trenches Wonder Hlongwa Churches were asked to “return to the trenches” this week to oppose the government’s growth, employment and redistribution policy (Gear) as it does little to assist the poor. The call was made by delegates to the South African Council of Churches’ (SACC) tri-annual conference, prompting the SACC’s former secretary general, Frank Chikane, […]
Robin McKie If there is a gene for causing uproar, Craig Venter has it. More importantly, he is also the man most likely to isolate it. In the predatory world of advanced biotechnology, Venter — head of the Institute of Genomics Research in Maryland – is regarded as a deadly member of a breed of […]
Phillip Kakaza Live music Back in the 1980s South African music made a radical turn – the locally created home-brew kwaito took the music scene by storm. Its tsotsi taal- flavoured lyrics and irrestible dance rhythms are still heard blasting in clubs, shebeens and parties. Recently, much in a similar way, BMG (South Africa) is […]
Swapna Prabhakaran and Mungo Soggot Court papers have implicated top KwaZulu-Natal government officials in a fraudulent conspiracy involving a businessman who allegedly exposed high- level corruption in the province. The businessman, Sateesh Isseri, is now allegedly on the state witness- protection programme. He is suing KwaZulu-Natal Premier Ben Ngubane and the province’s head of expenditure […]
Swapna Prabhakaran Whether you are a working Mozambican mamma or a leisured Amex-wielding tourist, there’s only one way to get between KwaZulu-Natal and Maputo in style – take the brand new trans- Lubombo train. The new service was recently launched by Spoornet from Durban station, to make its way over the Lubombo mountains, through Swaziland […]
Stuart Hess Minister of Justice Dullah Omar has asked for a report into Western Cape Attorney General, Frank Khan’s decision not to prosecute a former police superintendent accused of sexually harassing a colleague for six years. Khan twice declined to prosecute Mario Laubscher, on the grounds that he was suffering from depression. Carol van der […]
GAY AND AFTER by Alan Sinfield (Serpent’s Tail) Towards the end of this riveting study, Alan Sinfield evokes “an almost forgotten moment, the early 1980s – when the pop charts featured Boy George, Divine, Marc Almond, Bronski Beat, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. You couldn’t get into Lesbian and Gay Soc discos (as we called them […]
Too often South Africa’s transitional government has been held up as a model for other countries undergoing profound political change. Usually wrongly. But this country does offer a good example to Nigeria as its military regime gropes its way in the wake of the deaths of former dictator Sani Abacha and the man elected president […]
Graham Farmelo Only the most foolhardy person would try to predict the future of the World Wide Web, but that didn’t stop its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, from trying some crystal-ball gazing last week. During Internet, Web, What Next?, a conference at the Cern atom-smasher laboratory in Geneva, Berners-Lee and others speculated on what they hoped […]
Lauren Shantall To reach Heart of Darkness, one must embark on a symbolic journey into the bowels of the hulking 1820 Settlers Monument. There, one will confront an Africa of the past – that mythical place of the European imagination – and the multi-dimensional Africa of the present day. Finally, one encounters the minds of […]