Courts in Gauteng have been running a scheme in which criminals do community service instead of going to jail Khadija Magardie Last year, Shaheed* (16) made a life- changing decision – to leave the gang that had been part of most of his life. But the notorious Westbury Fast Guns gang refused to accept his […]
Peter Dickson Representatives of the 1 300 Volkswagen South Africa (VWSA) workers who were sacked in January have been lobbying for international support, while troops this week patrolled the streets of Uitenhage to keep the peace in the wake of the strike. The employees from VWSA’s Uitenhage plant were axed after they went on strike […]
James Blond You won’t find the familiar “huge” South African rock outfits at Womad 2000. Rather, there are artists that complement the international musical on offer. Probably the most identifiable group to feature is Virgin SA’s angst-motivated Fetish – fresh from their opening visit at The Big Nine outing with Lenny Kravitz and company. From […]
Ivor Powell THE SNAKEBITE SURVIVORS’ CLUB by Jeremy Seal (Picador) You have to acknowledge it right from the outset: a book that is not only ostensibly but also actually about people who lived to tell the tale of being bitten by the world’s four most venomous species of snake is not the most immediately engaging […]
Neil Spencer CD OFTHEWEEK Screaming out of nowhere, or rather Harlem, comes 20-year-old Kelis with an early claim to single of the year in Caught out There, better known as I Hate You So Much Right Now, a pounding tale of female revenge. Her debut album, Kaleidoscope (Virgin), suggests there’s more to Kelis than a […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION I used to admire Warren Beatty, both as an accomplished actor and as a Hollywood “celebrity” a cut above the usual run of plastic idols. I now despise him, the reason being no more than his acceptance speech at last week’s Oscars. We’ve most of us seen quite a few televised Oscar […]
Parties in the Congo war committed themselves to a ceasefire in July last year, but the accords have been breached repeatedly Gregory Mthembu-Salter As the United Nations announces its plans for further troop deployments in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the opposing alliances in Congo’s year-and-a- half long multination war are desperately trying to sever […]
A recent police crackdown on alleged members of a criminal syndicate has netted a pharmacist and his mother Hazel Friedman The mother of a prominent pharmacist has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly poisoning coffee she gave to policemen who raided her son’s premises in search of counterfeit drugs. Maureen Adlam, the mother of […]
Jaspreet Kindra Two senior officials from a primary health-care group funded by the government pension fund have been arrested in connection with the theft of R50-million. The money was destined for setting up clinics in formerly disadvantaged areas. The officials are Ernustus Visser and Vaughan Coetzee, executive directors of the Carewell Group, which is backed […]
Robin Denselow in Makeni, Sierra Leone Just outside the little town of Lunsar, less than a 160km inland from Freetown, there is a roadblock where the rule of President Tajun Kabbar ends, and that of the rebel leader Foday Sankoh begins. From here on in, right through to the diamond fields in the east of […]