Rebel leader Laurent Kabila is making economic decisions that could impoverish Zaire further. Stefaans Brmmer reports from Lubumbashi LAURENT KABILA’S alliance has shown itself adept at waging war, but signs are it has a lot to learn about managing the peace. Erratic decisions by the rebel leader’s young “government” have eroded outsider confidence. His actions […]
THE accelerated movement of hundreds of thousands of people into the cities from the rural areas, from other provinces and from the rest of Africa, is transforming South Africa. Poverty-stricken squatter camps have long been a feature of our cities, but the urban sprawl of Gauteng, which has become one of the fastest-growing emerging cities […]
Africa is not a romantic motherland for black Americans, but a cruel despotic continent, writes Keith Richburg I WATCHED the dead float down a river in Tanzania. It’s one of those apocryphal stories you always hear coming out of Africa, meant to demonstrate the savagery of “the natives”. Babies being pulled off their mothers’ backs […]
After decades on the mines, a Mozambican man has been offered R1 777,54 for long service. He is one of thousands left without old-age security, writes Ferial Haffajee FORTY-EIGHT years ago, Andre Muianga joined the throng of Mozambican men leaving their homes in Xai-Xai to work in South Africa’s booming gold mines. On January 20 […]
Julie Barker AT Western Platinum Mine in Mooi Nooi, near the Magaliesberg, a group of mine employees is rehearsing a play. They are putting the final touches on Shortcuts. The group is called Thuto ke Lesedi, which means Education is Light. Formed just over a year ago, Thuto ke Lesedi has, with the help of […]
Ann Eveleth BLACK students attending school in a working-class Afrikaans suburb of Pretoria West should “go back to Soweto”, said white parents standing guard outside Elandspoort High School this week after three days of racial clashes which saw two students hospitalised with bat and knife wounds. By Thursday morning the school was still struggling to […]
A special investigative unit arrived in Mpumalanga this week and is uncovering politicians’ dicey deals, reports Justin Arenstein THE National Parks Board chairman and respected former homeland leader, Dr Enos Mabuza, is being probed by the most powerful government investigative unit in South Africa for a state farm he bought for R6 000 in 1991 […]
If computers can beat humans at chess, does that make them smarter than us? Julia Grey reports MACHINE has finally conquered man: Garry Kasparov, world champion chess player, succumbed this week to IBM’s supercomputer, Deep Blue, in their six-game rematch. The outlandish vision of the science fiction world, seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where […]
herStoriA deputy editor DELIA ROTHNIE-JONES explores the rewards of literary prizes THE recent death of the CNA Literary Award means that another window of opportunity for writers has been boarded up. Soon we shall be left only with peep-holes into our country’s soul. Faced with this withering of literary activity, we are forced to ask […]
IF the writing was not on the wall for the Mobutu Sese Seko regime before, it was there last week in a cable sent to Washington by the United States embassy in Kinshasa. It reported that the newly appointed prime minister of Zaire, General Likulia Bolongo was preparing for “a speedy departure from Kinshasa with […]