`I’m riding high upon a deep depression,’ sings Garbage’s Shirley Manson. But the band’s tunes are exhilarating, cutting-edge rock. Caroline Sullivan reports The Brit Award for best female artist always goes to some pleasant dullard (Gabrielle, Eddi Reader and this year’s winner, Shola Ama, spring to mind) who barely impinges on one’s consciousness the other […]
Wally Mbhele Mounting frustration over the continued incarceration of Robert McBride, who has been languishing in a Mozambican jail without trial for almost two-and-a-half months, has prompted calls for the South African government to become more active in securing the freedom of its foreign affairs official. After the Mozambican authorities failed this week either to […]
Angella Johnson The first thing Hazel Kidson did on entering the Johannesburg courtroom where she is standing trial for murdering her husband was reapply her lipstick. Then the bejewelled 52-year-old sat clutching her miniature Bible. “I always carry it with me,” she later explained. After more than a year in jail, she was dressed to […]
Lizeka Mda The challenge to South Africa’s abortion legislation being heard next week in the Pretoria High Court pays little attention to the needs and desires of South Africa’s women. On Monday, three groupings – the Christian Lawyers Association of Southern Africa, Christians for Truth in South Africa and United Christian Action – challenge the […]
Kuseni Dlamini: CROSSFIRE Is the left in South Africa and the rest of the world facing a ”mysterious decline” (Crossfire, May 8 to 14), or is it having a ”facelift” (Crossfire, May 15 to 21)? The left has never been held in lower esteem than it is today. At best, it is seen as impotent […]
Helderberg claims to TRC Ann Eveleth A list of 30 former and current parastatal officials and employees who allegedly played a role in the Helderberg air disaster has been handed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Commission representative Christelle Terreblanche says the list came from the Friends of the Victims of the Helderberg, which has […]
Thulo Hoeane The tranquillity of a late autumn morning is suddenly broken by a deafening voice blaring out of a 3 000-watt sound system. Maseru suddenly comes to life as an off-white bakkie which has seen better days passes by, winding its way down Kingsway, the capital’s main street. At the wheel of the bakkie […]
Guy Butler If known at all, Sister Margaret of the Community of the Resurrection of Our Lord, Grahamstown, is known as the painter of one picture, the splendid mural in the apse of St Mary and All the Angels, the Chapel of Rhodes University. It was painted between 1924 to 1928. She painted mainly for […]
Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS An interviewee once told me she knew her husband was the one for her when he took her out to dinner at the Three Ships in the Carlton hotel. No boyfriend had ever put himself out like that for her before. But her two sons will never know this symbol of […]
Andrew O’Hagan CRIES UNHEARD by Gitta Sereny (Macmillan, R88) There is nothing more stupid and corrupt than the collective mind of Britain’s tabloid newspapers. In a spirit of moral outrage they set out to molest the very people who often require protection, sympathy, understanding. The cry of the mob is vicious and total. In full […]