Gary Younge in Makeni The rebels came for Kulo Korban on Saturday night. They left him with a letter and took away three of his fingers and both ears. “I was asleep when I heard a knock on the door. Then four men kicked it down and dragged me away. They tied me to a […]
I never thought I was the type who’d join a cult. But I did. It’s not a cult of personality, but of technology. It’s the cult of the PalmPilot – a simple hand-held computer and operating system that now accounts for over 60% of the global personal digital assistant (PDA) market. Most religious cults attract […]
South African art triumphed at a huge French show. Brenda Atkinson was there So there I was in Paris, filled with strawberries and red wine, mingling with a 2 000-odd crowd of the young, hip, gorgeous and powerful. If these people sweat, I thought, then they sweat pure CK-One. Let no one tell you that […]
Elvis Costello pays tribute to Frank Sinatra My mam tells me that one of my first words was “skin”. I was not an especially precocious child, I couldn’t say whole sentences, but I knew how to request that I’ve Got You under My Skin be played on the family record player. Then again, I might […]
Say what you like, Jessie Duarte has further refined and developed the undervalued political art of giving the finger to the world. When it doesn’t suit her, Jessie tells entire commissions of inquiry to go stuff themselves. Just one of many swerves and skids she practised in a fast-lane career launched during the years of […]
The World Economic Forum’s Southern African economic summit in Windhoek this week provided an object lesson in what lies behind the woes of the continent. Like the arrival of Zambian President Frederick Chiluba – who has been appealing for debt relief from foreign donors – with retinue in a state-of-the-art Falcon 500 executive jet. Delegates […]
WHO IS . . . TONY LEON? David Beresford An obituary on the English philosopher, Bertrand Russell, memorialised him as “a gadfly on the rump of civilisation”. The same might be said of Democratic Party leader Tony Leon as he buzzes noisily around the rump of South African society. The question facing the DP is […]
The conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda is often characterised as mindless ethnic bloodletting. Mahmood Mamdani provides a far more complex background to the conflict No two conflicting groups in the Great Lakes region have a longer and more comprehensive history of intermarriage than do the Hutu and the Tutsi. Intermarriage between the Hutu […]
Janet Smith A trample of running girls, sandals unbuttoned and skirts pleated around them, grin and point at the silver and blue machine. They’re caught in its shimmering breeze as they stop at the fence, put their hands to their brows and start chattering like birds. The firemen laugh lazily together at the corner of […]
Wonder Hlongwa The offices of three southern Cape newspapers have been burnt to the ground in an apparent revenge attack for reporting on the activities of gangs in the Hangklip area. The offices of the Hangklip Herald, Hermanus Herald and Gansbaai Herald were set alight in the early hours of last Monday morning. A petrol […]