Yearly Archives: 1999

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

Aaron Nicodemus The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) axed its national registrar last week after an internal inquiry found him guilty of sexual harassment, gross insubordination and negligence. Monde Zimema, the organisation’s number two official since mid-1996, has been suspended with pay since February. The inquiry also found him guilty of lying to […]

Gilfillan A marble bust of Queen Victoria adorns the front of the Graaff-Reinet town hall, the interior of which is hung with crystal chandeliers, where farmers and farmworkers gathered this week to express their views on a minimum wage and conditions of employment. A series of similar meetings has, over recent weeks, quietly taken place […]

Former South African president Nelson Mandela met former German chancellor Helmut Kohl in Berlin on Thursday.

Former president Nelson Mandela on Tuesday received a transcript of the original judgment in his 1961 treason trial.