The success of South Africa’s film industy will hinge on managing expectations, writes Matthew Krouse.
A football era has come to an end with the relegation of Wits University from the Premier Soccer League (PSL) — a first in the club’s history. Wits narrowly escaped the drop in the 1996/97 season when they beat Jomo Cosmos in their last game. They are renowned as a breeding ground by the glamorous PSL teams.
He promised his dying mother he would be an artist. Today he is one of South Africa’s most promising cartoonists. Bethuel Mangena ignored high school teachers who told him to look for a ”respectable” job — and has not looked back. Choosing to study fine art, Magena — at 26 — is one of the youngest practitioners of this most difficult journalistic art.
Cape Town’s political leaders remained largely invisible this week during the city’s spreading protests over housing shortages which, particularly in Langa and Guguletu townships, set ”Cape-borners” against amaKwaduka (rural newcomers). Monday saw crisis meetings at the metro council’s head offices, but an encounter with community leaders scheduled for Tuesday was postponed.
Rural schooling is in crisis — and rural education should be resourced and organised differently from that in urban schools. ”The state’s commitment to social justice in all matters and especially to universal access to education … remains unfulfilled for large numbers of children, youths and adults living in rural areas,” says a ministerial committee report on rural education, due for release next week.
The Zimbabwean government has deployed 3Â 000 paramilitary police as it begins an operation to demolish illegal settlements around Harare, state television reported on Thursday. The television news showed a parade of hundreds of officers in full riot gear preparing to be deployed to demolish 25 illegal settlements in and around the capital.
Communist heavy-hitter Phillip Dexter, the new acting CEO of the Mpumalanga Economic Empowerment Corporation, will have his work cut out turning back the tide of sleaze at the scandal-plagued agency. The report of a PricewaterhouseCoopers forensic inquiry paints a gloomy picture of widespread misconduct, poor management control and breach of statutory obligations.
Church Square in Pretoria has seen some deadly serious encounters: one Friday lunch-hour in 1990 about 5 000 members of the newly-unbanned African National Congress confronted a police cordon. But last Sunday was not one of those occasions, despite the fact that roughly the same number of angry people gathered on the square to protest against the decision to rename Pretoria Tshwane.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will go on a nationwide strike on June 27 to protest against the ”catastrophic loss of jobs and intolerably high levels of unemployment in the country”, Cosatu secretary general Zwelinzima Vavi said on Thursday. More than 10 000 jobs have been lost since January, and 30 000 more are under threat.
A global conference to review the non-proliferation treaty is due to end on Friday, almost certainly in deadlock, jeopardising what is seen as the best chance of containing the spread of nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has said it will stick to its moratorium on nuclear tests but would not accede to a global treaty outlawing them.