Ivor Powell While talks in Lusaka aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to stutter, the war is intensifying in the diamond-rich area around Mbuji Mayi. Congolese forces are reportedly under heavy attack in the town of Kabinda, 100km to the east of the diamond capital, Mbuji Mayi. They are […]
Paul Trueman Online gaming is the fastest-growing industry on the Internet, where players spend hours online sharing information … and killing each other. Some friends and I blew up the Death Star last night, freeing the galaxy from the emperor’s evil tyranny. Not bad for a night’s work. I used to be someone who got […]
What light through yonder windshield breaks? I read the title of Mark Dunlop’s video work on the exhibition Truth Veils: The Inner City, currently on at the Rembrandt Gallery, after two weeks spent thinking about the Truth Veils project. In Dunlop’s video – a stylish and cleverly crafted sneer at white perceptions of Johannesburg as […]
Tony Twine Data published by Statistics South Africa (SSA), which effectively wrote the economic recession we thought we were living through out of the history books, appears to have been accepted by analysts, while astounding the man in the street. Is it simply smoke and mirrors, or something more sinister along revisionist lines? The definition […]
Angolans are press-ganged into a conflict that began before they were born and where greed has overtaken ideology. Chris McGreal reports This is not a good year for the self-styled “Joao the Survivor” to turn 21. A few weeks before his birthday the Angolan army called up men born in 1978 to throw into the […]
Cameron Duodu Letter from the North I wonder whether Congolese politicians realise the impatience and irritation with which the rest of us in Africa look on as they squabble over the terms of the peace agreement that could give their country a chance to recover from the ravages of Mobutu Sese Seko’s kleptocratic rule? Don’t […]
Xolela Mangcu Guest Column `Where are the black intellectuals?” President Thabo Mbeki has often asked. I would urge him to consider an even larger and prior question: where is the intellectual environment required for the emergence of those intellectuals? Black people have been excluded from what I have previously called the “knowledge-ideas- complex”. It consists […]
Architects and theorists gathered in Paris to discuss the current state of architecture. Globalisation in the form of cyber-culture was the main topic of conversation, writes Michael Nurok If a bomb had gone off in the Palais de Chaillot last week, architecture’s past, present and future would have ceased to exist. Rarely have the doyens […]
Mercedes Sayagues For tourists, The Kingdom, a posh new hotel in Victoria Falls, is a delight. For locals, it is a sore point. Sore enough that angry residents planned a protest in March. It was cancelled under threat of police repression, but the issue is not dead. In question are the hiring policies of The […]
John Matshikiza With The Lid Off Far be it from me to be critical of the way other newspapers operate, but, speaking as a simple citizen for a moment, I have to say I get frustrated at the lack of proper background and follow-up in many of the stories we are fed. If you don’t […]