RISING EVIDENCE OF SLEAZE IN POLITICS
The British politician Stanley Baldwin once famously slated the influence of the press barons of his day as "power without responsibility - the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages". Yet where they function as watchdogs of freedom, the med...
ANOTHER WEEK
AT HOME Auditor-general Shauket Fakie says 14 ministers - including deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka - did not d...
DON'T BURN YOUR FINGERS WHEN STIRRING THE POT
Government is deliberately pursuing a more interventionist industrial policy - one with significant implications for the affected businesses. The department of trade & industry (DTI) is at the heart of the effort: it has identified eight priority s...
AFRIKAANS DOES NOT NEED SPECIAL PROTECTION
The only language that is going backwards in SA is Afrikaans," complained Freedom Front leader Constand Viljoen in the 1990s. He was right, and the process continues. It could not have been otherwise. Afrikaans dominated because of its status as...
EDITOR'S NOTE
e-mail: fmeditor@fm.co.za
The bus was slowly making its way down the runway at Johannesburg International Airport when its passengers suddenly spotted an Air Zimbabwe aircraft. And, as if on cue, the passengers burst out laughing. "I didn't know they still had a plane in Z...
THE STATE WE'RE IN
By Jamie Carr
IF ADAM HAD READ THE APPLE MANUAL . . . I am writing as usual on the ancient PC, while the glowing new Apple iBook gives me the hairy eyeball from across the study. This is approximately the equivalent of swank...
THE REAL DE LILLE
I read Carol Paton's paean to Patricia de Lille, "The gold chain isn't everything" (Current Affairs March 10) with some degree of pity and amusement. I, too, was once charmed by De Lille, for the same reason many others w...
FSB AND FEDBOND
Your reporting of the Fedbond affair (FM Focus March 10) raises certain questions. Is there no limit to the number of appeals that an organisation may make to the high court, despite regularly losing judgments? It seems the ...
RAPE LAW SET BACK
Congratulations to the FM for a fine editorial (March 17) and an excellent headline: "An accuser guilty of being a woman." Coverage of the Jacob Zuma trial has been disgusting, the silence from the SA National Editors F...
PAST IMPERFECT
I am delighted that your columnist for The State We're In (March 10) was able to master irregular Greek verbs during his time at school. Nonetheless, he should not be disparaging about modern youth being unable to recognise a p...
MIND YOUR BEE BASES
I refer to a reader's account titled "Scoring BEE time" (Letters December 16 2005) of a distressing and distasteful meeting the writer and a client of hers had with "William", the KwaZulu Natal black economic empowerment (BEE) ...
SELF-POLICING MEN
Your March 17 editorial, "An accuser guilty of being a woman" is right on the button. However, I think it should go a step further. Where violence and crime, rape and theft are everyday issues, we have to wonder how civilised we re...
NICE HEDGE FUNDS JOB
I found your recent survey on hedge funds written by Stephen Cranston (FM Fund Management - First Quarter 2006) to be a particularly illuminating assessment of the state of the industry and the increasingly important role ...
MUTUAL TAKEOVER
Mutual & Federal is owned 78%-88% by Old Mutual, which failed to get enough shares for a full takeover of M&F a few years ago. There is only a small free float of shares in the market and institutions are not selling. What to d...
OUTAGE OUTRAGE
Andile Mali's letter (Letters February 10) is unfortunately a classic example of blaming current wrongs on the past, rather than addressing the problems we face. He cannot dispute the fact that much of the expertise ...
VERWOERD AND BEE
The articles in your issue of March 17 (Economy & Markets) refer. The writers lament the fact that black control of the JSE is so low 12 years into the new SA. They will do well to investigate what happened with Afrikaner co...
LEARN FROM THE EAST
The article "Wanted: Bold Moves" (Management March 17), highlights some of the reasons for our atrocious levels of people development, but our problems are much deeper and more serious. We have three main problems. The conte...
