Charl Blignaut Shopping and Fucking, a controversial new theatre production, has, against all odds, ushered in a new era for Johannesburg’s Market Theatre – in the process taking its young cast into uncharted territory. The play, which contains some of the most explicit scenes ever seen on a local stage, was always going to be […]

ready for the spectacle of the World Cup Bongani Siqoko Soccer World Cup The whole universe will come to a standstill when reigning world champions Brazil take on Scotland in the opening game of the World Cup 98 in France at Saint Denis on June 10. Unlike the 1994 World Cup, which was a two-nation […]

Multinationals are moving into hitherto untouched areas, with catastrophic results, writes John Vidal Amungme tribal leader Yosepha Alomang, a mother of 10, should be in Britain. But as she boarded the plane this month in Irian Jaya, Indonesia, to head for London and the Rio Tinto annual meeting, she was stopped by the military. Had […]

Craig Bishop The launch of the National Environment Management Bill this week is expected to give communities a “lot more political muscle in dealing with companies”, says Chris Albertyn, national co-ordinator of the Environmental Justice Networking Forum. “The new Bill recognises that the government has very little capacity to deal with companies breaking environmental laws. […]

Chris Gordon The in-your-face style of marketing practised in downtown Luanda, Angola, is a normal hazard of life on the dishevelled and risky streets of the capital. Young men and children, mainly refugees from the provinces, sell anything from chewing gum to clothes, pushing it through car windows, following potential customers down the street, disbelieving […]

Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE Of all the cool and creepy pieces of vapourware to have emerged since the Web went mainstream, the coolest and creepiest have got to be intelligent agents. And, according to the press releases jamming my e-mail server, they’re here: autonomous pieces of programming trained to race around cyberspace doing our (largely consumerist) […]

Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week I don’t have any friends I still know from my schooldays. It’s probably just as well. Most of them weren’t really friends because I was such a wise-ass. But two films opening this week give unique insight into the world of children and growing up. Both are rites- of-passage […]

Anna Borzello in Kampala The 42 Sudanese prisoners sat at the edge of Entebbe airport. Despite spending more than a year in military prison, they looked in reasonable health – with the exception of a man who was said to have gone mad in captivity. A Sudanese government delegation arrived by jet from Khartoum and […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Vista University was plunged into crisis this week as students continued a boycott of their mid-year examinations while management reacted by shutting several of the campuses. Two weeks ago students demanded that the examinations scheduled to have begun last Monday be delayed by a week, saying they were unprepared and the timetable […]

`Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” the inscription on the Statue of Liberty urges the world. In South Africa, which we pride as a “land of liberty”, we electrocute them, detain them, deport them and, on occasion, lynch them. Even when they are not poor and huddled we […]