Peter Dickson Impoverished rural Transkei faces a “real possibility of famine” unless there is large-scale government intervention, welfare groups warn. Transkei Land Services Organisation acting director Simphiwe Ntshweni says widespread crop neglect and drought in the province is a recipe for disaster. “The government should revive the parastatals and introduce irrigation schemes on a large […]

respect you’ Sarah Ruden Okay, okay – don’t forget the United States entirely. You need those tourists, and you need foreign direct investment. But the irony is that economic progress is not going to happen if the South African government is craven in following advice from abroad. Current American economic policy, even as applied in […]

RESCUE services were searching the sea off Angola’s southwest coast on Wednesday after a helicopter carrying a senior Angolan government official and at least four other people failed to arrive at its destination, an official said. Deputy Interior Minister Dario Ngongo was on board a police helicopter that left Luanda on Tuesday en route to […]

MPUMALANGA’S former environmental affairs MEC, Luckson Mathebula, suspected of conspiring to murder his estranged wife, was again remanded in custody during a court appearance in Phalaborwa on Thursday. Mathebula’s girlfriend, Pretty Thembi Gama, was on Thursday afternoon placed in a police witness protection program after she agreed to become a State witness. All charges against […]

John Matshikiza With The Lid Off I met Danny Glover in the Sheraton hotel in Harare in 1986. It was a bitterly cold winter’s morning, the sun had not yet come up, and we were gathering in the lobby of the hotel, waiting to go on to the set to shoot a made-for-TV movie called […]

Shirley Kossick A PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY JAMES: TWO WOMEN AND HIS ART by Lyndall Gordon (Chatto & Windus) After Leon Edel’s Pulitzer-winning five- volume biography of Henry James (1953-72) and numerous subsequent studies, it is difficult to believe that anything fresh is left to be said about James. Lyndall Gordon, however, proves this assumption […]

THURSDAY, 12.15PM: BAFANA Bafana may be out of the World Cup finals, but they have reason enough to hold their heads high, writes ROB DAVIES. The fact that the South Africans qualified for the tournament is testimony to their spirit and their commitment to South African soccer. For a side that has only been playing […]

Matthew Krouse The Encounters Swiss South African Documentary Film Festival is the first of its kind in South Africa. Given our proud history of documentary film-making it’s surprising that no others have preceded this major event that launched on June 20. An initiative of the film department of the Swiss cultural organisation Pro Helvetia and […]

It’s irritating to be accused of stifling debate while debating. “Aids-denial” scientists are like Holocaust-denial historians. Of course they have a constitutional right to be heard – but Holocaust denial didn’t get cranked up until the 1980s, when every thinking person had known for 40 years that the Holocaust actually happened. Here, the government was […]

‘Long ago, in a far, far galaxy …’ So began a 1977 film that spawned a hundred imitators, billions of dollars in profits, two sequels and, now, the first of three planned prequels. What is it about George Lucas’s Star Wars films that has so captured the imagination? By Mark Lawson In 1977, a promising […]