Mercedes Sayagues Unita’s artillery rumbled 5km away. Malanje was surrounded. Panic ensued. The airport was swept by people desperate to get on a relief plane bound for Luanda. The Antonov had little safe time for take- off. Manuel’s mother lifted him over her head. A hand pulled him up on board. While his mother scrambled […]

Opera Coenraad Visser The State Theatre’s production of Manon is a milestone in many respects. It is the first production of Massenet’s early masterpiece in South Africa, an all-South African cast does full justice to the rich score and a South African production team presents a unified artistic vision that draws on the best European […]

Time contains every paradox. It heals all wounds, but it wounds all heels. It shrinks, it stretches, it flies, it drags. It varies relativistically according to the speed of the observer. It is measured in years, but even years have to be subdivided into tropical years, or anomalistic years, or Great Years. Aeons are counted […]

MPUMALANGA’S former environmental affairs MEC, Luckson Mathebula, suspected of conspiring to murder his estranged wife, was again remanded in custody during a court appearance in Phalaborwa on Thursday. Mathebula’s girlfriend, Pretty Thembi Gama, was on Thursday afternoon placed in a police witness protection program after she agreed to become a State witness. All charges against […]

Matthew Krouse, who once portrayed Dimitri Tsafendas in a play, looks at Lisa Key’s extraordinary documentary on the man who murdered Verwoerd I know what it feels like to kill Hendrik Verwoerd. I killed him often in 1985, when I acted as Dimitri Tsafendas in a musical satire I wrote with Robert Colman, who played […]

Cameron Duodu Letter from the North It is gratifying to learn that Sierra Leone’s President Alhaji Tejan Kabbah is about to bring the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) into his government. There is no doubt that the RUF and its leader, Foday Sankoh, are among the most sadistic murderers on the African continent. […]

Shaun de Waal Big-budget movie of the week `See it again!” the Star Wars faithful are urging each other on the Net. “It gets better!” This is partly to ensure that Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace breaks Titanic’s record, but also to help them get over the disappointment of the first viewing. Disappointment […]

Mungo Soggot ASecond Look A few weeks before the election, a foreign diplomat said that as far as his government was concerned, the litmus test of the Thabo Mbeki era was going to be what happened to the then Cabinet’s non-performers. The diplomat mentioned only two names – Penuell Maduna, whom he believed had had […]

There is a political tradition followed in some parts of the world which has it that a newly elected political leader should be given 100 days – a “honeymoon” period – in which to find his or her feet in office before being subjected to media and opposition criticism. Thabo Mbeki has already been occupying […]

A FARM worker has laid assault charges against an Mpumalanga farmer who allegedly beat her for talking loudly to a friend in a toilet while on duty. Cynthia Mkhatjwa (37) of Magogeni tribal trust alleges that Ricardo Colonna assaulted her two weeks ago and then tried to bribe her with R10. She laid charges against […]