Lizeka Mda: CITY LIMITS Andr Wessels (not his real name) still remembers the time when Indians were kicked out of Pageview, an area to the west of Braamfontein station that was predominantly Indian at the time. He was jubilant, and so was everyone else he knew. They would shout “Gaan terug [go back], coolies!” as […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Divisions within the African National Congress’s top structures this week spared Gauteng MEC for Safety and Security Jessie Duarte her job for the time being, despite growing pressure on Premier Mathole Motshekga to sack her. Senior officials in the party are said to have been furious at Duarte’s decision this week to withdraw […]

Vatmaar, the Afrikaans novel by a man in his 70s which won the M-Net and the CNAprizes, recently elicited a heated auction among German publishers. The rights to a German translation were finally sold to Luchterhand, a literary house with a good reputation, for a high five-figure sum. Vatmaar has already been published Meulenhoff in […]

Adam Haupt The University of Cape Town’s Contemporary African Music and Arts Archive (Cama) got its African Alchemy project started with a workshop, which was facilitated by musician, producer and artist Brian Eno. The obvious connection to be made here is with the forthcoming visit of mega pop group U2’s Popmart tour – Eno produced […]

Andy Duffy Nine of the 10 deans at the University of Cape Town (UCT) are to be replaced as part of an aggressive affirmative action drive and management shake-up. The university is also putting all staff through rigorous performance checks, to weed out underachievers and free up posts for new black and female employees. All […]

Nigeria Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka visited South Africa for a writers’ festival in Durban. He spoke to Suzy Bell A distinguished man in black sips a cold Amstel in the retro lounge of the Blue Waters Hotel in Durban. He’s Wole Soyinka, acclaimed playwright, essayist, novelist and memoirist. He’s the quietly spoken winner of the […]

politicians It seems there may be some kind of inverse correlation between the popularity of political parties and public figures in the media on the one hand, and with the public on the other. At the very least the issue would provide fertile ground for research for a PhD thesis! During the 1994 elections, most […]

THURSDAY, 5.45PM: THE South African Chamber of Business’s Business Confidence Index (BCI) strengthened in February, on the eve of the Budget, Sacob announced on Thursday. Regardless of the economy’s slowdown and the weakness of consumer demand, the BCI improved by 1,5%, after remaining static since November last year. The falling inflation rate, expectations of lower […]

THURSDAY, 3.30PM: PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela will obey a subpoena to appear in the Pretoria High Court next week to testify in the South African Rugby Football Union’s attempt to have a judicial inquiry into its affairs declared illegal, Mandela’s lawyer Wim Trengrove said on Wednesday. However, in a conflicting statement, Mandela’s spokesman Parks Mankahlana said […]

THURSDAY, 6.00PM: WORRIES about the stability of the Asian markets, an imminent drop on Wall Street, and the weak rand and gold price, knocked the spots off all Johannesburg Stock Exchange indices on Thursday. The all gold index shed 21,9 points to 744,7, the industrial index, 187,3 points to 8117,3, and the financial index 511,7 […]