CINEMA: Shaun de Waal DOMINIC SENA’S film Kalifornia, which is a few years old now, was not a big hit in Britain or America. We may never have seen it on the big screen here had it not been for Brad Pitt’s recent success, or the ascendance of Juliette Lewis in films like Natural Born […]

Joe Modise’s attempt to gain cabinet approval for four new corvettes will not be plain sailing, reports Stefaans Brummer DEFENCE Minister Joe Modise is experiencing opposition from the ranks of ANC cabinet colleagues in his quest to buy the navy four new patrol corvettes — at a cost roughly equal to the R2,5-billion Reconstruction and […]

Eric Naki in East London A SECURITY firm recently launched by a former Umkhonto weSizwe cadre in crime-torn Mdantsane is believed to be the first registered black-owned security company in the country. Sibuyile Security Services was started by Sam “Juba” Mkani (41), a former MK political commissar and chief political adviser at the ANC mission […]

Basketball is gaining popularity in South Africa, but in Zaire it has long been the most popular game BASKETBALL: Julian Drew IF YOU had switched on the television and watched the recorded highlights of the recent African women’s basketball final between Zaire and Senegal, you could have been forgiven for thinking the game had taken […]

Shadley Nash Two youths from Sterkstroom are in hospital with bullet wounds after an irate resident shot them for stealing fruit from the trees in his yard. The bullet fired by the unnamed resident first passed through 14-year-old Patrick Zolani before lodging in the body of his friend, Willem Pretorius, also 14. Police said a […]

Jan Taljaard: Pretoria SELDOM shy of a good idea, the die-hard leader of the Boerestaat Party, Robert van Tonder, has established the right-wing’s own reconstruction and development programme. It is unlikely that minister Jay Naidoo will ever be part of this RDP, even though the somewhat idiosyncratic Van Tonder is a businessman of no small […]

Being an ambassador now involves more than just holding one’s drink and making social chit chat, so perhaps we aught to select with more care, argues Peter Vale THERE has to be a better way to pick our ambassadors. Aside from the fumble over Allan Boesak, in the past month there have been two dropped […]

The legal profession, viewed with scepticism by the public, is in need of transformation, reports Dennis Davis WHILE 1994 brought about a legal revolution, the legal profession showed itself ill-prepared for these momentous changes. By the end of the year, numerous constitutional judgments had been delivered by the supreme court and, with few exceptions, the […]

Marthinus van Schalkwyk THE forthcoming federal congress of the National Party symbolises a party which must accept important challenges to maintain its indispensible role in South African politics. It is a party which — after more than 40 years – – has, for the first time, had to undergo the traumatic experience of losing power. […]