The Sunday Independent (South Africa) back issues from July 2007:
Pollution and Mickey Mouse: reasons to still be pessimistic about Hong Kong.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... There's a lot of back-slapping in Hong Kong these days, and for obvious reasons: the 10th anniversary of the UK's handover of the city back to China takes place today. By most accounts, Chinese rule has gone far better than expected. Individual liberties have been largely ...
Top US firms scale up recruiting wars across university campuses.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Everyone wanted to hire Qiushuang Zhang. Before she earned her Master's degree in computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in May, Zhang had two job offers from Goldman Sachs, two from Microsoft and one from Google. "Goldman says I can make lots of money," said ...
SA seeks black talent in wrong places - Manyi.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Jimmy Manyi, the chairman of the Employment Equity Commission, recently stirred up a hornet's nest when he told the parliamentary portfolio committee on labour that the perceived shortage of skills among black people in South Africa was an "urban legend". "There is an ...
Transformation relies too much on white women, equity commission complains.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Progress towards employment equity continues to be woefully slow, according to the latest report from the Employment Equity Commission. It says black representation in top management increased cumulatively by a meagre 9.5 percentage points, from 12.7 percent in 2000 to 22.2 ...
TAA could optimise investment performance for pension funds.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Tactical asset allocation (TAA) continues to grow in importance in the South African market, with an increasing number of pension funds appointing specialist TAA managers. TAA is becoming more accepted in South Africa because its track record, now stretching back several years, ...
Survey highlights educational failures.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Wiseman Khuzwayo Johannesburg - Survey after survey in South Africa bemoans the shortage of skills, especially among black people, to help propel the country to economic growth. The government, under the stewardship of deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, ...
Hunt turns offshore for senior professionals to fill SA's skills gap.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: MARGIE INGGS Durban - Vanesh Maharaj, a partner with Development Engineering & Consultants (DEC), left Durban for India on Friday to interview engineers for two senior positions that he has been unable to fill in South Africa because of the skills shortage. ...
SAA to stay in red until restructuring.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Audrey d'Angelo Johannesburg - SAA, which ended the year to March with a loss of R883 million, would be profitable again in 18 months, after restructuring, chief executive Khaya Ngqula said on Friday. He told a media conference that although the airline's ...
ANC now backs pro-business nanny state.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Donwald Pressly Midrand - The ANC's centre-left economic vision is working well but big business should be tamed and small business encouraged. This is the message that emerged from the ruling party's four-day policy conference, which has focused on both the ...
Rennies to transform its banking unit for middle classes.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Bidvest would soon change the name of its specialist banking unit, Rennies, to Bidvest Bank to expand its product range for the growing middle class, the diversified services group said on Friday. Brian Joffe, the chief executive of Bidvest, said the name change would be ...
Glib Blair won't solve Middle East with his tongue.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... What is an unemployed world leader to do, especially one as young as former UK prime minister Tony Blair? No one fades away gracefully anymore. Jimmy Carter scolds his successors, builds houses and oversees other countries' elections. Bill Clinton gives speeches for ...
Blocked bid trips up BCX.(Business Report Weekend)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Shares in information technology outsourcing firm Business Connexion Group (BCX) lost more than 7 percent on Friday, the day after competition authorities blocked Telkom's plan to buy it. Telkom wanted to acquire BCX for R2.43 billion to give it access to the outsourcing sector ...
Bulldog, Biggles and the buzzard's loot; For tales of corsairs, villains and modern adventurers in search of treasure, the Seychelles can't be beaten, writes Veruska De Vita.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... In the Indian Ocean, just below latitude zero, a group of islands are associated with the stories of equatorial adventure. Merchant ships fading into the misty waters, pirates obsessed with the gold they left behind and madmen haunted by the ghosts of slaves beaten to death and elephants ...
Metro police may one day be as good as LAPD, but not yet, says adviser.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Eleanor Momberg Increased visibility and more effective law enforcement strategies are key to creating a world-class Johannesburg Metro Police Department (JMPD). Also important is the application of specialised training to curb the loss of Metro police - for ...
The private pain of binge eating.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Camilla Herrera Ron Saxen does not remember eating 2kg of chocolate in a single sitting. What he does remember is waiting in his darkened bedroom for his father to come home from work and beat him. His dad called it discipline; Ron was nine and afraid. ...
Listening to a fun lucky dip.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Sometimes it's not just the car you drive that gets you safely from A to B, it's good radio. Picture this: you're on the road, the highway you're on has been closed because a truck has jack-knifed. It's been a long day, you've had an e-mail fight with a colleague and your cellphone hasn't ...
You laugh a lot, but could go home grumpy.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Shrek 3 manages to be something of a paradox: it contains two theoretically self-cancelling polarities. It's (a) quite funny and (b) quite bad. The result is that you laugh a lot and you go home grumpy. The DreamWorks animators, all 600 of them or whatever, have, by ...
Banking on A Baby; Women hedge their bets by having their eggs frozen and stored, writes Rob Stein.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... As the number of women delaying motherhood continues to rise, many fertility clinics are starting to offer a new service that allows them to freeze some of their eggs to buy more time on their biological clocks. At least 138 clinics are freezing and banking eggs - more than ...
Vivid evocation of farm life, war and the loss of childhood certainty.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Writing a memoir is a tricky business: stick closely to the facts, and the story seems humdrum; rearrange them for effect, and it seems phoney. Lauren St John has managed to steer a course between the two opposed dangers of tedium and sensationalism by telling an engrossing ...
Tough mothers turn tables on HIV; A Cape support group is helping women to face and disclose their HIV-positive status and, in so doing, positively transform their own lives and those of their husbands and children, writes Charlene Smith.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... 'Being diagnosed HIV-positive was a good thing; it has opened opportunities for me. I've been overseas, delivered a speech at the White House ... HIV reminds you that your life can be whatever you want it to be." Babalwa Sitshaka, 32, exudes positive energy and wisdom. Her story ...
Wild dogs finally form a working pack on Venetia reserve.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Eleanor Momberg It appears success is finally in the offing for wild dog researchers hoping to establish a new pack at the Venetia Limpopo Nature Reserve, near Alldays. The good news comes after more than a year of struggles and failures to introduce new ...
Present trends weigh heavily on Jo'burg's new school of architecture.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Alan Lipman The faculty of art, design and architecture at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) has moved into purpose-designed accommodation, off Bunting Road, opposite the disgracefully neglected gasworks. Designing such a structure is a challenge that can ...
A menu of mixed messages; If undereating is a modern affliction, so is the opposite, and it's hard to tell from the media where the balance lies, writes Tanya Farber.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... You open the glossy magazine and disappear into its lighthearted pages to unwind after work. On page one, a stick-thin celebrity - with a mane of digitally enhanced hair - endorses a wrist watch you can't afford on an arm devoid of flesh. You turn the page to read an article about how, as ...
Watch small screens for the next big thing.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Edwin Naidu Cellphone television is going to be the next big thing in South Africa, says the company set up to tap into this lucrative market. Linda Vermaas, the chief executive of DStv Mobile, a subsidiary of pay-television provider Multichoice, says that ...
Goldblatt renders the mundane extraordinary; By observing what might otherwise pass unnoticed, the photographer leaves a record of what makes us human, writes AndrA[c] Brink.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Nobody would mistake him for a piece of battered hand-luggage left behind by a weary traveller at the end of a long train journey. But then, very few would mistake him at first sight for one of the great photographers of the world. Yet in David Goldblatt the two images converge. And the ...
Desperate for friendly faces.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... I have nine friends now. What a relief. For a while I was starting to feel like Ronald Suresh Roberts. Of course, I am referring to the group of friends I have managed to scrape together for Facebook, the new phenomenon that sees circles of friends connecting and networking in cyberspace. ...
Tribute to Tony Williams.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Trio Beyond - Saudades Anouar Brahem - Le Voyage De Sahar If drumming is your core interest in jazz, you will be conversant with the late Tony Williams, one of the loudest drummers in recent times. Williams died at age of 51 in 1997, of a heart attack ...
Chronicler of an Africa freed and shackled anew.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Chinua Achebe won the A[pounds sterling]60 000 (R860 000) 2007 Man Booker international prize for fiction, which is awarded to a living writer for a body of work written or translated into English. Nadine Gordimer, who with Colm Toibin and Elaine Showalter was one of the judges, appraises ...
Self-doubt erodes America's faith in a health-care system that works for most.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Rupert Cornwell The United States health-care system can work brilliantly, but in a country where 44 million people have no medical insurance, the pressure for change is building. Whisper it not to the assembled Democratic presidential candidates, and breathe ...
Splatter Man; Life is cheap in Hollywood's horror boom, but the movies make millions. James Mottram meets the king of the Splat Pack, Eli Roth.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... There's a sense of triumph in Eli Roth's eyes. "It was amazing," he says. "The amount of violence that I got into Hostel: Part II I don't think has been allowed in an American film before." Considering that this is the sequel to his hit 2005 horror Hostel, arguably the most violent film ...
Hamilton can rule with victory in Europe.(Sports)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: David Tremayne McLaren chief Ron Dennis is a meticulous and far-sighted individual who rarely makes mistakes, and he never made a better decision in his professional life than taking over the guidance of a younger karter's career, and giving him his Formula One chance ...
Gift for the cameo portrait redeems perceptive but loosely structured tale.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Segun Afolabi is already established as a masterly teller of short stories. His first novel is largely set in Berlin in the 1980s (before the Wall came down, through there seems to be no particular significance in this). Vincent, the first-person narrator, is a Nigerian, a ...
fashion passion; Italian designers seem to be on a mission to get guys to dress up again, writes Daniela Petroff.(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Italian designer Valentino scarcely bothered to dress the women in his menswear show this week, putting five topless dancers behind a mock-up cocktail bar in his presentation for spring and summer 2008. The dancers, who wore red sparkling thongs and black and red feathered wings, took some ...
Over-eating: a psychological disorder?(Life)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Says Adilia Silva of Wits University: "Over-eating is more of a psychological problem than a physical problem. Naturally, when one is hungry, one eats and then stops when the body gives the hormonal signal that it is full. "In someone that over-eats, the same happens; however ...
Acknowledging the wounds of silence; Elinor Sisulu, in the introduction to the report, Gukurahundi in Zimbabwe: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands 1980-1988, reflects on how she and others, as they celebrated a newly independent Zimbabwe, ignored the massacres.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... l "All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."- Edmund Burke, 18th-century British statesman and political thinker l "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." - Martin Luther King ...
Grandiose, overblown and aurally bruising fluff; Southern melodrama meets actors in need of ego boosting in this decidedly pointless and utterly forgettable remake of the 1949 original.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Robert Penn Warren's novel, All the King's Men, was published shortly after the end of the Second World War, in a climate of reconstruction and potential for the future. Surprisingly, it became a best-seller, since its stock-in-trade is the debunking of myth, or the slow accrual ...
Art plays second fiddle to rhetoric; Nonetheless, the exhibition, despite being an idealistic muddle of African work, will leave an indelible impression on the viewer.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... 'My father has lost all his teeth, I can bite him now," reads a phrase emblazoned on the gallery wall at the entrance to the exhibition. Underpinning curator Simon Njami's unshakeable desire to tear at the fabric of colonialist dogma, thereby shattering long-held notions about Africans, ...
Coulthard sees echoes of legends in new wonderkid.(Sports)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Ian Stafford David Coulthard admits he will never forget the day Lewis Hamilton asked him for advice. And the Grand Prix veteran, at 36 the oldest man on the grid, reckons the reply he gave might well have played a part, even if only in a small way, in ...
Middle-aged youth leader has big mouth and a short memory.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... When will Fikile Mbalula grow up? It is about time the 37-year-old rabble-rouser stopped masquerading under the umbrella of the ANC Youth League. He's not a youth. The youth league has had over-the-hill leaders with a penchant for holding on to the reins long after their time is up. The ...
Pilgrims are performing economic miracles; A remote village in Bosnia is typical of many religious sites benefiting from exposure on the internet and cheaper air travel, writes Mary Jordan.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Nora McNulty, a Scottish grandmother, began climbing the hill at 5.50am. She had travelled 2 000km in search of something hard to find at home. "Everybody is looking for peace, a calmness," she said. "Here I can take my mind off everyday living." Long before farmers ...
Autism lawsuit explores vaccination link.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Jia-Rui Chong and Thomas H Maugh II Theresa and Michael Cedillo, the parents of an autistic child in the United States, sat behind their three attorneys on one side of the courtroom. On the other side were three US federal lawyers armed with a shelf full of ...
Welcome to world-class New Delhi, soon free of 'work-shirking parasites'.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Mian Ridge Indian police are to launch a controversial plan to eradicate beggars and cripples from Delhi ahead of the Commonwealth Games in 2010. Limping lepers with outstretched arms, pleading mothers pressing their naked babies to car windows and ragged ...
Graveyard offers respite from the chaos in Lagos, city of irrepressible energy.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Robyn Dixon Away from the noise and hustle and stink, the shriek of energy, the never-ending buzz that is Lagos, a man reclines on a gravestone, serenely reading a book. His name is Immortal and he sells life insurance. He says he is waiting for an angel. ...
Rushdie battles bigotryon behalf of all writers.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Maureen Isaacson What's blonde, has big tits and lives in Tasmania? Answer: Salman Rushdie. In 1993, Rushdie wrote in a column, "The Last Hostage": "Sometimes I get a letter saying, give up, have an operation, change your life. I don't want some other person's life. I ...
Boris Becker: still a most singular man; Notoriety on and off the court has given the boy from Leimen a unique status, writes Brian Viner.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Boris Becker, reflecting on his time as the world's finest tennis player, once said: "Where do you go when you're best in the world? What's next?" It was a perceptive comment on the existential angst that grips many a top sportsperson, and typical of Becker. Even in the world of ...
Indian womenhelp keep the peace in Liberia; For the first time, the United Nations has deployed a mostly female unit of peacekeepers, with excellent results, GA[paragraph]rrel Espelund reports.(Dispatches)
Jul 01, 2007 ... On the road that leads out of Monrovia towards Kakata, before the dusty market area known as Red Light, the Liberian police are conducting a routine check. Just a few steps away, two Indian policewomen, Bhanumati Das and Sabita Das, dressed in blue camouflage uniforms and bullet-proof ...
Applause in order for public service deal.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Time to give credit where it is due - to the government for coming up with the innovative offers that have led to public servants stopping their strike. Not that the government was the "winner" in this dispute - there was no winner, rather a hard compromise thrashed out in protracted ...
Not your usual serial-killer movie - it's based on fact.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Detectives hunting serial killers - Hollywood detectives, that is, hunting Hollywood serial killers - inevitably discover that they have more in common with their quarry than they'd like to admit. So Clarice becomes fascinated by Dr Lecter, and Brad Pitt, having tracked Kevin Spacey ...
Bravo for remembering an unsung struggle hero.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... I want to congratulate The Sunday Independent and Jeremy Gordin on the article "A quirk of fate stymied struggle hero" (The Sunday Independent, June 24) about Ebrahim Ebrahim, one of the many, many freedom fighters in our country who have gone virtually unnoticed. I grew up ...
Jobs and services cannot keep up with birth rate.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... I have a 657-page book called World Desk Reference. It covers the world's 193 countries, divided into about 20 subjects. One of the subjects, presented in the form of a vertical graph, is "Population breakdown by age and sex". If I close the book and open it again anywhere ...
Isaacson's eagle eye.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Hosannas to Ms Maureen Isaacson for her penetrating profile of Helen Zille (The Sunday Independent, June 24). No detail ...
One rate for all public servants.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... As a health-care professional, previously employed in provincial service, whose real income was severely eroded in the 1980s by high inflation and low salary increases, I have great sympathy with those who went on strike. This is amplified by the frustration many of my ...
Catch the new early bird on Classic fM.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... Patrick Ndlovu will be the new young voice presenting Classic Calm from July. He has shown exceptional leadership and, despite coming from a disadvantaged background, was head boy at De La Salle Holy Cross, ...
The dark force who was the popular front's alter ego.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Kim Murphy He shows up for work in famously drab ties with his nails bitten to the quick. He hates networking and did not marry until he was 49. He is the glowering figure often seen harrumphing on the bench behind his preternaturally poised boss, Tony Blair, in the ...
The rise and fall of Bush's British lapdog; In 1999 Tony Blair was promoting his doctrine of international community but, with the election of the 'callow cowboy' in the US, his career was doomed.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: James Traub The people of Britain shed few tears when Tony Blair stepped down as prime minister on Wednesday. But Americans will miss him deeply, the way we do the star of a beloved TV drama that the networks finally cancel. Not since Mikhail Gorbachev has the leader of ...
SACP must cut its own cloth.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... The South African Communist Party got a message from the ANC, and from President Thabo Mbeki in particular, at the ruling party's policy conference. If the SACP was listening then it must now stop the political grandstanding and define its own path. Actually, the president's ...
Low voter turnouts signal waning charisma.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Patrick Laurence While it may seem trite to observe that the African National Congress policy conference - which ended in Midrand yesterday - opened with the delegates being led in prayer by a clergyman, it is certainly not insignificant. It symbolised the ...
Julies has too much class to be the centre of attention.(Sports)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Jacques van der Westhuyzen He may not be the quickest around the field, but he's pure class when it comes to passing a rugby ball and he's equally impressive in bringing down his opponents. He's a clever rugby player, never doing anything flashy; just the ...
Blood on the beaches as seal-clubbing starts; Ravaged by starvation, Namibia's rapidly shrinking population of Cape fur seals is accused of out-fishing the high-tech trawler fleets.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Eleanor Momberg The Namibian seal-clubbing season started this morning. Three companies awarded concessions by the Namibian government will be allowed to beat to death 80 000 baby seals and kill 6 000 adult males during each of the 2007, 2008 and 2009 killing ...
Eskom strike threatens to leave SA in the dark.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Eleanor Momberg Power outages could become the bane of many South Africans' lives if Eskom employees embark on planned strike action this week. The National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa and Solidarity have ...
New agreement opens way for both Zuma and Mbeki to stand for party presidency.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Christelle Terreblanche A compromise agreement that opens the way for both President Thabo Mbeki and his ANC deputy Jacob Zuma to stand for the ruling party's top job was set to intensify lobbying for positions at all levels. This was among the potential ...
Key court record in Masetlha case found to have been tampered with.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Jeremy Gordin The legal adviser to Zolile Ngcakani, the inspector-general of intelligence, secretly asked Jeremiah Shongwe, the deputy judge president of the Transvaal division, and Dreyer van der Merwe, a Pretoria magistrate, to remove pages from their court records. ...
Medical schemes under pressure, members at risk; Huge rises in medical costs and competition for new members have left many health insurers with alarmingly diminished emergency reserves.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Edwin Naidu Thousands of people who belong to medical aid schemes that do not comply with a government requirement that they hold 25 percent of their income in reserve could one day find themselves without cover, Patrick Masobe, the registrar of the Council for Medical ...
Body of explosives expert back on home soil.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Paul Fauvet Sergeant Johannes Gasaratwe was an explosives expert and one of a group of 50 South African soldiers who have been helping their Mozambican counterparts dispose of ageing and unstable Soviet-era weaponry that is stored in the military arsenal in the Maputo ...
Warning of state of emergency as Zimbabweans shun cash payments in favour of food.(News)
Jul 01, 2007 ... BYLINE: Basildon Peta Alfred Moyo holds his breath each time he queues to pay for his bread and milk. By the time he reaches the till, the prices of the commodities might have increased. "This is no ordinary joke," he says. "It is the reality of the rot that has set ...