Sechaba ka’Nkosi Labour and business are becoming increasingly impatient with the government’s reluctance to set a date for the long- awaited presidential jobs summit between the government, organised labour and business. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and Business South Africa (BSA) are ready and waiting for the summit, but say they are […]
living Expelled ANCleader Sifiso Nkabinde walks free on 18 charges of murder and the question is posed: who should be afraid this time? Ann Eveleth reports More than a dozen people died in KwaZulu-Natal hot spots within days of the acquittal of political wildcard Sifiso Nkabinde last Thursday. None of the deaths – one in […]
Victoria Brittain The former prime minister of Rwanda has become the first person to plead guilty to charges relating to the 1994 genocide in which a million people were killed within three months. At the United Nations’s tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, last week Jean Kambanda admitted genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement […]
Efforts to ensure fair play in sports have not proved an outstanding success, says John Duncan It is one of the biggest contests in world sport: the prize for winning, and the cost of taking part, are measured in millions of dollars. But it takes place not on a track or in a swimming pool […]
Nina Allchurch Telecentres, or common-use public access terminals, are the innovative means government has come up with to get the information society to the vast majority of people who live in remote rural parts of South Africa. These kiosks are part of a pilot project initiated by Minister of Post, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Jay Naidoo […]
The squatter invasion that swept Cape Town housing officials into the high court this week comes against a backdrop of delayed, scrapped or crippled low-cost housing projects around the city. Latest council figures show that nearly R30-million of the R46,2-million the city council had earmarked for priority housing projects for the year to June 1998 […]
Charl BlignautOn stage in Johannesburg There is a bizarre moment in the Johannesburg Market Theatre/Stockholm Stadtsteater co-production of August Strindberg’s 1901 tragi-comedy Dance of Death when the subtle, classic lighting design suddenly spins out of orbit and transforms the stage into a discotheque, John Kani’s cantankerous Captain thrusting his arm in the air like a […]
Stephen Gray’s new poetry collection, his first in six years, has just come out. He spoke to Chris Dunton Your last collection, Season of Violence, appeared in 1992. Between that and the new volume, Gabriel’s Exhibition [Mayibuye], there’s quite a gap. Was there a break in your writing of poetry? To me Season of Violence […]
John SeilerSOUTH AFRICA, LIMITS TO CHANGE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TRANSITION by Hein Marais (Zed/UCT Press, R150) Hein Marais is not the first observer of post-apartheid South Africa to point to the burgeoning African professional and entrepreneurial classes and their conspicuous consumption patterns. The recent book Comrades in Business captures this dynamic pithily in its […]
Tony Mechin As the leaders of the Zimbabwean Internet industry entered the Harare International conference centre in January for the opening of Internet@frica98, the country’s first Internet show, looming in their minds was the thought that the show billed as the “biggest Internet, intranet, cyber conference and exhibition in Southern Africa” was going to be […]