JAZZ ON CD: Gwen Ansell In the beginning was the word. And long before slack, ragga, rap and hip-hop, the word was dub. As Jamaican music emerged from mento, rock-steady and ska in the 1970s, a new kind of artist was born. A whole generation of producers and DJs took advantage of increasingly sophisticated (but […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN tries to get beneath the inscrutable surface of Arts minister Lionel Mtshali Picture a coat-tailed Victorian gentleman posing for one of those daguerreotype photographs and you’ll probably come up with a reasonable facsimile of Lionel Mtshali, Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. Starchily polite, unblinking, with an air of impenetrability effectively masking […]

THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW AT best Eeben Barlow is a pathological charmer. At worst he is a pathological liar. The man who has replaced Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev to become a major power broker in Africa is seeking to legitimise the mercenary business of state- sponsored killing for money. But to hear him talk […]

Prophets of doom have been predicting Australian dominance in the Test series, but South Africa can boast a combination of experienced campaigners and exciting new talent CRICKET: Jon Swift IT is astounding that the gloom and doom merchants are already predicting an Australian dominance of the Test series which gets under way at the Wanderers […]

THE government’s decision to ignore a recommendation by its own task team that the South African Communications Service (Sacs) be shut down has wider implications than the waste of taxpayers’ money. The move gives rise for concern about what could be in store for South Africa under a Thabo Mbeki presidency. The case for the […]

Die Jogger is Andre P Brink’s first play in 20 years. ADAM HAUPT saw it, and was suitably depressed Andre P Brink’s Die Jogger, takes us into the psyche of Colonel Killian (Chris van Niekerk), a security policeman. We meet the colonel in a mental hospital shortly after he dreams of torturing Vusi Manyin during […]

A brutal case shows the truth commission has the ability to turn murderous men into decent human beings, reports Eddie Koch THE question of whether Captain Wouter Mentz should be given amnesty for the murders he committed as a policeman could well be recorded in the history of the truth commission as the “case of […]

Between the volatile rand and the transformation process, Timothy Thahane has had a busy first year as deputy governor, he tells Madeleine Wackernagel From a personal point of view, Timothy Thahane is very happy to be back in South Africa. Work, on the other hand, has been a bit more hectic, he says with a […]

A silicosis victim’s opponent has asked the court to pay him compensation, reports Rehana Rossouw A DYING man’s five-year fight for compensation ended in Cape Town this week after his opponent stood up in court to deliberately testify in his favour. Western Cape Department of Labour director Brian Williams turned a routine Workmen’s Compensation Commission […]

Peta Thornycroft THE Transvaal attorney general’s office is putting the finishing touches to the case against several police generals who will be arrested and charged in the middle of next month. General “Krappies” Engelbrecht is finally going to be brought to court three years after he was forced to leave the police service, following Judge […]