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 […]
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 Reverend Fernando Kuthino promised everything from a place in heaven to a cure for Aids, but he was no match for President Mobutu Sese Seko. Chris McGreal reports FOR Israel Ciswaka, his pastor’s arrest, torture and dispatch to a Zairean military prison for 12 months’ hard labour was confirmation that there is a God […]
Stefaans Brummer THE master of the supreme court is investigating a false signature on the trust deed of a non-governmental organisation set up by truth commission reparations committee head Hlengiwe Mkhize.Mpumalanga clergyman Father Michel Barrette has complained to the supreme court that the signature — which appears to confirm him as a trustee of the […]
Marion Edmunds THE most coveted documentation at Parliament this week was not the latest draft of the Constitution, but an invitation to the party to end all parties, the big bash to end it all held on Wednesday night at Fernwood, the Parliamentary Estate in Bishops Court. In the last late nights of the constitution- […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
An historic agreement between the government and teachers’ unions will affect the jobs of thousands of teachers, reports Rehana Rossouw A GROUP of negotiators has finalised the route to achieving equality in education and breaking down apartheid’s legacy of unequal funding for different races. Unequal spending will be erased by the year 2000, following an […]