus began in Baghdad after years of disillusionment, death, fear and destruction. It was not a trip he ever thought he would make. ...
Liberia's fragile hopes rest on the Iron Lady; Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf appears determined to turn around the fortunes of the once war-torn country, writes Robyn Dixon.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Liberians call her "da woma'", in their soft patois, in which the word endings seem to die in the steamy West African heat. "Da woma', she tra' her bes'," they tell you earnestly, if you enquire about the state of affairs in a country shredded by a 14-year |civil war. "She ...
GPS is the smart way to go.(Life)
Feb 04, 2007 ... To call me directionally challenged would be seriously understating my navigational disability. So when I was given a Garmin Quest 2 GPS to test, I saw it as fate saving my driving from constant u-turns. I was pleasantly surprised by the screen clarity and how easy scrolling ...
Neighbouring conflicts obscure tragedy of one of Africa's poorest countries.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The Central African Republic is Africa's forgotten tragedy. Caught in the crossfire between larger rebel uprisings in neighbouring Chad and Sudan, its own troubles have been dwarfed by the mass killings across the border in Darfur. Although obscured in the shadows of media ...
Jo'burg falling into clutter and confusion.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Alan Lipman The Gautrain, that costly, obstinately promoted folly, is turning Johannesburg's Rosebank into an obstacle course. Major access routes have been diverted; roads are shut by garish bollards; motorists are told how to navigate the area via huge roadside ...
BirdLife book encouraging conservation in Iraq.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Leon Marshall Amid the carnage and destruction of Iraq, an environmental movement is said to be taking shape that, in a particularly poignant way, reflects ordinary people's desire for a return to normality. Curiously, it appears to be drawing its main ...
Benson's music still evolving after 50 years and legend far from 'Givin' It Up'.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: J Brooks Spector In his half-century career, George Benson has delivered album after album -- more than 60 - and his fans have bought about 50 million copies. His influences range across contemporary music, drawing easily from R&B, jazz and pop. Or as Benson ...
British navy officer's diary reveals horror of slave trade.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Cahal Milmo On July 13 1823, a young Royal Navy officer named Cheesman Binstead noticed a large number of sharks in the water as his ship patrolled in the seas off west Africa. His superiors left him in no doubt about the cause. To avoid a fine, an intercepted slave ship ...
Intrepid Polish journalist dies and 1 001 paintings live on.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Maureen Isaacson l Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish journalist who reported on violence in Africa and Latin America, died last week at the age of 74. He was among the great writer journalists, like Truman Capote, who was credited with establishing a new ...
Iceberg the size of London poses a threat to Arctic oil rigs.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Jonathan Owen An iceberg the size of central London is causing alarm among scientists, who predict that it could be on the move in a matter of months - a potential threat to shipping and oil rigs in Arctic waters. The 2 million-ton, 65sq km block of ice is ...
Village unearthed where Stonehenge builders celebrated life and death with lavish feasts.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Cahal Milmo By any standards, it was a wild party: piles of half-eaten pig bones were flung to the floor by revellers, who then smashed their food bowls into a "filthy" mud floor. Add to that the fact that this bash took place 4 600 years ago, less than 2km ...
Contaminated teapot could contain vital evidence in Litvinenko murder mystery.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Andrew Johnson London - Detectives investigating one of the murkiest international crimes ever to hit Britain - the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy |- believe a quintessentially English teapot is at the centre of the web of intrigue. ...
Aged rockers hit the greens; As Bob Dylan snaps up a property near a Scottish /golf club, Adam Sweeting explains why so many /pop stars are drawn to the sport.(Life)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The news that Bob Dylan has splashed out PS2 million (about R28 million) for Aultmore House, a 10-bedroom mansion at the foot of the Cairngorms within easy striking distance of Abernethy golf club, opens |a new chapter in the bewildering relationship between golf and music. It's ...
Over-fifties taking a gap before retirement; Growing numbers of mature babyboomers are taking time out to travel or change their lives, reports Sarah Harris.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... 'Do not go gentle into that good night," wrote Dylan Thomas, "Old age should burn and rave at close of day / Rage, rage against the dying of the light". Little did he know that 50 years on his words would be reverberating through every flea-ridden backpackers' hostel from New ...
Another 'Drum' era revealed through lens.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... "It was the best of times, the worst of times," an apt description by Can Themba, one of Drum magazine's most famous writers (quoting Dickens on the French Revolution), about South Africa in the 1950s. This era, as seen through the eyes of the Drum photographers, has been well ...
Local fashion designers to get a chance to shine; Clothes and other prizes up for grabs for the country's first, state-of-the-art showcase for autumn/winter collections.(Life)
Feb 04, 2007 ... South Africa's first annual autumn/winter fashion week takes place in Johannesburg from February 14 to 17. The event, titled the Audi Joburg Fashion Week, will be held at Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton. The launch of this event gives the country's established designers the ...
Black troops snubbed in liberation of Paris; John Lichfield looks at how France's colonial army was stopped from helping with the symbolic recapturing of its capital.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The story is one of the most written-about events in modern French history - the first large allied military force to reach Paris on August 24 1944 was the only French unit in France at the time. The Deuxieme Division Blindee (the second armoured division) led by General ...
Einstein's road to glory 'awesomely human'.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: John Johnson The year was 1915. War and privation had come to Germany. In Berlin, a solitary man struggled with the equations for a new theory of gravity. "I have been labouring inhumanly," Albert Einstein, then 36, wrote to a friend in his native ...
We are not alone.(Life)
Feb 04, 2007 ... I think I have been abducted. How do I know? Well, besides the ever-increasing size of my forehead, there are other signs that ET and his band of probe-wielding friends have had their evil way with me on more than one occasion. Melinda Leslie, a writer for InChelsea.com, has ...
Anti-whaling group hunting Japanese fleet; Eco-warriors will do 'everything it takes' to stop the illegal slaughter of marine life, writes Kathy Marks.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The president of a militant anti-whaling group has vowed to "do whatever it takes" to disrupt a Japanese fleet planning to harpoon| nearly 1 000 whales in the waters off Antarctica. Sea Shepherd, notorious for its aggressive tactics, has two ships and one helicopter stalking the ...
Chinese leaders on an unprecedented tour of Africa; Its intense courting has disturbed western powers and human rights organisations have criticised the no-strings attached investments in Sudan and Zimbabwe.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Robyn Dixon There are many ways to tell the story of China's booming relationship with Africa: the spiralling trade figures, the growing oil imports, the Chinese-built stadiums, railways, power lines, dams and roads that are mushrooming across the continent. ...
Africa and Europe could be linked /by tunnel.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Elizabeth Nash The dream of a tunnel between Africa and Europe is coming closer to reality, but it might be another 20 years before you can hop on the fast train at Seville and disembark in Tangier 90 minutes later. After decades of plans and geological tests, ...
WSF needs to tackle exclusivity issue.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Jane Duncan Is another World Social Forum (WSF) possible? This question emerged in the light of controversies around the growing elitism of the event. The seventh WSF took place from January 20-25 in Nairobi, Kenya. Set up in 2000 in opposition to |the World Economic ...
Advocates are also subject to human foibles.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The article, "Judiciary's credibility depends on choice of suitable judges" (The Sunday Independent, January 21), refers. Paul Hoffman's opinion about the choice of judges from the ranks of advocates is shaped by an anachronism whose precepts are founded in colonialism, as well ...
Scaremongering typical /of anti-nuclear lobby.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Your correspondent Doug Struck states "used fuel ... will remain radioactive for a million years" ("Climate change prompts global swing from fossil fuels to nuclear power |for electricity", The Sunday Independent, January 21). Wrong. Used nuclear fuel, although remaining toxic ...
Film becomes one thing Arbus refused to be - normal.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... A few years ago, the director Steven Shainberg and screenwriter Erin Cressida Wilson gave us Secretary, the story of an office assistant whose duties included receiving spankings from her boss. Now Shainberg and Wilson have moved on to another tale of a sexual surrender in which |a ...
Sad time for South African journalism.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The departure of SAfm's John Perlman and his co-anchor, Nikiwe Bikitsha, from the SABC is indeed regrettable and disturbing. We have become accustomed to these voices on radio and this brings to an end one of the most compatible presenting partnerships in the SABC's history. ...
When Effie is off-screen the dramatic yields to mere showbiz.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Another View by Robert Greig More perhaps than any genre, films about contemporary musicians conform to a pattern - the romantic, cautionary fable about the perils of success. The fable goes something like this: rough raw talent from the boondocks struggles ...
Smokers targeted to /mask real problems.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... According to your full page on the anti-smoking laws (The Sunday Independent, January 28), I really must satisfy my compulsive urge to write to you. The smoking campaign being waged by the government and other agencies is giving me high blood pressure. The tobacco ...
Sporty Tema heads back to his roots.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Classic fM is delighted to announce that one of South Africa's most entertaining and versatile radio and television journalists will be joining the station as the host of The Classic Brunch from 9am-12pm Monday to Friday. Thabiso Tema or "TT", as he is also popularly known, is ...
The Iraq we dreamed of is dead - and so is Ra'ed.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... "Ra'ed is dead," read the unexpected SMS from Beirut. Ra'ed dead? It didn't seem possible. I called his sister, Wasan, who had sent the message, and asked if it was true. Her reaction had been like mine. Was this just a terrible dream? Sadly not. Ra'ed had been shot ...
Pray for some credible action at our flailing national broadcaster.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Dali Mpofu has failed to honour a pledge he made to restore the credibility of the corporation when he took over as group chief executive of the SABC in June 2005. He took over the corporation at a time when morale was low amid allegations of government interference and the ...
Fresh, exhilarating version of an old theme; But Dreamgirls is hobbled by the pyramid structure of the original stage show, in which the story reaches its emotional climax halfway through.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... That the Motown sound went from being a niche-specific brand of music to the dominant music form of the United States was largely due to the ministrations of one Berry Gordy jnr. He saw the need to break the barrier between so-called "black" music and "white" music, or rather ...
Effects of crime outweigh the statistics; Fifty people murdered each day is still a disturbingly high rate that creates concentric circles of grief and shock among the living.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Patrick Laurence Another week, another murderous assault on a high-profile person, but, unlike the first, it was fortunately not fatal. Historian David Rattray was not yet laid to rest when Alan MacKenzie, the Business Against Crime project manager, was shot ...
Goniwe causing tension, division in his hometown; But by a fluke of history widow of struggle icon arrives in E Cape township at the same time and with a different agenda - to heal residents' suffering.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Mike Loewe Dust devils chase across the sheep-studded scrub, causing the wirework windmills on sale along the national road to Lingelihle township in Cradock to clatter and squeak. It was at the end of this road 20 years ago that the name Goniwe was branded ...
Myanmar vote critics missing SA's aim at UN.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Thenjiwe Mtintso It is highly commendable that many South Africans took interest in the issue of the vote on Myanmar in the United Nations security council. Yet, it is unfortunate that some of our subsequent comments indicated both ignorance of the UN and how its ...
Tips for Thabo: it's time to take up your responsibilities, Mr President.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Tony Leon What advice would I give the president while he prepares to deliver his state-of-the-nation address on Friday? In all amicability, I submit a few pointers for the president's speech - some "tips for Thabo". Overall, my chief note is this: Mr ...
A 'bumbling bureaucracy' fails our children; The rural poor often walk for a day to get to a home affairs office - only to be told to come back tomorrow.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Reports by Wendy Jasson da Costa Millions of South Africa's poorest children don't have access to poverty-alleviation programmes, and so continue to suffer, because they or their parents don't have the right documents. Katherine Hall, a senior researcher for ...
Bleak prospects for youth.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... As more and more children have to single-handedly deal with HIV/Aids and poverty, just as alarming is unemployment of the youth, which stands at 70 percent, according to the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC). The centre's Peter Dwyer says young people are ...
Push for support grants for those aged 14 to 18.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Calls for the extension of the child-support grant to include children between 14 and 18 is gaining momentum, with several NGOs saying it will be top of their campaigning agenda for this year. Currently, the grant immediately falls away once a child turns 14. The ...
Aids orphans heading households battling the odds.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... In 2004, Phindile Mbhele was just 14 years old when her mother became seriously ill with an Aids-related illness. Pretty, her 18-year-old sister, who was in matric at the time, took over the running of the household and cared for her four siblings. In March that year, their ...
Cosatu was in Nairobi.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Bheki Ntshalintshali Christelle Terreblanche is an excellent journalist, for whom the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has great respect. But her article, "Cosatu must walk the talk", on Sunday January 29, is unfortunately marred by a number of damaging ...
Woman of a changing world; Adelaide Tambo was born into the old South Africa but lived to see the success of her efforts in the new, writes Maureen Isaacson.(Dispatches)
Feb 04, 2007 ... The world that mourns Matlala Adelaide Frances Tsukudu's death at 77 in her Sandhurst, Johannesburg, home on Wednesday is a far cry from the one into which she was born. The year was July 18 1929, the place was Top Location, Vereeniging. In South Africa, JB Hertzog, the prime ...
Doubt over whether state had the 'right' body a basis for appeal, say Waterkloof Four.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... BYLINE: Eleanor Momberg The state did not prove beyond reasonable doubt that the body found in a Pretoria East park was that of the man the so-called Waterkloof Four had murdered in December 2001. The four applied for leave to appeal against their convictions and the ...
Number of child deaths in SA worrying - Unicef.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Every hour, eight South African children under the age of five die from a preventable disease, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef). Macharia Kamau, the head of Unicef South Africa, says that while South Africa has taken massive strides in improving the ...
TV programming tailormade for you - pity you can't afford it.(News)
Feb 04, 2007 ... Ask a South African what "Joost" is and he's likely to mumble something about rugby and making lots of money from having babies with another minor celebrity. But that might change in a year or so if Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the creators of the popular software Skype, have their ...