Dale Carnegie would have been proud of FW de Klerk’s performance at the National Party’s weekend congress, writes Gaye Davis NATIONAL Party leader FW de Klerk is credited with being something of a magician among politicians, capable of producing a rabbit from a hat. The analogy was particularly apt at the opening of his party’s […]
Cape Town gang buster leader Muhammed Ali “Phantom” Parker is not the caped crusader his nickname suggests, but a man who has tasted death and is prepared to die for the cause he believes in, friends and relatives said this week. Parker was shot in the chest at the siege of gang leader Rashaad Staggie’s […]
The misguided choice of coal-based technology is limiting a potentially booming sector, reports Lynda Loxton Plastics and chemicals giant Polifin upset many manufacturers when it managed to persuade the Board on Tariffs and Trade to slap anti-dumping duties on polymer (plastic raw materials) imports. But while many ranted and raved about “high-handed measures to reduce […]
Credit Lyonnais may become the latest in a series of botched sell-offs, reports Alex Duval Smith from Paris If rumours are confirmed that the French government is preparing a rush privatisation of the Credit Lyonnais (CL) bank, it will be the latest in a long line of sell-offs motivated more by desperation than design. The […]
Edwina Spicer Blacks don’t buy books. At least, that is the apparent sentiment of many Zimbabwean bookshops. And yet the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) attracted thousands of mostly black visitors, including hordes of children who packed the reading tents. Harare’s big booksellers display a daunting range of coffee-table books, hard-covered and full-colour, on topics […]
Philippa Garson THE future of Ravan Press, renowned for its fierce independence during apartheid, is under threat. Founded by Beyers Naude nearly 25 years ago, Ravan will be absorbed by its holding company Hodder and Stoughton Educational Southern Africa, unless its staff can find a buyer before the end of the month. Ravan was bought […]
Bronwen Roberts A special session of the Eastern Cape legislature was convened this week to look at ongoing charges of corruption and maladministration. Whenever the Eastern Cape government faces another scandal involving internal corruption, officials emphasise it is because of their own efforts that corruption is being exposed. The implication is that the government is […]
BEN JOHNSON is a lonely man. Always with him are the harsh judgments and sustained mockery of those who condemn him for testing positive for steroids after he won the 100m dash in a record shattering 9.79 seconds at the 1988 Olympics. He did not sink into hopelessness after Seoul, but he remains wounded. The […]
Is Felicia Mabuza-Suttle’s personality preventing her show from attracting advertisers? Jacquie Golding-Duffy reports on the politics behind the `high-risk’ programme The Felicia Mabuza-Suttle show, regarded by black audiences as the “African version of Oprah Winfrey”, has failed to attract advertising despite its popularity. Although one of the most successful SABC local television talk shows, the […]
ZIMBABWEAN novelists, even the most successful, have a hard time surviving. In a workshop at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) last week, only two were able to say they earned their living from writing. One then confessed to being a journalist too, and the other, a playwright, admitted his main income comes from performance, […]