Exiled movements are setting up in South Africa, reports Justin Pearce Willie Nwiido’s family thought he had died on the gallows along with Ken Saro-Wiwa — until they got word he was in South Africa. Wanted in Nigeria for his political activities, the 30- year-old Ogoni doctor went into hiding, only to re-emerge in Johannesburg, […]

IF apartheid has any beneficial heritage for the new society we are trying to create it is an abhorrence of social engineering. That is to say an abhorrence of those like Hendrik Verwoerd who — whether acting out of a sense of moral or intellectual superiority, or on private communications with the Almighty — attempt […]

The attack on the Koeberg nuclear plant was a chilling demonstration of the vulnerability of an atomic installation to attack as well as a reflection on the incompetence of South African security. The authorities at Koeberg have since made the extraordinary claim that they not only anticipated the attack, but had pin-pointed the date. In […]

Stand-up comedy is enjoying an international renaissance — and South Africans are getting in on the act, as DAVID LE PAGE MOST evenings at the moment, the Johannesburg Civic Theatre foyer is bustling with theatregoers missing a great opportunity: that of going to see — totally free of charge – — the Swopping Comics crowd […]

Gaye Davis SOUTH Africa has not yet begun to wrestle with the question of whether the country should become a safe haven for, and even help, exiled movements fighting for democracy in their home countries — but the issue is at least on the Members of the Nigerian grouping Democratic Alternative met members of Parliament’s […]

Two innovative ventures are set to improve the Gauteng public’s art literacy levels, reports HAZEL FRIEDMAN THE perfect instrument for assessing art literacy in Gauteng has, to date, been the microscope. And leading the “no-need-to-know” pack are past city councils whose role in cultural promotion has been so negligible — and misguided — as to […]

Chris McGreal THE world has got Nelson Mandela all wrong. You may think of him as the epitome of decency and statesmanship providing a beacon of hope on an unsettled continent. The truth is, he is a bumbling, sex-starved old fool secretly in the pay of the white man. Or, he simply does not know […]

Simon Segal Leslie Boyd, new chairman of Business South Africa (BSA), is used to the trenches of business politics. It was he who played no small part in the merger between the then Association of Commerce (Assocom) and the Federated Chamber of Industries (FCI) to form the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob). Boyd, also […]

Sharon Hammond and Hazel Friedman Four years after a high concentration of arsenic was first found in drinking water at Anglovaal’s New Consort gold mine in Barberton, Mpumalanga, the poison is alleged to have claimed its first victim. An investigation into the mine started recently after 2 000 residents were poisoned by drinking water in […]

Jazz: Meshack Mabogoane THERE are musicians who use sound as the basis for working their beings into living monuments to creativity and expression. The sounds they produce are more than musical, however consummate their accomplishment; they convey something — the very depths, even — of the person. Both musician and music serve as conduits for […]