Time is running out for a group of farmworkers who are waiting for state assistance to build new homes Marianne Merten A group of 14 Stellenbosch farm workers and their children may soon find themselves homeless following the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs’s failure to provide them with grants for the construction of new […]

Sarah Bullen Last year the Insider Trading Directorate (ITD) dropped a minor bombshell on local markets by publishing a list of companies in whose shares insider trading was suspected. In January it added 10 more to its list of 43. Six claims have been settled, seven have been closed due to lack of evidence and […]

apartheid Lungisile Ntsebeza and Fred Hendricks CROSSFIRE Patekile Holomisa’s article ”Ubukhosi the bedrock of African democracy” (February 11 to 17) raised a number of critical issues about the nature of democracy and the future of traditional authorities in South Africa. We feel it is necessary to correct some of the distortions, half-truths and sweeping statements […]

Matthew Krouse REVIEW OFTHEWEEK William Wharton’s Birdy – widely known as a bestselling novel and an Alan Parker movie – makes for an intermittently moving piece of stage drama, even though Naomi Wallace’s adaptation is in a writing style that’s somewhat out of date. Like Peter Schaffer’s Equus, it’s about a youth who develops an […]

Deon Potgieter BOXING One of the highlights of the most intriguing boxing bill in recent memory will be the presence at ringside of Irichelle Duran, daughter of the legendary Roberto Duran. Irichelle Duran has signed with Golden Gloves, the promoters of the tournament, and will be making her professional boxing debut in South Africa on […]

Ivor Powell The Pretoria High Court will next week consider a case that could result in the removal of Judge Willem Heath from his embattled special investigating unit and the reversal of all the unit’s state asset retrievals. This could mean that the state would have to return the millions of rand it has reclaimed […]

Thebe Mabanga Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe is a man clearly peaking in his career as a dancer and choreographer. The 28-year-old associate artistic director of Moving into Dance exudes an air of quiet confidence that belies his stature as one of South Africa’s leading dance practitioners. He has come a long way from his Diepkloof upbringing […]

As a rule, journalists prefer reporting the news to making it. Yet the press itself is making the headlines in South Africa just now. The editors of the Johannesburg Sunday Times, the Mail & Guardian and two other Cape Town papers have been threatened with jail if they refuse a summons to appear before the […]

Bell Hooks BODY LANGUAGE In her first book, The Bluest Eye, novelist Toni Morrison identifies the idea of romantic love as one ”of the most destructive ideas in the history of modern thought”. Its destructiveness resides in the notion that we come to love with no will and no capacity to choose. This illusion, perpetuated […]

STANDARD Bank Investment Corporation (Stanbic) said on Friday that its appeal against a potentially harmful court judgment in a hostile takeover battle with smaller rival Nedcor will be heard next month. ”The Appeal Court hearing will take place on March 23 and 24 in Bloemfontein,” a Stanbic spokesman said. Lawyers had warned that it might […]