THEATRE: David Le Page IN February 1956, in the foothills of the Drakensberg near Bergville, a group of Zulu dagga farmers took severe umbrage when the South African Police attempted a raid on their crop. It was, after all, not only a traditional indulgence, but their livelihood. At first the police retreated, but it was […]

CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale HARVEY KEITEL gets to smile warmly in Wayne Wang and Paul Auster’s Smoke, and that’s only one reason to see this deceptively emotional, Zen-like drama about family, identity and Keitel plays Auggie, a cigar-store manager in Brooklyn who has photographed his shop at the same time every day for 14 years. William […]

Justin Pearce THERE’S music floating over the boxy, red- brick buildings of the University of the North: the creamy sounds of Kenny G’s saxophone. The music is issuing from a loudspeaker on the wall of the student centre, the home of Radio Turf. Inside the studio, science student Thapelo Sehume is behind the microphone, chatting […]

Bronwen Jones TEARS and righteousness make a potent mix in an angry young woman out to fight the wealth and might of big industry. Sitting atop a crumbledown dam looking over her community, Rene Smith, 21, adjusts blue rimmed spectacles and says: “We will not let them build their dam on our doorsteps. We will […]

Urban planners, white suburbs, and the homeless are locked in a struggle of competing needs, writes Justin Pearce POLITICAL squabbling has halted Johannesburg’s plans to house its homeless. Shack settlements have proliferated in the city while municipal and provincial authorities have failed to reach a universally acceptable plan to accommodate squatters in formal housing. At […]

SOME staff members of the African Languages Department have expressed outrage at the way Makgoba handled their former acting head, Robert Herbert, an American academic. In a letter seen by the Mail & Guardian, Makgoba declined a request from Herbert for the renewed contract of one of his staff members, and then told Herbert that […]

Karen Harverson A ROW within the ranks of the black construction industry may damage its initiative to fund a developmental programme for emerging black contractors. The programme is aimed at helping black contractors acquire the skills necessary to participate in the mainstream construction industry. All contractors wishing to be part of the home building industry […]

Hazel Friedman ARMSTRONG BADUZA (52) recalls the day Archbishop Trevor Huddleston arrived at his father’s house in Soweto armed with musical instruments. “I was too young to play but those who managed became international stars,” he says. “I became a wandering star instead.” He also remembers his father leading the residents of Alexandra Township — […]

Rehana Rossouw BRIAN is a Cape Town engineer now attending counselling sessions, who said he physically and sexually abused his wife because he wanted to control her and because he could. His wife Lynne, the owner of a successful restaurant in Cape Town, tried to leave him at least 18 times during their six-year marriage […]

Simon Segal WITH South Africa’s inflation rate, down to 6,3 percent in October, at levels last seen in the early 1970s, much is being said about the economy entering a lower inflationary Most economists (there are a few exceptions) see South Africa’s inflation rate remaining in single digits both next year and in 1997, averaging […]