Fools, the film based on the short stories of Njabulo Ndebele and directed by Ramadan Suleman, opens on circuit this week, Andrew Worsdale spoke to the director Ramadan Suleman is a passionate guy. He uses his intense, piercing eyes when he talks and gesticulates powerfully. No wonder. He spent about 10 years in Paris and […]

The response this week from state health officials to our story that some of their former psychiatric patients have been killing people is instructive. Valkenberg hospital, which treated and released the patients, says such tragedies in other countries prompt, at the very least, a full-blown commission of inquiry. Not so here. The Western Cape provincial […]

Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week I didn’t have any hopes that Barry Levinson would ever make a good movie – or at least one I’d like. Everyone raved about Diner. I thought it was self-indulgent, adolescent crap. Rain Man won Oscars. I thought it sentimental, badly styled rubbish (why did everything, but everything, have […]

David Pallister The British salesman sank with evident relief into his club-class seat as the plane prepared to take off from Murtala Muhammed airport. Doing business in humid, chaotic Lagos, even selling defence electronic equipment to the military junta, was never the easiest of jobs. In answer to the question, “So how much commission do […]

Duncan Mackay witnesses auspicious changes in the status of Qatar’s women The approach to the Khalifa Stadium on the edges of Doha, Qatar’s capital city, takes you down a long road past date palms, papyruses and cypresses. Creamy buildings, which seem to have been lifted from either Paris boulevards or Cairo squares, rise steeply from […]

Caroline Sullivan Even after their four million-selling debut, Garbage’s second album was never going to rouse panting anticipation. The reason is neatly encapsulated in the understated title, Version 2.0. Derived from computer software, it mumbles “very dull”. In spite of the presence of Nirvana producer Butch Vig (drums, effects) and the pin-sharp Shirley Manson (vocals), […]

Because of its position on the equator, a space base on a converted oil rig could have the international edge, writes Tim Radford In October the first satellite launched from a pad in the open ocean is due to arrive in its orbit, 35 000km out in space. Sea Launch, a once-unimaginable business consortium from […]

With a clogged-up justice system, prisons are bursting at the seams with remand inmates. Angella Johnson braves ‘Sun City’ The first thing that hits you is the smell. It is the same in every prison: a rancid aroma of cleansing fluid, stale sweat, urine and more than a whiff of despair which clings to your […]

Ferial Haffajee In KwaZulu-Natal a community of women risk getting eaten by crocodiles and bitten by snakes. It’s the peril they face on their daily trek to collect water. Other women told the poverty hearings in other provinces that they are raped or harassed as they make their way to watering holes. Water provision is […]

of relapse hard to detect Andy Duffy Staff at the Valkenberg forensic security unit are busy retracing their steps to see what, if anything, could have been done to prevent the killing of seven people by former state psychiatric patients. There are common threads. Each patient, despite their usually violent history, seemed to have responded […]