Superficially, the former minister of law and order, Adriaan Vlok, may appear to be deserving of some credit for his performance before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week. Unlike his former colleagues (Magnus Malan, the former minister of defence, is one name which stands out starkly), he at least had the guts to face […]
Coenraad Visser Escapism, or realism. Pretty girls in pretty dresses singing pretty, or the glamourless homeless, evicted from land and love. These are the opera choices in Gauteng this week. The Three Sopranos is, above all, a feast of glitz. Producer Tibor Rudas, the man behind the ageing three tenors extorting vast sums of money […]
Iain Banks writes books about sex and drugs. Iain M Banks is a sci-fi nerd. Are they related? Phil Daoust investigates on the eve of the author’s visit to South Africa What the hell are you doing in a place like this? It’s a question you have to wrestle back down your throat when you […]
Neil Manthorp in Nottingham Cricket Napoleon may have been a great general but it doesn’t mean to say he would have been as successful today as he was then. Nonetheless, the study of Napoleon remains as intrinsic to the modern soldier as it is to the student of European history. The same applies in sport […]
showing Brenda Atkinson wonders why ads in trade magazines are so bad – and who creates these sub-standard promotions I was paging through a copy of Engineering News recently. I know less about engineering, but I maintain a healthy interest in a wide variety of topics, and have been known to frequent garages and hardware […]
David Coldwell It may be little consolation if you lose your job, but those at the top argue that downsizing is a management tool, to be distinguished from redundancy. Redundancy occurs as a result of sudden large-scale economic crises, or when large industries are no longer able to compete, for example, the decline in the […]
Vera Rule investigates Chris Carter, the mysterious force behind The X-Files He’s from Bellflower, southern Los Angeles, a “burb” for guys who used to make aeroplanes; a part of what Chris Carter’s writers call the military- industrial-entertainment complex. Teenage Chris and a classmate drove 30km to Westwood, Los Angeles. The boy looked nervously around a […]
Who is . . . Graa Machel?
Mail & Guardian reporter The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has come a teeny bit closer to determining which date it should set for South Africa’s second democratic elections. It’s not firm yet – but the IEC said this week the Constitution provided for the National Assembly elections to be held within 90 days of the […]
redistribution’ Derek Hanekom Ann Eveleth’s article “Land reform targets are far, far away” (Monitor, June 5 to 11) ignores the remarkable progress we have made in the past four years and the complexity of land-reform processes. The central argument is that we will never meet “the reconstruction and development programme promise to redistribute 30% of […]