Freedom Front leader Constand Viljoen has held secret meetings with the editors of leading Afrikaans newspapers. Gustav Thiel reports FRESH evidence of the split between the National Party and the Afrikaans press emerged this week with details of a campaign by the Freedom Front to woo the country’s top Afrikaans editors. The Mail & Guardian […]

Gustav Thiel SOME 1 600 invited guests turned up for the annual Nederburg Wine Auction – show-case for the industry – outside Paarl at the weekend, but only about 50 were blacks. ”We invite people to the auction that will buy the expensive wine and will be able to sell it afterwards,” explained auction manager […]

THE OSCARS: Richard Brooks RUPERT MURDOCH’s studio, Twentieth Century Fox, was originally due to shoot The English Patient, the movie that went on to pick up nine awards including best film at Monday’s Oscars, but Fox did not want to spend R140-million on a film without a star actress. He demanded that Demi Moore replace […]

come’ On the other side of the coin, some South African producers were facing insurmountable barriers to entry into the EU market. Davies has tried to highlight the case of the Langeberg fruit-canners in the Western Cape as a case in point. Most of their products remained on the agricultural exclusion list and attracted duties […]

Hazel Friedman IT is the place where the bones of our earliest ancestors were unearthed. But the village of Taung, 160km north of Kimberley, also resonates in a different way through the music of keyboard supremo Paul Hamner. His latest CD Trains To Taung – an instrumental journey through the roots of ancient music to […]

CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser OVER the past few years it has become increasingly rare for the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO) of the SABC to give performances worthy not only of its status as the official orchestra of a national (publicly funded) broadcaster but also of the undoubted abilities of its members. One often suspected that […]

Spain’s acceptance of South Africa to the Lom Convention is only the beginning of a wider battle over trade and development issues, writes Lynda Loxton SPAIN’S decision not to veto South Africa’s limited accession to the Lom Convention was only the start of a process of negotiating a new trade agreement with the European Union, […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN meets sangoma Credo Mutwa to talk about the future – and a new exhibition ‘I HAVE a sick, disgusting obsession to make this country great – not through guns and revolution but through love and laughter.” Credo Mutwa’s eyes practically sink behind his tree-thick lenses and disappear into bloated cheeks as he breaks […]

Investigations into the ‘Trojan Horse’ incident in 1985 may reveal why officers who killed children were never prosecuted, reports Gustav Thiel IN the late afternoon of October 15 1985, security police hiding in crates on the back of a lorry opened fire on children playing in Thornton Road, in the Belgravia section of Athlone. Shaun […]

THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW I HAD been waiting more than 30 minutes for Cheryl Carolus, idling my time away listening to her secretary gossip over the phone. The African National Congress’s acting secretary general was late. I was growing more furious with each passing second, having rushed like a lunatic to get to ANC headquarters […]