Marion Edmunds A black female SABC employee, Hope Zindle, has been charged with assault and intent to commit grievous bodily harm after she grabbed a white colleague, Janet Szabo, around the throat. The matter is being heard in Brixton Magistrate’s Court where Zindle has pleaded not guilty to the charge. The case has provoked a […]

Karen Harverson Once exchange controls are lifted, the South African investment community’s interest in offshore opportunities will snowball, says Syfrets Group chief executive Christopher Beatty, speaking at a launch this week of new international investment products. However, he cautioned that investors need to react quickly to changes in the international economy and understand the risks […]

Eddie Koch Griqua leaders have sent a letter to President Nelson Mandela to back demands for the bones of a 19th-century chief to be returned and reburied after they were dug up by researchers from Wits University more than 30 years ago. The Griqua National Conference this week sent a statement to M&G saying it […]

The Nation of Islam leader spoke during his vist to South Africa this week of creating a homeland for more than a million black American convicts, report Vuyo Mvoko and David Beresford Louis Farrakhan, the Black American firebrand who is trying to fill the shoes of Martin Luther King, has dreamed an extraordinary dream — […]

CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale HUEY NEWTON, one of the founders of the Black Panther movement, was a great fan of Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 movie Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song. He even analysed that funky box-office smash, writing that its tale of a hustler who evolves into a revolutionary was an allegory of a `street brother who […]

THEATRE: Hazel Friedman Those who are unacquainted with Greek tragedy may yet be vaguely familiar with the myth of Medea — the woman who murdered her sons when her husband dumped her to become king. But even audiences who were struck by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1970 film version — with its bizarre exploration of Freudian […]

Karen Harverson Newly appointed chief executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) Ian Goldin may face an uphill battle from some of the bank’s staff who feel a black candidate would have been more suited to lead its transformation. For the past 18 months the bank has been racked with mass departures, and […]

Louis Farrakhan visited South Africa to spread his message of segregation, to search for a homeland for the United States’ convicts and to try and borrow a bit of Nelson Mandela’s aura. One could not help but notice that he connected best in radio talk-back shows with South Africa’s far-rightwing ethnic separatists. It is coincidental […]

Rehana Rossouw In a field on the edge of Parkwood Estate in Cape Town is a ramshackle wooden building with a tiny garden lending a splash of colour to the dreary township. The garden is filled with petunias, marigolds, tomatoes, cabbages … and dagga. This is the home of Bernard Brown of the Burning Spear […]

Dirk Hartford It was reminiscent of the heady mass struggles of the Eighties. For four hours last Sunday, several hundred trade unionists listened to fiery speeches from workers and trade union leaders denouncing the government and its policy of national reconciliation as a `national disaster’ between songs praising socialism as the only road to liberation. […]