Jan Taljaard THE first salvoes in the battle for the rightwing vote in November’s local government elections have been fired by two big rightwing guns, Ferdi Hartzenberg and Constand Viljoen. Competing against the rain, rugby and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the capital last week, neither the Freedom Front’s (FF) Viljoen nor Conservative Party (CP) leader […]

THE Norgaard principles are named after Carl Aage Norgaard, a Danish national and president of the European Commission on Human Rights, who was asked at the time of the Namibian settlement to frame guidelines defining the concept of a political prisoner. For a crime to be deemed a political offence, he stipulated the following should […]

RAVAN, one of the stalwart anti-apartheid publishers of=20 the dark years of South Africa’s history, have started a=20 new series of titles called the Ravan Writers Series.=20 It was Ravan that first published JM Coetzee; that=20 published Mongane Wally Serote’s first (and thus far=20 only) novel. Many of their books were banned by the=20 white […]

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser=20 GAUTENG audiences were presented with two of the=20 centrepieces of the classical religious repertoire=20 recently. Unfortunately, neither performance was an=20 unqualified success.=20 The Standard Bank Arena was packed with an audience=20 eager to hear Yehudi Menuhin conduct Handel’s Messiah.=20 He brought with him the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and=20 three soloists. They […]

Ann Eveleth The Inkatha Freedom Party’s 30-day deadline for international mediational on constitutional issues runs out next week and so far the party sees no progress on the issue. Unless some agreement is reached by Wednesday, party leaders say they will be forced to walk out of the Constitutional Assembly. IFP constitutional affairs spokesman Sipho […]

THE Restitution of Land Rights Act passed through parliament in November last year. It allows for the creation of a Land Claims Court and a five-member commission to hear claims by groups who suffered at the hands of apartheid forced removals. The commission, which has already been appointed, has regional offices in each of the […]

The Markets=20 Jacques Magliolo=20 Stockbrokers are slow to accept change and nothing=20 upsets them more than when their old boys’ club is=20 interfered with. =20 Now, only seven months after being forced to allow=20 institutions to become corporate members of the=20 exchange, the realisation that they have no choice and=20 no way out is finally […]

BALLET: Stanley Peskin=20 IT has not been established whether Emma Livry’s costume=20 caught fire while dancing the title role of Taglioni’s=20 Papillon (1860) or during a rehearsal of Auber’s opera=20 La Muette de Portici, in which the role of the dumb girl=20 was traditionally played by a ballerina. =20 Whichever account of her death is […]

Eddie Koch A COMMISSION set up this week to probe Thor Chemicals’ importation of toxic waste to South Africa may be presented with evidence of links between employees of the British multinational and a covert weapons The Environmental Justice Network Forum (EJNF), a coalition of environmental groups, this week said it feared the commission would […]

THEATRE: Guy Willoughby=20 IT’S nearly two months to go before the World Rugby Cup,=20 and Paul Slabolepszy’s getting in early. The country’s=20 chief analyst of the white male ego couldn’t hope for a=20 better setting, and in his rumbustious new comedy Heel=20 Against the Head (at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town) he=20 scores nearly […]