Durban businessman Sifiso Zulu has, over the past two weeks, become the city’s Scarlet Pimpernel. But, unlike the Pimpernel, rumours circulating in the city suggest that Zulu may need the intervention of friendly political aristocrats, rather than the other way around.
The municipality of the surfing village of Port St Johns on the Wild Coast has been accused of engineering community divisions and rushing to settle a land claim to bail itself out of bankruptcy. Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana has signed off a R92,7-million compensation settlement.
The stink caused by the withdrawal of Blue Flag status — the international eco-stamp of approval for pristine beach management — from several of eThekwini’s beaches is a pointed reminder that municipal manager Mike Sutcliffe takes criticism very badly. Flags were lowered largely because of water-quality issues at the beaches.
”Have the strength to practise what you preach and live what you believe,” implores Whill van Staden, lead screamer of the metal-core Christian band He* Sha* Burn. His Saturday-night audience at the Harvest Church in suburban Durban North is a hyperactive mosh-pit of teenagers throwing themselves at a wall of furious guitars.
Mishehe Kalohua opens his asylum-seeker permit tenderly. The tattered page, held together by sticky-tape, has been opened and refolded so often that it has become as flimsy as cheap toilet paper. He has been waiting for well over a year for a response to his application for refugee status in the country.
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/ 29 February 2008
Wednesday afternoon and the sun beats down on a tattered strip of grass surrounded by embattled homes in the centre of KwaMashu township, north of Durban. Boy-men in excruciatingly tight shorts and sleeveless tops do violent pirouettes in the air — usually because someone else is clobbering them.
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/ 22 February 2008
With Social Development Minister Zola Skweyiya recently intimating that the child-support grant would eventually be extended to include children up to the age of 18 hopes had been raised in the child advocacy sector. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel’s capping of the grant at 15 was met with criticism from NGOs and lobby groups.
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/ 22 February 2008
On February 2 the Durban Metro branch of the Red Cross was stripped of all its powers, including control of all income and expenditure. Now South African Red Cross Society (Sarcs) volunteers in KwaZulu-Natal are up in arms that the organisation’s leadership is hell-bent on rooting out individuals perceived as whistle-blowers — rather than cleaning up its financial mess.
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/ 15 February 2008
Artist Michael MacGarry’s new exhibition subverts stereotypes of the "darkest" continent, writes Niren Tolsi.