Burundi’s government calls it `regroupment’, but to the thousandsof Hutus chased from their land these places are concentration camps. Chris McGreal reports from Nyarurama, Burundi AMELIE MUVUNI is not a prisoner in the conventional sense. There is no fence to keep her confined to the squalid, overcrowded hillside camp she was herded into by Burundi’s […]
As both Unita and the Angolan government begin to redeploy their troops, US diplomats are desperately trying to save the Lusaka Peace Accord, reports Chris Gordon AS evidence emerges of massive Unita military duplicity in Angola and the government in Luanda mobilises for full- scale war, frenetic diplomatic activities are under way to try to […]
FRIDAY, 12.30PM FORMER British MP Emma Nicholson, who has been sheltering Katiza Cebekhulu, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s kidnapping co-accused who was abducted and carried to Zambia to prevent him testifying against Madikizela-Mandela, said this week in London that she is to travel to SA in September and offered an interview to the truth commission. Nicholson, who has […]
FILMGOERS can sup at a feast of independent cinema playing for the next two weeks in Johannesburg, arriving in Durban on July 15 and in Cape Town on July 28. Here are some of the best: The Funeral (Abel Ferrara, 1996) This 1930s-set gangster pic finds fierce and furiously transgressive director Ferrara on strangely penitent […]
Ken Barris RUDE SHELTERS by Robert Kirby (Jonathan Ball, R79,95) RUDE SHELTERS is a collection of Robert Kirby’s columns and articles that, judging by the content, span a three-year period from 1994 to 1996. It includes selections of his work as a television critic for The Star Tonight, satirical columns in the Sunday Times and […]
Journalists in Somalia have to be wary … before publishing by photocopier. ALEX BELLOS reports from Mogadishu THE press in Britain is often referred to as the fourth estate. In Somalia – where uniquely there has been no government for six years – it is definitely the first. Mogadishu is an unlikely place to have […]
The sound of scandal from the controversial Aids musical continues to reverberate around its creator Mbongeni Ngema. SUZY BELL reports NEW evidence has emerged in a fraud investigation into controversial director and playwright Mbongeni Ngema. The investigation concerns allegations, made in February, that Ngema used R3-million advanced to him from the R14,2-million spent on Sarafina […]
Wally Mbhele A FORMER commander of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) recently granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission allegedly tried to derail the amnesty applications of Jerry Richardson and other jailed members of the Mandela United Football Club. Yet Richardson, who is seeking amnesty for the murder of teenage activist “Stompie” Seipei and three other […]
Hazel Friedman `LIFE should not be cheap and love ain’t for free.” This is one of the messages behind the Lovers Plus commercial on SABC, South Africa’s first branded condom television ad. Filmed and produced in South Africa and flighted during prime time on SABC1 and 2 since June 23, the ad is the brainchild […]
What patrician journalism in South Africa needs is a heavy dose of impoliteness, argues Ronald Suresh Roberts ‘WHEREVER you find injustice, the proper form of politeness is attack,” wrote American activist T-Bone Slim early this century. This view contradicts the cowering ethos that gripped media bosses under apartheid, and survives, even thrives, today. ”To publish […]