Alex Sudheim Celebrating its 20th birthday this year is the Durban International Film Festival, one of South Africa’s premier cinematic events. With a programme boasting 30 intriguing examples of alternative cinema from around the globe, the festival is a blessed relief for Durban cinephiles starved of indie action. Since Ster Kinekor’s technocrats deemed the city […]
dangerous The Reserve Bank has been speaking to the IMF about the fund’s controversial proposal to sell gold for debt relief, reports Mungo Soggot Reserve Bank Governor Chris Stals said this week the gold price had fallen to “dangerously low” levels as South Africa’s top mining magnate and unionist joined forces to lobby against the […]
gates skeletons John Grobler Namibia’s Central Intelligence Services (NCIS) this week took the unusual step of asking for public assistance to identify 57 skeletons discovered in the desert outside the southern harbour town of Lderitz. In a rare public appearance, Director General of the NCIS Peter Sheehama said the skeletons were discovered as long ago […]
AN electric locomotive pulling 18 goods trucks derailed on Thursday at Rosenegal near Middelburg in Mpumalanga, causing damage of more than R100 million. Police said that the train driver and his assistant were missing. The train was on the way to deliver titanium slabs to Highveld Steel at Witbank when the accident happened at about […]
Friday night Mercedes Sayagues Zimbabwe has a Lost City, in the Great Zimbabwe ruins, and a Fun City, in Vic Falls. More than half a million tourists flock every year to Vic Falls to have fun, since that is what tourists are supposed to do. The town has caught the disease. Every day is a […]
Marianne Merten Candlelight vigils, marches and prayer meetings may seem insignificant gestures in the face of guns and violence, but for many residents in gang-ridden Hanover Park on the Cape Flats these are the first steps to finding the courage to speak out and act. Hanover Park residents are slowly finding their voice after a […]
Matthew Krouse Down the tube Across the world the myth about men is the same – apparently we’re out to get laid all the time. Well, yes and no. Yes, we’d like to be engaged in some form of sexual play our whole lives. But no, we don’t fall apart at the seams if it […]
John Sutherland George Lucas’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which was released in South Africa this week, generated so much hype worldwide there was bound to be a backlash. One character, Jar Jar Binks, a computer-birthed frogboy, has been indicted of that most heinous culture crime: racist stereotyping. Jar Jar (created on screen by “animatics”) […]
Shaun Harris Taking Stock The latest, long-awaited interest rate cut should have us all ecstatic. The drop in prime and home-loan lending rates from 19% to 18% certainly seemed to please some people, typically those commentators who herald every rate cut, drop in inflation and rise in gross domestic product as the dawn of a […]
Loose cannon Robert Kirby There’s an ancient Australian proverb which runs: “By his piss-up mates shall you know your neighbour best.” Attributed to Dunny the Elder, the wisdom of the saying is self-evident. This appealing fragment of Antipodean social philosophy came rushing to mind when I read in last Sunday’s newspapers that among the host […]