The Time of the Writer festival was recently held at Natal University. South African author Farida Karodia was there Monday In the afternoon Nigeria’s Nobel winner Wole Soyinka, British author Barbara Trapido, Zimbabwean Yvonne Vera and Breyten Breytenbach, there since Sunday, drift into the lounge. Some of the writers on the programme have not turned […]
Hunadi Mateme: RIGHT TO REPLY Your article, “MEC ‘has blood on her hands’” (February 27 to March 5) has not done anything to assist the public in understanding the action of my department. Your reporter claims that this mentally ill person set fire to himself and his home because his pension was suspended. We could […]
Deborah Toler: A SECOND LOOK When Theodore Roosevelt visited sub-Saharan Africa in 1909, after he had already stepped down as United States president, he took an elephant gun and a team of taxidermists and brought home 512 animal specimens for the Smithsonian Institute. When President Bill Clinton – the first USpresident to visit this region […]
Ferial Haffajee SABC chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu made a rapid about-turn at the weekend when he accepted a top-notch job at New Africa Investments Limited (Nail) instead of a very senior post at Independent Newspapers. It appears that Sisulu finally made up his mind about a new job at the weekend and made rushed attempts […]
Mzilikazi wa Afrika The Department of Justice has enlisted two of South Africa’s top special investigation teams to probe a well-organised national crime syndicate which has defrauded the department of more than R30-million over the past three years. Confidential information leaked to the Mail & Guardian shows that 23 government officials, including police officers, court […]
Ann Eveleth Government lawyers this week secured their first victory in a series of legal battles over the fate of three allies of the late Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Johannesburg High Court Judge Meyer Joffe on Tuesday rejected a bid by Mobutu’s former national police commander, General Kpama Baramoto, defence minister Mudima Mavua and […]
Caroline Sullivan: CD of the week It was clear after the sexcentricity of Madonna’s last studio LPs, Erotica and Bedtime Stories, that the next would have to be markedly different – and Ray Of Light (WEA) certainly is. She’s done what superstars at a crossroads do – found religion. She’s been studying the Kabbalah and […]
FRIDAY, 9.45AM: AMANDA COETZER, world women’s tennis number five, has confirmed that she will play in the $200 000 MTN Women’s Classic at the Northgate Dome from April 23-26. Coetzer was a doubtful starter for the tournament, as she was scheduled to defend her title at the Budapest Open, but a berth was kept open […]
Shaun de Waal If the English shortlist of this year’s M-Net Book Prize (announced this week in Cape Town) is anything to go by, South African novelists are still dealing with this country’s history, its national narrative, whether recent or more distant. Ken Barris’s novel The Jailer’s Book portrays an apartheid-era South Africa through the […]
Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS Zoo Lake is 90 years old this year. Over time people have forgotten that the name of the park is Hermann Eckstein. Such is the city’s attachment to the murky water in the sunken lake. As a park it is not even up to scratch. If ever there was some deliberate […]