Why do Pedi men wear Scottish kilts in their traditional dress? MARIAMcCLOY listens to some tall stories THE Lesedi Cultural Village in the Magaliesberg offers an expensive and contrived African experience. Visitors can “sing, dance and taste traditional Africa”. This includes them getting to see a group of Pedi, Zulu, Mosotho and Xhosa. They can […]
Robin McKie in London SCIENTISTS are developing the ultimate in designer genes: genetically engineered plants that produce naturally blue cotton. The aim is to make denims that can be manufactured without dyeing. The blue-gene project, created by United States chemical giant Monsanto, reveals the flourishing power of crop geneticists. Last year, this resulted in a […]
Shaun de Waal BORN IN THE RSA: FOUR WORKSHOPPED PLAYS by Barney Simon (Witwatersrand University Press, R39,95) LIKE Joan Littlewood, with whom he worked, and Athol Fugard, to whom he was close, Barney Simon made theatre out of a process of bringing real life as directly as possible to the stage. Simon’s actor-collaborators would be […]
act Busi Moloele NEXT time you’re in Witbank, look carefully between the giant forms of the iron-smelting factory, the electricity power-stations and the gangling steel factory. There, huddled in a space named Kwaguqa, you are likely meet an intrepid band of environmentalists who are trying to make a difference. In 1994, a group of standard […]
AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS HUMAN Rights Commission chairman Barney Pityana was appointed as a part-time member of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights on Friday. The Commission is affiliated to the Organisation of African Unity, and Pityana has been signed on for the next six years. ALDWORTH FINED BOB ALDWORTH, the Absa bank executive […]
Golf: Bill Elliott JUST a few kilometres from the Congressional Country Club, venue for the United States Open which started on Thursday, America’s most famous golfer sits and wonders about the state of his game once he is fully recovered from injury. For Bill Clinton these are worrying times. While the president frets over the […]
Communists in South Africa have started a passionate debate with religious leaders, writes Vishwas Satgar ‘ALL things solid melt into thin air.” Applying this Marxist nomenclature to the South African Communist Party (SACP) reveals a political organisation grappling with the oldest left-wing political legacy in South Africa and Africa. The SACP is on a path-breaking […]
LESOTHO WALK-OUT OPPOSITION parties in the Lesotho parliament on Thursday walked out for the second consecutive day in protest at Prime Minister Dr Ntsu Mokhehle’s new government, which they call illegal. Members of the Basotholand Congress Party and Sefate Democratic Union leader Bofihla Mkuebe walked out at the end of question time. Mokhehle at the […]
THURSDAY, 8.30AM RESERVE BANK governor Chris Stals, at a conference in Warsaw, was reported last night (Wednesday) to have hinted that the ceiling for individual South African investment abroad will be set at around R160 000. Stals said the figure would only be settled next week, but would be in the region of R160 000. […]
THURSDAY, 3.30PM THE Human Rights Committee on Thursday told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that between 1960 and 1989, at least 1 750 children died in political violence in SA, and another 517 were killed between 1990 and April 1994. Addressing special commission hearings on child and youth victims in Johannesburg, the committee added that […]