Staff Reporter
No image available
/ 1 May 1998

True-life confusions

Shopping and Fucking is one of the most controversial scripts to be staged in South Africa. Charl Blignaut sits in on a rehearsal The moment I walk in I can feel the energy in the rehearsal room change, becoming slightly flustered. Five faces turn and look up at me from the floor where they are […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

The rape of Timbuktu

People used to go to there just to collect the postmark, but now art dealers go to plunder the region’s priceless heritage, reports Alex Duval Smith ‘The trouble with Timbuktu,” says Mohamed Galla Dicko, “is that most people think it does not really exist. The world behaves as though it were just a mythical place.” […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

I, Quentin

He always knew he’d have a place in film history. He’s arrogant, precious, pretentious, solipsistic and a bit of a genius. Simon Hattenstone meets Quentin Tarantino Quentin Tarantino jives on to the stage of London’s National Film Theatre. His head nods like a hyperactive chicken. He’s walking the walk, waggling that famously big bottom, preparing […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

A modest debut for Windows 98

Steve Lohr United States federal and state officials are now racing to determine what antitrust action, if any, they should take against Microsoft before its next-generation operating system, Windows 98, is shipped to personal computer makers in May and goes on sale in June. But the PC industry has been gearing up for Windows 98 […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

Strong views from fiery midfielder

Andrew Muchineripi : Soccer National soccer coach Philippe Troussier spent this month shifting through the local and foreign-based talent available to him and now has a list of 30 World Cup hopefuls. One of the most eagerly awaited national squads since the birth of Bafana Bafana is scheduled to be named late next week for […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

Controlling the mind of South Africa

John Pilger : CROSSFIRE In his fine book, The Mind of South Africa, Allister Sparks wrote: “South Africa has the widest gap between rich and poor of any country in the world for which data are available. Eighty-seven per cent of its land and 95% of its industrial holdings are in white hands. That degree […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

Leopards taunted with burning cigarettes

A South African cvompany has been implicated in illegal leopard trade, write John Grobler and Fiona Macleod Delegates from an international conservation agency meeting in Namibia for the past two weeks were shocked when, walking out of a popular bar in Windhoek last Thursday (April 23), they encountered a group of drunken men taunting three […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

Ambivalence of a post-colonial

Anthony Egan LAST DAYS IN CLOUD CUCKOOLAND: DISPATCHES FROM WHITE AFRICA by Graham Boynton (Jonathan Ball, R99,95) This book is hard to categorise. Its title makes it sounds like journalism; parts of it read like an attempt to understand the democratic transition in South Africa. Much of it is reminscences of a childhood in what […]

No image available
/ 1 May 1998

The fridge that comes in from the cold

Michael Brooks looks at the latest cool solution The refrigerator of the future may be cooled by a semiconductor device no bigger than a credit card. There will be no buzz, no moving parts and, most important of all, it will do away with the need for the environment-destroying Freon gases used in conventional refrigerators. […]