LOOKING BACK

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 50 YEARS AGO

The sweeping rail tariff increases that will follow the R100-million increase for 222,000 White and non-White rail workers could — in the words of the Minister of Transport, Mr Ben Schoeman — prove to be “fatal for the economy”. They could cause the cost of living to rise so much that the benefits of the wage increase would be “wiped out in six months”. Mr Schoeman gave this warning recently when he refused a 20 per cent wage demand by railmen. Now the Railway Administration has adopted the recommendation of a departmental commission for a 15 per cent increase (the five per cent difference in the wage rise and tariff increase does not substantially alter the gravity of Mr Schoeman’s warning). — December 3 1972

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 25 YEARS AGO

After three days of relentless cross-examination, defence advocate George Bizos SC has been unable to breach more than a chink in Polish immigrant Janusz Walus’s armour. The man who is seeking amnesty for the April 10 1993 murder of SA Communist Party leader Chris Hani is sticking to his story that he and former Conservative Party parliamentarian Clive Derby-Lewis were the only people involved in the Hani assassination, and that their sole motive was to “cause chaos” in South Africa so that the right wing could seize power. Expectations that the amnesty hearings, which began in August, would finally reveal that a broader conspiracy hatched by state agents lay behind the killing have not materialised.

— November 30 1997