With the legalisation of gambling becoming a reality in South Africa, various problems are arising, reports Simon Segal THIS weeks parliamentary ad hoc committee debate on changes to the National Gambling Bill brings legalised gambling closer, and accentuates certain problems. The enabling legislation provides for the granting of 40 licences, a National Gambling Board (NGB), […]

CARNAGE in the streets of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, where more than 80 people were killed and about 1 300 injured last week by suspected Tamil suicide bombers, is a terrible reminder of the human cost of civil war and of the limits of force in solving chronic ethnic conflicts. The violence shows no […]

As the symbols of the past moved out, the RDP moved in to kick-start the process of parliamentary transformation, write Richard Calland and Christelle Terreblanche THE long-awaited transformation of Parliament, driven by Speaker Frene Ginwala of the African National Congress, will be paid for by a one-off grant of R82,5-million from the coffers of the […]

Participant PETER KLATZOW reports on the highlights of Africa’s first International Composers Workshop SOUTH African composers have learned to accept the fact that there are fat years and lean years. The feast or famine syndrome is dangerous, primarily because the ingestion of so much new music in so short a time can lead to cultural […]

Stefaans Brummer THE media are under renewed attack in some African countries, if a recent spate of arrests and bannings, and an apparent assassination attempt are anything to go by. The Post of Zambia, long a thorn in the side of President Frederick Chiluba, this week came under the strongest censure from government yet, when […]

Visiting Johannesburg this week, renowned composer Kevin Volans spoke to GWEN ANSELL about music past and present, African and European SERIOUS music in the late 20th century is an esoteric and fragmented world in which performers and composers find survival a struggle. Audiences tend to be rigid adherents of one school or another, and fairly […]

Ricardo Dunn THE first national exhibition of gay and lesbian art has got tongues wagging in Bloemfontein, where religious groups and concerned citizens have bombarded the press with complaints since the exhibitions opening at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum in January. The organisers of Gay Rights Rites Rewrites smelt trouble from the start when the director […]

Business believes it has the answer to marketing tourism in South Africa, reports Karen Harverson South Africa is the fastest-growing tourist destination in the world but this is due more to its flavour of the month status initiated by the 1994 elections than its marketing activities overseas. With a shoe-string budget of R48-million for 1996 […]

Roelf Meyer, newly appointed secretary general of the NP, in The Mark Gevisser Profile DRIVING to Pretoria to meet the New Face of the National Party on Monday morning, I heard FW de Klerk giving an interview about his party’s new direction on SAfm’s AM Live show. He affably said how happy he was to […]

The public service is run by a code so detailed and archaic that it prescribes acceptable body weights for job applicants and provides endless blockages to government progress, reports Anton Harber ONE issue, more than any other, will determine the extent to which President Nelson Mandela’s government succeeds this year in its ambitious mission. It […]