The new head of the secret service, and his deputy, will be looking out for the dangers and opportunities facing the country, reports Gaye Davis THEY’VE been described as student radicals, and they’ve certainly got the T-shirts earned during careers which took them from student activism to jail, exile and working underground for the African […]

Even the police in Mpumalanga are afraid to testify against local gangs, report Sharon Hammond and Justin Arenstein STATE-SPONSORED gangs, who used government patronage to build criminal business empires, featured prominently during Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) sittings in Mpumalanga this week. Although state support for the thugs officially ended with the dissolution of the […]

Gaye Davis AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS chairman Jacob Zuma is emerging as a strong contender for the position of deputy president of the organisation. President Nelson Mandela’s announcement that he would step down as ANC president at the organisation’s conference in December 1997, and as the country’s president in 1999, has paved the way for Deputy […]

Andrew Worsdale THIS Friday sees the South African release of Crash, a movie so controversial it has not yet been News, features, released in the United States or the other services United Kingdom. Local distributors Nu-Metro are leading the international market with computing their bid to release the film completely uncut, but with a “no-under […]

The last of SABC-TV’s big budget drama series comes to our screens this week. ANDREW WORSDALE reports – HOMELAND, the new 13-part-series on SABC3, is quite possibly the most engrossing drama series yet produced for local television. Full of well-judged performances and cinematic flair, it contains all the qualities that, up until now, one believed […]

SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi THE arrival of Nigerian champions Shooting Stars this week heralds the start of a hectic period of international activity involving Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates. On Sunday at the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, the Buccaneers continue their defence of the African Champions’ Cup with a quarter-final tie against highly-rated Stars. The […]

Catholic schools in Gauteng are outraged by a 30% retrospective subsidy cut, reports Max Gebhardt INDEPENDENT Catholic church schools which cater for thousands of disadvantaged black schoolchildren will be the first to suffer in the wake of cutbacks in their subsidies by the Gauteng Education Department. Religious and independent schools in Gauteng have been plunged […]

Nineteen-year-old Tebogo Lerole is bringing the joyful rhythm of the pennywhistle to a new generation. KAREN DAVIS speaks to him – WHEN Elias and Aaron Lerole were small boys, they were already to be found on the streets and at Johannesburg’s Zoo Lake every Sunday earning a living as pennywhistlers. Now, Elias’s children are carrying […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman – PHILIP BADENHORST’s exhibition would make interesting “reading” were it not for his desire to make his mark as a neo-expressionist high-tech symbolist. Ultimately that is what one retains of his work – the mark – violent slashes of reds, blues and black. And while vibrant, colourful and certainly evocative, it […]

Stuart Hess TWENTY members of the elite police reaction unit in KwaZulu-Natal stand accused by family members of murdering a 23-year-old Inanda man who was shot as he lay sleeping in bed with his girlfriend. The family of Thulani Nzuza say the group of uniformed officers burst into the house in the early hours of […]