In an attempt to save the industry, the South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union has been making sacrifices on behalf of its members: in October, the union agreed to a 30% reduction in wages for new employees.

A Noseweek investigation, however, reveals how futile such concessions are unless major stores like Stuttafords are more discriminating about those with whom they choose to do business. Boutique queen, Inge Peacock's pattern of non-payment wears thin as she refuses to settle the account with Cape Town garment factory R&R Anonymous Knitwear.

A shock exposé by the Sunday Times in December of what was alleged to be a police “death squad” based in Durban, has effectively closed down the Organised Crime Unit that deals with serious violent crimes such as cash-in-transit heists, armed robberies, serial killers and serial rapists. Given that KwaZulu-Natal has frequently topped the list of South Africa's most murderous provinces, by all accounts this is a serious setback for crime prevenion.

Thoshan Panday and Colonel Navin Madhoe are alleged to have conned  the press with doctored dossiers. Both face serious corruption charges and have an axe to grind with the head of the Hawks in KZN, Major-General Booysen, the man the minister has suspended as a result of the Sunday Times exposé.

Hands up if you’re one of those cynics who, when you heard about the proposed National Health Insurance, immediately thought, great: I’m going to be paying even more for something that will be so crap I’ll never be able to use it. Don’t be embarrassed, as this story shows, you’re probably spot on.

Read on to find out how when medics miss the mark, a woman dies and doctors pass the buck.

Where did all those pensions go? The brief was to make sure the members have a bigger kitty.

Information on the investment of Trilinear funds is still thin on the ground. It’s a pretty complex story that basically goes like this: a man by the name of Sam Buthelezi had an asset management company called Trilinear Capital and he persuaded the South African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (Sactwu) to invest pension funds in his company’s Trilinear Empowerment Trust – R460 million in total.  Trilinear invested (as in lost) R93m of this money in Canyon Springs Investment 12, a company that was 50% owned by Enoch Godongwana and his wife, Thandiwe, and which is now in liquidation and the subject of an insolvency inquiry.

Oasis boss used rod to discomfit staff.

Uncle Nazeem threatened employee, Naresh Karia, with jolly rogering and a Samurai sword;  and Shariah-compliant Saheen kicked off by branding Karia 'a pig'.

Oasis executives deny abusive behaviour in a round-robin letter to their clients and Noseweek responds from the gutter.

Mark Olivier, who’s in the midst of a legal battle with the JSE-listed giant, MTN, has been forced to close his six MTN stores and retrench 21 workers as a result of "inadvertently" selling R299-worth of rival Vodacom's airtime. He signed a tough exclusivity agreement tying himself to MTN and now believes MTN is secretly planning to eliminate the countrywide franchise stores that sell its cellphone products.

Len Ashton

reviews

DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY

by P D James

(Faber & Faber)

Not so many moons ago an 18-year-old schoolboy in matric at a top Johannesburg private school received hideous facial injuries – the photographs are stomach-churning – when an older man viciously stabbed him with a broken glass in an unprovoked attack at a local night club.

Curiously no charges have been brought. Why?

French President Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa – you may want simply to call him Sarko – made waves at the end of January when he attempted to justify a 1.6% rise in the VAT rate. According to a report in the British newspaper, The Telegraph, a journalist pointed out to Sarko that in Britain price increases had followed hot on the heels of an increase in the VAT rate.

Sarko’s dismissive retort: “The United Kingdom has no industry any more.

A year ago Mr Justice Bean sentenced BAE Systems to a fine of £500,000 and ordered it to pay £225,000 towards the prosecution costs. Two years on, now that BAE Systems have found their chequebook, how long do you think the cheque will be in the post?

Johannesburg Advocate Roshnee Mansingh’s court bid to have the whole Senior Counsel system scrapped was argued in November before the Noth Gauteng High Court in Pretoria and on 9 February judgment handed down in favour of Advocate Mansingh.

Sure as hell, things are not going well at Denel. In fact the state-owned defence conglomerate has been suffering a serious cash drought – so severe, Mr Nose has been told, that all cash income has been diverted from various subsidiaries' bank accounts to a central account controlled by Denel head office in Irene, all in order to meet the past two months' salary bills.

For years, parking in the suburbs of Johannesburg has been regulated by a combination of meters and informal car guards, while in the CBD and Braamfontein a more rigorous system – policed by parking marshals – has ruled for some time. Now their dominion has suddenly embraced Parkhurst as well – and it’s spreading.

The people of Parkhurst are very unhappy, especially the traders, because the new system is limited to the two streets where all the businesses are, namely 4th Avenue and 6th Street. There is no public participation; the infrastructure is inadequate; pavements and kerbs are in a bad way; and the system takes no account of pedestrian crossings, disabled parking bays, loading bays and parking for cyclists.