Mbongeni Ngema, director of Sarafina II, in The Mark Gevisser Profile DEPENDING on which way you look at it, Mbongeni Ngema is the very best or the very last person you’d want to give a R14-million Aids education contract to. Even his biographer, Laura Jones, was moved to chide him, in an otherwise-salutary Nothing Except […]
natural disasters Bafana Khumalo OKAY now. I’ve always known that I grew up under a racist regime that intended me to remain ignorant for the rest of my life. What I did not know, however, is how far the regime succeeded. They succeeded so much that the basics of Western concepts remain a mystery to […]
Stefaans Brummer SOUTH AFRICAN arms dealer Ters Ehlers — ex- President PW Botha’s last private secretary — has been implicated in “unauthorised” flights of a Russian cargo aircraft between South Africa, Namibia and Angola. Namibian Deputy Minister of Transport Klaus Dierks last Friday said his department had grounded the Russian- registered Antonov-12 in Grootfontein pending […]
A 61-year-old white farmer stands accused of sexually abusing nine schoolgirls. Strangely, none of his neighbours seem surprised. Ricardo Dunn reports Ockie Olivier’s smallholding in Louisrus is typical of this depressed area south of Johannesburg: a creaking windmill, wild flowers and stray dogs set against the backdrop of steelworks, industry and pollution billowing into the […]
Stefaans Brummer THE arrest of Dr Omar Sabadia on an allegation of complicity in the murder of his wife, Zahida, has highlighted the relationship between the Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad and two private investigators, former hitsquad member “Slang” van Zyl and convicted double- murderer Jack la Grange. Some police and judicial eyebrows lifted this […]
TWO socialist governments that have long been part of the world political equation disappeared last weekend. In Australia on Saturday, Paul Keating’s Labour administration was swept away after 13 years in office. Then on Sunday Felipe Gonzlez’s socialist coalition lost power after a 14-year reign in Spain. Both Keating and Gonzlez had been lucky to […]
Gaye Davis A HUGE computer database, capable of cross-checking names, dates and incidents, will be the truth commission’s most powerful tool. It will allow for fast checks on the truth of victims’ claims. It will also ratchet up the pressure on perpetrators to come forward — and come clean. Building the database is central to […]
CABARET: Peter Frost NATALIE GAMSU, back in South Africa after a four-year stint in New York, returns to a closing venue: the Cape Town landmark Upstairs at Elaine’s will go dark after Gamsu’s show closes. Punters should break their necks, however, to see the swansong. Gamsu is better than ever, the beneficiary of some tough […]
One committed to emulating Europe; the other finding talent at home. COENRAAD VISSER reports on two opera companies fighting to survive TWO professional opera companies are playing in Gauteng — only one likely to survive in the long term, according to current thinking in the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. The teasing question […]
Unmarried fathers who want to raise their illegitimate children could have the right to do so, if draft legislation before the Cabinet is approved, reports Rehana Rossouw JOHN WILLIAMS (25), a printer from Mitchells Plain, is forced to sneak visits with his six-year-old daughter at her Sunday school class. The child’s mother cut off Williams’s […]