Ivor Powell and Mungo Soggot Former state president PW Botha could face prosecution in connection with the grisly 1985 killing of eight East Rand youth activists by booby-trapped grenades. Botha has been named in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty application of South African police Commissioner Johan van der Merwe as having authorised what has […]
Cameron Duodu Letter From The North `Africa’s leaders, some of whom seized power in coups themselves, have decided, at the final OAU [Organisation for African Unity] summit of the century to ostracise any future African leader who takes power by force,” an OAU spokesman said. (Reuters) (Fast forward to January 1 2000. Military music is […]
The debate may be heated, but the statistics show that controlling gun ownership is the way to go, writes Anthony Minnaar South Africa has become part of a worldwide trend with its controversial draft legislation that tightens controls on the issuing of firearms to individuals. The whole world seems to have become gun conscious. The […]
Darran Thomas Winter in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands is hunting season for landowner and poacher alike and past seasons have seen their share of destroyed hunting dogs, imprisoned poachers, human death and communities at each others’ throats. But one Midlands man seems to have gone some way towards reconciling the divergent philosophies of hunter and landowner. […]
Leader: Laurent Kabila General area of operations: western and southern Congo. Forces: Armed Forces of the Congo (FAC): 40 000 to 45 000 poor-quality troops, most of them formerly in Mobutu’s army, collected by Kabila and stationed around the country. Angolan armed forces: 2 500 to 3 000, stationed mainly around the diamond mining centre […]
Peter Bradshaw Yugoslavian movie of the week There’s never been a more appropriate time to see a movie set in Serbia, so run, don’t walk, to see Black Cat, White Cat. It is a pungent and gripping gangland comedy by Emir Kusturica (The Time of the Gypsies), about patriarch gypsy godfathers on the banks of […]
`silent killer’, is disastrous Twenty-three year old “Malock” has a two- year-old child and is HIV-positive. Since receiving her test results in December, she has sought counselling and told her boyfriends, all of whom denied being positive. She worries about her daughter’s future. “I want to see her grandchildren but I know that won’t be […]
John Matshikiza speaks to two members of the Manhattan Brothers who have returned to visit South Africa after 38 years in exile `You stayed up late. I left you in the reception when I went to bed,” says Joe Mogotsi to Rufus Khoza. “What were you doing, practising your Zulu or what?” The two old […]
Despite OAU efforts to solve the border crisis, there is little hope of an end to the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Audrey Gillan reports from Mekelle The Ayder school in Mekelle is little more than a collection of breeze-block huts, but it has become one of the Ethiopian government’s most potent propaganda weapons in […]
The most recent novel by Justin Cartwright -once a Wits rugby player -won the Whitbread Prize. He spoke to Nicholas Dawes `I was the Peter Mandelson of my era,” says Justin Cartwright of his years as spin- doctor-in-chief to Britain’s Liberal- Democratic party. He’s joking, of course, but then the Lib-Dems did slip rather rapidly […]