Charl Blignaut `I’m a bit of a tart,” says Marianne Fassler as I settle against a plastic blow-up cushion embedded with pink flowers on a big old chair in her elegently kitsch Johannesburg lounge. “I think I know how to promote myself in the media. Put it this way, I’ve always had good press. But, […]
Eddie Koch Conservation authorities are so worried about tuberculosis (TB) in buffalos that they are preparing to shoot thousands of the animals in Lowveld game reserves. Rangers in KwaZulu-Natal’s Hluhluwe Umfolozi Park have already begun culling infected animals. Thousands of buffalo in the Kruger Park have been infected by TB, originally spread by domestic cattle […]
The winds of change that have blown through the SABC seem to have bypassed the commissioning department, writes Ferial Haffajee It is 1976 and television has just hit our shores. The Broederbond has decreed that it be a totally bilingual operation. But the problem is there is nary an Afrikaans producer in sight. The commissioning […]
Ferial Haffajee Strike action in South Africa is on the increase – but it is fuelled less by party political tension and more by the shrinking economy. “This is not Cosatu [the Congress of South African Trade Unions] sending warnings to the [African National Congress/South African Communist Party/Cosatu] alliance. But the strikes are political if […]
Iden Wetherell He is being compared to Britain’s combative wartime leader Winston Churchill in local media tributes which border on the hagiographical. But whether this proves to be President Robert Mugabe’s finest hour ultimately depends on the outcome of the war he is busy directing in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In a decision that […]
Alex Sudheim `Make sharp, the picture is on!” yells the usher to the throng of patrons still jostling for popcorn and cooldrinks around the kiosk. Behind him, the 400-seater cinema is packed to capacity as the enormous screen flickers into vivid life. Its a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon in a deserted and windswept Durban city […]
scoundrels? In the course of researching this article, I telephoned a former colleague in London who is responsible for organising much of the foreign coverage on an international financial publication. I have often used him as a sounding- board for ideas and arguments, and I asked his thoughts on the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). He was […]
Shaun de Waal What the Americans call “sell-thru” video -videos for sale -is beginning to take off in South Africa in a big way. The rampaging success of Disney titles such as The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, which appear to be addictive to children, spearheaded the influx into South Africa of an ever- […]
As `sell-thru’ video takes off in South Africa, the complete Tintin series has been released on video. Charl Blignaut spent 20 hours in front of his TV Everyone has their favourite Tintin moment. Permanently etched in my memory are those huge red and white mushrooms in The Shooting Star exploding into life on a small […]
Alex Sudheim `After 10 minutes time you’ll forget you’re watching a screen and you’ll feel like you’re in the same room,” promises Krish Moodley of his unique new venture, the 3-D Picture Palace on Durban’s beachfront. Whether or not you actually want to be in the same room as several dozen grunting, sweating, copulating people […]