crackers Nic Turner The word hacker is enough to strike fear into anyone’s heart, but the South African Tiger Team Initiative (Satti) is trying to change that. They are at pains to make a distinction between enthusiast programmers – hackers – and their criminal counterparts – crackers. To help spread the word, Satti organised Zacon, […]

Stephen Gray recently attended a conference in Botswana in honour of South African writer Bessie Head, who settled there Gaborone, June 17-18 Few remember the first round of this event. In April 1976, when she was still alive and with only half her work done, Bessie Head was invited here to the University of Botswana. […]

Tamar Kahn As the rand lurches into the land of Monopoly money, lawyers are among the few people still smiling. Not because they had the foresight to invest in foreign currency, but because they see the bony fingers of bankruptcy collecting record numbers of clients. Bankruptcy has an ominous ring, bringing to mind Dickensian scenes […]

disruptions’ Heidi Clark Community leader Freddie Brown says the 350 “squatters” who have made their home under the tall pine trees on a hill in Wilderness have lived in the area since the 1920s and feel they have a right to be there. The setting is idyllic, but for the fact that they are forced […]

Durban Nick Paul Surfing Just when you think you’re sick of big emotional sporting events, when you’ve had the Comrades, and the July, and the men’s and women’s Wimbledon finals and this year the World Cup and the opening sallies of the Tri-Nations, in great big chunks, along comes the Gunston. If you’re a Durbanite, […]

John Fordham Panthalassa was the name given to the ocean surrounding the primordial, unbroken continent. If Bill Laswell, the gifted producer and sometime free- jazz bass player, hears Miles Davis’s 1970s music as an “ocean of sound”, he’s gone to considerable lengths to reinforce the point on the remarkable Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis […]

Peter Makurube Pretoria’s anomaly has always been that it is the headquarters of apartheid and jazz. On one side of the city they chilled out to Bles Bridges and other nostalgic musicians. On the other side the spirit of Malombo won the hearts and minds of the people. Gradually,after all these years, Pretoria is learning […]

I’d hate to think what would have happened to artist Steven Cohen if he’d waltzed around this year’s national arts festival with his banner decorated with the words: “Give us your children. What we can’t fuck, we eat.” No doubt Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Lindiwe Sisulu would have had him for breakfast. Conversely, had […]

Andy Duffy A senior commander in the government’s fight against HIV and Aids is to step down. Rose Smart, the former nurse who revived the HIV/Aids and STD (sexually transmitted diseases) Directorate following the Sarafina II scandal, wants to leave in November when her contract expires. “It is a 12-hour day, seven-days-a-week job. I don’t […]

Stuart Hess Police investigating a complaint against artist Mark Hipper dropped the probe this week when the country’s chief censor read them the film and publications Act. Police telephoned Dr Nana Makaula, CEO of the Film and Publications Board, to arrange to take a statement following a complaint lodged by the National Council of Child […]