THE breakaway state of Somaliland in northwest Somalia will hold a referendum on May 31 to ask three million voters whether they want independence from Mogadishu, officials said Tuesday. “There is no way we will postpone it,” said Abdulkadir Hagi Ismail Jirdeh, deputy speaker of Somaliland’s parliament. Somaliland, which seceded from the rest of Somalia […]
KHADIJA MAGARDIE, Johannesburg | Friday LAWYERS for Cape Town candidate attorney Gareth Prince are proposing that Rastafari carry a pass, authorising them to smoke dope. The Constitutional Court this week resumed argument on whether Prince should be exempted from legislation outlawing the possession and use of the drug. He was refused admission by the Cape […]
NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo announced on Tuesday that the African Union, an economic community that will succeed the Organisation for African Unity (OAU), will be established later this month. Nigeria ratified the African Union’s constitutive act on April 26, bringing the number of OAU member states supporting the union up to the necessary two thirds. […]
Crime is one of the major streams of film narrative. Some movies – such as <i>Pulp Fiction</i> or this week’s release <b>The Mexican</b> – even exist in a criminal world apparently altogether free of police personnel. <i>The Mexican</i> must have put tears of joy into the eyes of its Hollywood producers.
Mike Rapaport plays a white television executive obsessed with black culture in Spike Lee’s <i>Bamboozled</i>, but in real life he’s no Vanilla Ice, writes Bob Strauss.
What a bizarre, sulphuric, directionless satire from Spike Lee <b>Bamboozled</b> is. The title is from a speech by Malcolm X ("You’ve been led astray, led amok. You’ve been bamboozled") and Lee quotes it by unblushingly showing a clip of his own movie with Denzel Washington addressing a crowd.
Shaun de Waal review OFTHEWEEK Two enjoyable drag shows now on in Johannesburg cover the range from mainstream comedy to the engagingly trashy, with variable results. British Ceri Dupree is visiting the Civic Theatre with Eager Divas, a show of impressions of famous female figures such as Camilla Parker-Bowles, Tina Turner and Mae West. The […]
Jakkie Cilliers a second look White farmers and rural blacks perceive themselves to be under attack the former by what they consider to be a political campaign to drive them off their land and the latter by unemployment and, sometimes, racial assault. To be sure, our commercial agricultural system is under threat. Jobs are being […]
It’s almost certainly the beginning of the end for De Beers as a listed firm. But what of the Oppenheimer bid’s strange omissions to shareholders ahead of its victory? Stewart Bailey The bid by the Anglo/Oppenheimer-led DB Investments (DBI) consortium to take De Beers private seems a dead certainty after the South African Reserve Bank […]
The new 112 number will cut across provincial and municipal boundaries and be able to reroute calls to the relevant emergency services Jubie Matlou In less than a year a three-digit telephone number 112 is going to be the country’s common number for the public to access emergency services. The new number will integrate all […]