Larry Elliott and Alex Brummers A Second Look From the offices of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in downtown Washington, DC, the ambush of the Thai baht by currency speculators a year ago this week looked like a brief but violent tropical storm. That great edifice, globalisation, had sprung a leak, but the problem was […]

Tracy Murinik On show in Cape Town Just in case you overlooked him, I can report that Caliban is, indeed, alive and well, and effectively leaving many a little speechless and thunderstruck in his eloquent wake. Mustafa Maluka’s latest solo exhibition in the Artsstrip at the AVA, entitled (the (UNSTOPPABLE) rapist), engages, through an elaborate […]

Alex Dodd Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Lindiwe Sisulu has been accused of old-order politics by South Africa’s chief censor after she threatened to ban an art exhibition of child nudes at the Grahamstown arts festival. The row between the two was sparked by artist Mark Hipper’s exhibition Viscera, on show at the Rhodes University […]

WEDNESDAY, 6.30PM: FOLLOWING an urgent application by the Namibian Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rehabilitation the Namibian High Court has ordered the eviction of 56 families who have illegally occupied 10 Government farms in the Kunene, Omaheke and Otjozondjupa regions. The illegal settlers, who allegedly raised Cain on the farms they occupied in November last […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD Me, jump out of a plane at 3 000m? You must be joking. No way! Not this side of life. I could not have emphasised the point more strongly when my editor suggested, with an evil grin, that I try skydiving for this column. I gave him one of […]

How was Wired magazine to have known that Godzilla would prove such a flop? With a three-month lead time, the United States’s pre-eminent futurists are bound to make a few wrong guesses. Putting Godzilla on their June cover, in anticipation that the flick would live up to its hype, probably seemed like a good bet. […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Golden Miles Bhudu, the outspoken president of the South African Prisoners’ Organisation for Human Rights (Sapohr) and a former member of the African National Congress, has crossed the political floor to join Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement. Bhudu joined the ANC in 1991, but has not renewed his membership since, although he […]

Leonard Doyle John Sweeney and Peter Beaumont Algeria is the winner of an alternative world cup – for the worst abuser of human rights. The garland of dishonour emerges from findings in The Observer’s Human Rights Index, launched to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With the backing of a […]

Phillip Kakaza Nico Phooko is a versatile young man. He is an artist and a musician. Although his focus is on his art, one cannot separate his artistic output from his professional skills and insight as a musician. “If I find difficulties in singing a song, then I take a paintbrush and depict the emotions […]

Andrew Worsdale Marleen Gorris has become a soft feminist. Or at least, softer than before. Her first two movies A Question of Silence and Broken Mirrors were savage indictments of male- dominated society. Born in Holland in 1948, Gorris studied theatre and literature before her stunning film debut with A Question of Silence. It tells […]