CINEMA Reviewed by: Derek Malcolm FEW opening films at the London Film Festival have caused such consternation as Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days. Yet, on the evidence of this futuristic epic (as well as Blue Steel and the highly successful Point Break), Bigelow is clearly one of the most proficient practitioners of pyrotechnical in-your-face film-making working […]

NO matter which way you cut the cake, professional golf in this country has some serious problems to address. And there is the inescapable feeling that it has been coming for a while. It came to a head this week when the South African Professional Golfers Association threatened to withdraw its backing of the Pro […]

Cindy Shiner in Accra NINE West African heads of state met in the Ghanaian capital Accra this week for an emergency summit to try to end the renewed civil war in Liberia. Hopes of success are slim. Officials are trying to rehabilitate an eight- month-old agreement that was supposed to lead to the disarmament of […]

The IBA will no longer formulate telecommunications policies, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE announcement early this week by Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Minister Jay Naidoo that his department will take over the task of developing telecommunications policies has met with mixed response. While some in the industry are apprehensive about the Independent Broadcasing Authority (IBA) shedding […]

The Constitution has become a yardstick of the success and strength of the political parties, and will do much to define them in the eyes of the public in the run-up to the 1999 general elections. Marion Edmunds reports WHERE does the Constitutional Assembly leave the African National Congress? “In a league of its own.” […]

With four teams jammed at the top of the log, working out the permutations on paper is harder than playing it out on the field RUGBY: Jon Swift PERHAPS the greatest thing about sport is its unpredictability: the propensity of competition to turn the form book on its head; the sudden lapse of concentration which […]

Marion Edmunds SLY to the last, the National Party attempted to win constitutional guarantees for special pensions for long-serving parliamentarians, just before the end of the constitutional negotiations. It was with some surprise that the waiting hordes of journalists heard, in the last nail- biting night, that the NP had added a new proposal on […]

Justin Pearce GROWING anti-landmine sentiments in South Africa and abroad have prompted the Department of Foreign Affairs to announce a permanent ban on the export of the mines by South Africa, confirming a moratorium which has been in place for the past two years. A suspension has also been placed on the use of mines […]

US threats to penalise businesses trading with Cuba, Iran and Libya have pitted it against the European Union. John Palmer reports from Brussels THE European Union warned this week that it is heading for a serious diplomatic and trade confrontation with the United States over laws that would penalise European businesses trading with Cuba, Iran […]

Eddie Koch THE lesson from this week’s truth commission hearings in Durban is that the effects of the organisation’s work can never be easily predicted. Instead of hearing evidence from mainly ANC- aligned victims — as was widely expected because of an Inkatha boycott — the commission ended up strengthening its non- partisan image and […]