While the road ahead is long and hard, Burundi’s Tutsi and Hutu leaders have at last agreed to talk of peace. Chris McGreal reports form Arusha BURUNDI’S Tutsi military leader has bowed to regional sanctions and agreed to unconditional negotiations with Hutu rebels. But a weekend summit of East African presidents remained suspicious of Major […]

higher gear Mungo Soggot A TRIP to Australia has triggered a fresh tussle between lawyers and the state over planned reforms to South Africa’s state-run car accident insurance fund. The Multilateral Motor-vehicle Fund (MMF) has sent four officials to Australia to examine an insurance scheme, despite a government pledge to freeze reform of South Africa’s […]

Max Gebhardt AN appeal was lodged on Thursday with the Publications Appeal Board in Pretoria against the controversial banning of the movie Kids. In his submission to the Appeal Board, Anant Singh, whose Videovision Entertainment owns the South African distribution rights to the film, stated that the banning by the censor board is unconstitutional and […]

Judith Watt spoke to Clive Hassell and Adam Levine, who set up a studio at Gay Pride that became the venue for interactive photographic theatre. DRAG is alive and well and living in South Africa. That we know – but what is less well known is the cutting-edge gay subculture of cross dressing, body decoration […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy A THREE-PART documentary on transformation at the South African Broadcasting Corporation – Going Live! – was pulled off the air at the last minute by the corporation’s management, who offered no explanation to executive producers Shane Mohabier and Saths Cooper. Ironically the documentary, which was due to be aired on SABC 1 on […]

Katy Bauer PIGEON racing: boring “hobby” or mystical love story? Belgium’s national sport may fuel the first argument, but it is the second that has real substance. Johan van Deventer, a building contractor from Elandsfontein, enters one of the avaries at the smallholding of friend and fellow pigeon fancier Norman Gruar. “Kom nou. Kom nou […]

The Malan trial has highlighted the need to overhaul the attorney general’s office and re-educate its staff THE failed prosecution of Magnus Malan and the outrage that followed it illustrated aspects of the lack of trust in the legal profession dealt with in this column last week. It also highlighted one particular area that cries […]

Joshua Amupadhi and Mungo Soggot EVIDENCE that Gold Fields’s racial classification of workers could have contributed to the promotion of slaughter at the company’s mines has emerged at the Myburgh Commission of Inquiry. The evidence, which showed that the company identified workers’ ethnic backgrounds on their clock-in cards, followed a startlingly frank account of the […]

Suzy Bell THE Durban Centre for Photography (DCP) at the Bat Centre on Durban’s waterfront is under threat of closure by the end of the month if funds cannot be secured. Local photographers have reacted to the news with outrage. The centre has been open for one year, offering monthly photographic exhibitions and courses. It […]

National museums fear the axe following a financial survey by government consultants, writes Marion Edmunds GOVERNMENT consultants have proposed closing down a number of national museums, including the War Museum of the Boer Republics, the Afrikaanse Taalmuseum in Paarl, and the William Fehr Collection in the Castle in Cape Town, to make way for two […]