Yearly Archives: 1999

imagination David Beresford Another Country As the smoke and flames of factional hatred rise over East Timor I feel a surge of envy tinged with pity for my former colleagues in the rat-pack scrambling once again, post-Kosovo, for airline bookings and their visas. Envy, for the rush of adrenalin and the camaraderie of the foreign […]

Shaun Harris taking Stock Since the market crash last October our black chips have looked more like black blips in danger of fading right off the investment radar. Personal intrigue at board level has also not helped perceptions of black economic empowerment companies, which are presently probably as negative as they have ever been since […]

Alex Dodd For a city as untamed as Johannesburg you’d expect a little more edge on the underground. A few less galleries, more factories. Fewer townhouse complexes, more warehouses. Jo’burg’s mercurial infrastructure seems like an invitation to artists to go for the spaces between the lines and occupy territory that cannot be easily named and […]

Deep under the Eastern Cape’s Kat River dam are 1 000 silent witnesses to one of apartheid’s greatest lies. Peter Dickson reports Across the length and breadth of South Africa, from District Six to Dimbaza, nothing could stop prime minister BJ Vorster’s bulldozers in 1967. Not even in dusty little Seymour, off the beaten track […]

Proposed legislation to govern minimum wages for South Africa’s lowest-paid employment sectors could pose a serious danger for employment losses, writes Haroon Bhorat The Department of Labour has recently called for public submissions and comment on the issue of minimum wages and conditions of employment for domestic and farm workers. An analysis of the first […]

Shaun de Waal Movie of the week The division of India on the eve of independence in 1947 has left lasting scars on that country and Pakistan, the chunk of the old India that was chopped off to become a Muslim country while the rest was dominated by Hindus and Sikhs. The departing British (supported […]

Marianne Merten At least three civilians have applied for the post of Western Cape police commissioner -a first in the history of the police service – despite grumbling among the top brass that the job should go to one of the men in blue. The civilian candidates include Cape Town Safer City manager Omar Valley, […]

Author Brian Aldiss describes his years of developing film scripts with Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick’s reputation rests not only on his films but also on his seeming isolation and determined independence. No other director has managed so successfully to stand outside the Hollywood system – and flourish. I saw an example of this independence when […]

Sex workers in Kenya have provided scientists with the tools to develop a trial vaccine against HIV. David Gough reports from Nairobi Majengo, a slum area of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, is a sprawling maze of narrow alleys and paths scored by the open flow of untreated sewage. About 80 000 people live among the […]

Savage violence in East Timor and Indonesia’s stubborn refusal to accept international peacekeepers has left the United Nations facing one of its starkest dilemmas – and choices ranging from difficult to impossible. In an eerie repeat of events surrounding the Angolan elections in 1992, the UN, having organised the referendum which produced an overwhelming vote […]