As I read Xolela Mangcu’s heartfelt ode (Crossfire, June 5 to 11) to the need for national values, I see the jets roaring over the Union Buildings, leaving behind in their thundering blur a rainbow of colours. Presidents, ministers and generals stand stony-faced, with hand on heart, framed by the deafening adulation of people waving […]
Tangeni Amupadhi and Wally Mbhele Former Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) operative Johan Niemoller, named in court this week as the mastermind behind a recent spate of arms heists from military bases, has a long history of supplying military equipment and other assistance to the Angolan rebel movement, Unita. Niemoller was in 1995 named as the […]
Gaby Wood Movie of the week Robert Duvall has been thinking about making The Apostle, a film about a Pentecostal preacher in the American South, for more than 20 years. He has called preaching ”the only authentic American art form”. Some time ago Duvall was due to star in a Sidney Lumet film about two […]
WEDNESDAY, 5.00PM: THE South African Communist Party on Wednesday hit out at the government’s growth, employment and redistribution policy (Gear), saying it is misplaced to address socio-economic needs, and has manifestly failed to reach its stated targets. Addressing the SACP’s 10th congress at Crown Mines in Johannesburg, SACP general secretary Charles Nqakula said: “We remain […]
Alex Duval Smith in Casamance A quarter of a million West Africans fleeing on foot from fighting in Guinea-Bissau without food or water are heading north into another civil war where they face landmines, hostile Senegalese troops and swamps. As this human emergency advances on Casamance – the region of Senegal where a 16-year independence […]
Fiona Macleod Animal-welfare groups were scrambling madly this week to prevent Roy Plath, a central figure in the “canned” lion-hunting scandal, from exporting 17 lions to a hunting operation in Mozambique. Plath has sold the lions to a professional hunter, Andr Booysen and his father-in-law, Dick de Villiers, who own a farm called Pandane in […]
Shaun de Waal CD of the week I aint down here for your money, I aint down here for your love, sings Nick Cave on the first song of the new Best of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (DGR). Im down here for your soul. Whether playing the hellfire preacher or the devils advocate, […]
Phillip Kakaza Zimbabwean master drummer Jethro Shasha, well-known on the South African music scene, died at the age 46 last Sunday, having suffered for many years from diabetes. He played with many top musicians, including Malian Salif Keita. He was due to do a live recording with pianist Paul Hamner this weekend. Touched by Shashas […]
A black commercial farmer in the Free State claims to have been sabotaged by some of his white counterparts, writes Ann Eveleth The vultures started descending on Isaac Khumalo’s Vredefort farm soon after he took the plunge into commercial agriculture in December 1995. Thirty-one-year-old Khumalo, the Free State vice-chair of the Emerging Red Meat Producers […]
Andy Duffy and Megan Voss The government is to send independent investigators into the University of the Transkei (Unitra) – the first time it has wielded the powers of intervention recently created through higher education legislation. The probe, due to start this weekend, will focus on what government officials have termed a “police state” allegedly […]