Tangeni Amuphadi A police bodyguard assigned to Minister of Transport Mac Maharaj found himself on the wrong side of the law when he tried to arrest a man who called him a ”kaffir”. Inspector Edmund Sekatane says he called fellow officers to assist when the man resisted arrest, but his white colleagues treated him like […]
Jeremy Cronin: CROSSFIRE Jonathan Steinberg’s ”The ‘mysterious’ decline of the left” (May 8 to 14) is a useful antidote to some of the recent excesses of John Pilger. What Steinberg dwells upon, what Pilger neglected, is that the South African transition is occurring in a world very different from the first two-and-half decades after World […]
THURSDAY, 9.15AM: THE National Sports Council lifted the ban on international rugby tours to South Africa amid scenes of jubilation in Johannesburg on Wednesday evening. After lengthy meetings with the South African Rugby Football Union’s executive and the 14 provincial rugby unions, the NSC announced that proposed tours by England, Wales and Ireland will go […]
THURSDAY, 6.30PM: THE Presidential Review Commission on Thursday said in a report that it appears the leadership of the Northen Province and the Eastern Cape have been bogged down by the enormity of the challenges facing their provinces. The PRC also admitted that the problems may be much more complex than they had appeared at […]
THURSDAY, 11.00AM: THE National Party lost 81% of its 1995 vote to lose 1419-386 to the Democratic Party in the Brakpan by-election on Wednesday. The winning candidate was the DP’s Shelly Loe, who defeated the NP’s Malcolm Laing in a 31% poll. On Tuesday, the DP won a clear victory in former NP bastion Bergvliet/Meadowridge […]
TUESDAY, 7.00PM: THE Council for Nuclear Safety is worried by rapid development near Cape Town’s Koeberg Nuclear Power Station, and says it must be brought under control. Further development could create enormous difficulties should an emergency evacuation of Koeberg ever become necessary, council general manager Jeff Leaver told the Minerals and Energy parlimentary committee on […]
Charl BlignautOn stage in Johannesburg There is a bizarre moment in the Johannesburg Market Theatre/Stockholm Stadtsteater co-production of August Strindberg’s 1901 tragi-comedy Dance of Death when the subtle, classic lighting design suddenly spins out of orbit and transforms the stage into a discotheque, John Kani’s cantankerous Captain thrusting his arm in the air like a […]
Libby Young `Salaam za Afajiri. Nawatakia wote siku nzuri yenye mafanikio mema tuu,’ says Nuru.” It’s just an ordinary statement in Swahili. But what makes it different is that it’s posted on the Internet. The Internet, we all know, is almost entirely colonised by English, or more accurately, American culture, the same one that has […]
The squatter invasion that swept Cape Town housing officials into the high court this week comes against a backdrop of delayed, scrapped or crippled low-cost housing projects around the city. Latest council figures show that nearly R30-million of the R46,2-million the city council had earmarked for priority housing projects for the year to June 1998 […]
Mungo Soggot and Andy Duffy A number of policemen charged with torturing suspects in custody – in some cases with electric shocks – have not been suspended while awaiting trial. The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) – the police watchdog which has received 63 complaints of police torture over the past year – has confirmed to […]