Ferial Haffajee South Africa’s delegation to the annual World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings in Washington this week jet home on a buoyant note. Certainly they are more buoyant than their East Asian and Latin American counterparts, who return to economies more damaged by the quakes in the world system than South Africa […]
Howard Barrell: OVER A BARREL I was not alone in thinking it must be April 1. As I stared at the early morning sun – or was it my egg yoke? – my radio was telling me that Louis Luyt had formed a political party and expected us to support him in next year’s election. […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week The French have long fetishised the American detective genre in their films. Perhaps the greatest exponent of this was Jean-Pierre Melville who, in films like Bob le Flambeur and Le Deuxime Souffl, perfectly captured the trademarks of American gangster movies – wet night streets, raincoats with bulging pockets, gunmen […]
The men gain, while the rest of us take the pain – financially speaking, of course. Belinda Beresford wonders who’s going to pay for Viagra With fanfare and press coverage greater even than the latest Leonardo di Caprio appearance, Viagra is on its way to South Africa. Some say the latest star in the pharmaceutical […]
Cameron Duodu Letter from the North Lesotho is a place with which I have an unfulfilled date. While taking part in a BBC African service discussion with the late King Moshoeshoe of Lesotho, I discovered that apart from being nicely spoken and charming, he had almost as much a passion for democracy as I had. […]
Is it time to junk your video cassette recorder or CD player now that there is the new digital video disc? Jack Schofield advises caution It’s the next big thing since the last big thing, which might have been Sony’s MiniDisk or Philips’s digital compact cassette or DAT audio tape, or CD- interactive (CDi) or […]
Robert Kirby: Loose cannon Reading last Monday’s editorial in the Cape Times, I felt a cloak of nostalgia envelop me. At the best of times a second-hand emotion, nostalgia does, however, have its uses. On this occasion it took me all the way back to 1966 and to a brief appointment I had with broadcasting […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, New York | Friday 9.00pm. THE United Nations said on Friday that an ”immediate re-adjustment” of the its observer mission in Angola will start in early December if all hopes for peace have collapsed by then. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the 1,100-strong UN force would pull back to six main regional […]
Wonder Hlongwa Residents of the township of Mpuma- langa in KwaZulu-Natal are living in fear of an alleged serial killer who they believe is being protected by the authorities because he is a police informer. Sbusiso ”Sbra” Makhaye (22), who has been implicated in nine murders in the past four years, was mysteriously released from […]
Andrew Worsdale picks the best out of an exciting line-up for the Spanish film festival The Spanish ambassador to South Africa, Miguel Angel Carriedo, is a devoted film fan. A few years ago he even became part of a consortium that invested in movies and, sadly, like many others, lost money. He did enjoy a […]