Sharp-eyed readers will not have failed to notice that I did not finish a thought that I began in last week’s column–namely, what the films in the <i>Three Continents Documentary Film Festival</i> held at Buenos Aires, Argentina, were all about.
An article told of a South African musician who has come back to Africa in order to make contact with the "true roots" of jazz. The piece reiterated a comfortable fiction about Africa having single-handedly hosted the birth of jazz.
This Friday one of the most extraordinary of meetings will have just begun. Fidel Castro is the host. The guests: Robert McNamara and president John F Kennedy’s adviser at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, Ted Sorenson.
In a new twist in the saga of the former home affairs director general Billy Masethla, the auditor general has found that the extension of his contract for a year to June 20 was invalid. The report places a huge question mark over the legality of thousands of administrative actions Masetlha performed.
Pressure from the provinces is mounting on ANC leaders to implement the Taylor commission recommendations of a comprehensive social security system. To deflect the pressure, with the ANC’s national conference, President Mbeki is likely to make a strong case for implementing the system.
Even the most remote political observer would have noticed that South Africa crossed a critical threshold. Whereas previous public exchanges between the ANC and Cosatu and the SACP have ended in stalemate, the week’s exchanges revealed that political discourse has shifted leftwards.
South African soccer fans will be hoping the Coca-Cola Cup provides scintillating football over the next 12 weeks.
If the tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth emanating from south of the Hex river were to be taken seriously, we should now be lamenting the demise of South African rugby. Again. An unlikely series of results from here on in notwithstanding, Western Province will not win the Currie Cup this year. Ag shame, pass the tissues.
Willie Madisha, president of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, says government leaders may be linked to attempts to infiltrate the labour movement in a bid to fragment it. Madisha said: ”We know those who make these statements have planted people in our organisation to weaken some of our affiliates…”
A group of 54 Indian jewellers will be deported after a year-long stay during which they were unpaid and often unfed. They are the last of a group of 110 left penniless for almost a year after being recruited from their home country with promises of jobs with a state-funded beneficiation project.