DISABLED beggars in northern Nigeria’s largest city Kano have given the state government two weeks to rescind a ban on street begging or face protests. State authorities last month announced a ban on street begging, which they said had become an organised racket. The practice of begging for alms is widespread in Kano, the second […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Saturday A VIGILANTE group – which is backed by authorities in three southern Nigerian states – this week barbarically executed two suspected robbers in public, police admitted. Members of the vigilante group known as the Bakassi Boys – sanctioned by Abia, Anambra and Imo state authorities to tackle high crime levels […]
AT least 18 people have been arrested in a rural district in southern Zimbabwe in pre-election violence that has left at least one person dead, police said. Among those held are members of both the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and the ruling Zanu-PF. Political tension in the Bikita-West constituency has shot up since […]
SHAUN BENTON, Cape Town | Saturday THOUSANDS of banjo-strumming minstrels, complete with blackface, are shrugging off the traditional derogatory label of Coon Carnival in a two-week celebration they hope will rival the annual carnivals in Rio de Janeiro, Notting Hill, and New Orleans. The “klopse”, as they are known, compete for annual prizes, including the […]
Two women have made a prize-winning documentary about South Africa’s truth commission. They spoke to Andrew Worsdale.
American film-maker Lionel Rogosin, who died recently, made a classic South African film, Come Back, Africa. Peter Davis reminisces.
Letter to the Editor — Racism is essential to human behaviour.
Marianne Merten Several Western Cape residents in witness protection who are refusing to leave the province despite the Christmas murder of two state witnesses face the choice: relocate or leave the programme. The head of the Office for Witness Protection, Director Piet Kleynhans, said a decision on this handful of witnesses to Cape criminal trials, […]
Ian Penman Fear and Loathing in America: The Brutal Odyssey of an Outlaw Journalist 1968-76 by Hunter S Thompson, edited by Douglas Brinkley (Bloomsbury) As a writer bin all that “cultural icon” stuff, all the cartoon strips and cocaine blizzards and Colorado screamin’ it is hard to see Hunter S Thompson as much more than […]
Thomas and the Magic Railroad. A mixture of live action, animation and modelling, Thomas and the Magic Railroad is an Americanised version of the British TV series based on the Reverend W Awdry’s children’s books. It’s whimsical stuff about the interaction of the railway (sorry, railroad) systems of a real community and a magical one […]