With the controversy surrounding Mark Hipper’s portraits of naked children still simmering, Fiona MacCarthy reports on an exhibition of Lewis Carroll’s photographs of little girls Xie Kitchin, little girl photographed as a pert Chinaman, perched in skimpy silk kimono on a pyramid of tea boxes. Alice Liddell dressed up as a small beggarmaid, rags falling […]
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s President, Laurent Kabila, is pondering a future as obscure as his past not because of his evident lack of administrative talent, his taste for the good life or the minimal support of his fellow citizens. Instead, consider a broadcast on Congolese state radio last week: “People must bring a machete, […]
Zwelithini ka Mvelase Uncompromising winter’s sun blasts its ultraviolet rays into my eyes as we swing into the Hector Petersen Square, Orlando West, for a presentation to Soweto of an art work titled Hector Petersen Mosaic, by the late activist/artist Theo Gerber’s wife, Susie. It’s Sunday in Soweto, Donny Hathaway’s soul classic Children of the […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Premier Soccer League chief executive officer Trevor Phillips has tried and failed to reduce the size of the 18- club Castle Premiership, the richest national championship in Africa. This week, his South African Football Association counterpart, Danny Jordaan, tackled the same problem from a different angle, proposing that his organisation buy two […]
front David Hirst Last month an “important announcement” appeared on a website, , “in the name of God the merciful, the compassionate”. It consisted of a brief interview which the journal al- Murabitoun – mouthpiece of al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, Egypt’s largest underground organisation – had with one of the group’s exiled leaders, Sheikh Abu Yasser Rifai […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) television news editor-in-chief designate Phillip Molefe describes his whole life as a strange coincidence prescribed by fate: he was born in Sharpeville exactly two years before the famous massacre in 1960 when police killed more than 69 anti-pass law protesters in the sprawling Vaal Triangle township. He started […]
Mail & Guardian reporters The Natal High Court handed down a landmark judgment in favour of press freedom last week when it denied an application by the Inkatha Freedom Party to gag the Mail & Guardian. The IFP launched a two-pronged attack on the newspaper last week, applying to the court to stop the M&G […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 6.00PM. ZIMBABWE has increased the number of its troops backing the Democratic Republic of Congo army against rebels from 600 to 2800 in the past few days, which have seen an escalation in fighting, the Zimbabwe Independent reported on Friday. “Initially, we had underestimated the number of foreign troops in […]
MONSTER MACHINES by Caroline Bingham (Dorling Kindersley) This book describes 12 different types of the “biggest, heaviest, chunkiest machines on the move”. These include a Boeing 747, a giant mining shovel with a mass of 240 tonnes and an enormous mobile crane with 18 wheels. The text is very simple and quite devoid of technical […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dakar | Friday 11.00am. SOUTH African hammer thrower Chris Harmse, who is the African record holder in the event, won the gold medal at the African Athletics Championships in Dakar, Senegal ,with a throw of 72,11m on Thursday night. Nigerian competitors dominated on Thursday, with Clement Chukwu and Falilat Ogunkoya doing a double […]