There will be no grand release when the truth commission’s final report is tabled, writes Antjie Krog THE commissioner spreads the photos on the table. A slope of tamboekie grass, a wind- blue sky, some fresh soil. “He shows us the place … we dig … we find red topsoil mixed with black subsoil … […]

FINE ART: Dennis Mair AT an event that took place a few weeks ago, at the Obz(scene) Cafe in Observatory, Andrew Putter set up for a work-in- progress. It was a performance piece where he invited family, friends and people off the street to pass around and fit on a set of false teeth, while […]

Steady shifts are happening as mainstream South African radio hones in on an increasingly competitive market Hazel Friedman on Radio 702 PERCEPTION is reality, reality is a mind thing, and minds tend to change. Understand this principle and you’ll get a handle on the law governing 702-land and the drastic programme changes that took place […]

fund Mungo Soggot A TOP official in Gauteng’s Housing Department has confessed to stealing more than R8-million from the province’s low-cost housing kitty. Senior accountant Louis Botha handled the province’s disbursements from the National Housing Fund – the central reservoir of funds for the government’s low-cost housing drive. But lax controls within the provincial department […]

ANDREW WORSDALE previews a moving new radio documentary commemorating Youth Day A MASTERFUL radio documentary, The Story of June 16th , begins with a police loudhailer: “This gathering under section 48 of the Internal Security Act is defined as a riotous gathering and you are all ordered to disperse.” With the sound of gunfire laid […]

act Busi Moloele NEXT time you’re in Witbank, look carefully between the giant forms of the iron-smelting factory, the electricity power-stations and the gangling steel factory. There, huddled in a space named Kwaguqa, you are likely meet an intrepid band of environmentalists who are trying to make a difference. In 1994, a group of standard […]

The South African Association of Youth Clubs is changing direction again – this time it aims to motivate young people to take charge of their lives. Busi Moloele reports ‘NO, I definitely don’t agree with the label ‘the lost generation’,” says Mokoka Seshabela. “Many young people are on the margins of society – they are […]

MADAM & EVE, South Africa’s most successful comic strip ever, celebrates its fifth anniversary this week. The strip was first published in The Weekly Mail. Madam (a Johannesburg northern-suburbanite) and Eve (her “domestic maintenance assistant”) have won the hearts of millions as they journey through the rocky landscape of the new South Africa while keeping […]

Environmentalists describe seafood farming in Asia as a rape-and-run industry, writes Suzanne Goldenberg in Keyakhali, Bangladesh THEY saw the enforcers coming from a distance – 50 men cycling along the embankment, iron bars and home-made petrol bombs glinting under a bright afternoon sky. As the villagers cowered in their homes, the intruders hacked at the […]

Madeleine Wackernagel The United Nations Human Development Report 1997, released this week, highlights the importance of integrating poverty reduction into economic policies. Only those countries that make “poverty eradication a central objective of their national development policies” will achieve steady and equitable growth in the next century. “The positive and negative experiences over the past […]