Stephen Gray THE DARK STREAM: THE STORY OF EUGENE MARAIS by Leon Rousseau (Jonathan Ball) Eugne Marais, with his passion for the South African wild outdoors, put the Northern Transvaal’s Waterberg district on the map. His memory is still celebrated there. In the Nylstroom library, an alcove is fittingly devoted to his bust (sculpted by […]
Ivor Powell Nosizwe Madlala-Routledge, the newly appointed deputy minister of defence, is no militaristic hawk or securocrat. She’s a self-professed pacifist – and a practising member of the Society of Friends or Quaker movement. She is married to Jeremy Routledge, the director of the Quaker Peace Centre in Cape Town. In the 1980s the centre […]
John Matshikiza With The Lid Off I met Danny Glover in the Sheraton hotel in Harare in 1986. It was a bitterly cold winter’s morning, the sun had not yet come up, and we were gathering in the lobby of the hotel, waiting to go on to the set to shoot a made-for-TV movie called […]
gates skeletons John Grobler Namibia’s Central Intelligence Services (NCIS) this week took the unusual step of asking for public assistance to identify 57 skeletons discovered in the desert outside the southern harbour town of Lderitz. In a rare public appearance, Director General of the NCIS Peter Sheehama said the skeletons were discovered as long ago […]
Loose cannon Robert Kirby There’s an ancient Australian proverb which runs: “By his piss-up mates shall you know your neighbour best.” Attributed to Dunny the Elder, the wisdom of the saying is self-evident. This appealing fragment of Antipodean social philosophy came rushing to mind when I read in last Sunday’s newspapers that among the host […]
Fiona Macleod Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi- Mahanyele is talking about starting a revolution in her second term of office. “We’ve laid the foundations, the building blocks are in place and a social revolution is about to start,” she says. “Our society is changing, and housing is one of the factors contributing towards that change.” […]
RESCUE services were searching the sea off Angola’s southwest coast on Wednesday after a helicopter carrying a senior Angolan government official and at least four other people failed to arrive at its destination, an official said. Deputy Interior Minister Dario Ngongo was on board a police helicopter that left Luanda on Tuesday en route to […]
Shaun de Waal Low-budget movie of the week In Rose Troche’s debut feature, Go Fish, a lesbian is put on “trial” by her peers for daring to contemplate the idea of sex with a man. This scene seemed to confirm some viewers’ worst fears about lesbians, but Troche’s intention was indubitably satirical. Her satire, though, […]
David le Page Finding out that there is a special cellphone service for deaf people was a little puzzling. After all, surely any phone with a vibrating alarm, which is pretty standard, and a normal short message service (SMS) – just as standard- can work perfectly well as a wireless communicator for deaf people? Sure […]
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki and Organisation of African Unity secretary-general Salim Ahmed Salim will address a conference on the theme of an African revival in Johannesburg in October, organisers said on Thursday. Former South African and Tanzanian presidents Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere, as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, are among those who have […]