* Iran: Total trade has grown more than 25 000% since 1993, and last year stood at R5,7-billion. Main South African exports include cereals, iron, steel and machinery including nuclear equipment. Main imports are oil. Amnesty International says Iranian authorities detain thousands of political prisoners, and often punishes offenders by public flogging, amputations and executions. […]
spies Marion Edmunds THE government’s finance watchdog has provided a glimpse of the apparently pampered life of the nation’s spies. National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the South African Secret Services (SASS) agents enjoy plush, furnished accommodation. Employees have also allegedly been leasing their own properties to their agencies, and there are plans for a special […]
Rehana Rossouw THE Mail & Guardian and the Freedom of Expression Institute have instituted legal proceedings against the SANDF in an attempt to open a Cape court martial to the public. Staff Sergeant Herman Phieffer and Corporal Desmond Booysen have been charged with alleging that their commanding officer was racist and with leaking sensitive information […]
IT has been the best of weeks and the worst of weeks for South African culture. While thugs were meting out their own special breed of cultural elitism at the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn, another group of quietly dedicated cultural workers was busy launching the most important arts body yet established in […]
THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW HANDS up anyone who has never told a lie. No takers, eh! That comes as no surprise. ”We are all liars,” says Bob Sienaert. ”The purpose of education is to teach us how to lie and get away with it.” He should know; his business is to catch liars. Sienaert is […]
might RUGBY: Steve Morris NO one in his right mind would believe that Louis Luyt is an easy man to take on in a head-to-head battle. More than one opponent has tried. None have yet succeeded in ousting the man who sits at the administrative helm of the game of rugby in this country. Brian […]
Anthony Kunda in Lusaka ACCORDING to a witness in the Zambian Supreme Court case to decide whether President Frederick Chiluba was eligible to be elected last November, Chiluba was expelled from school in the equivalent of standard seven for smoking marijuana. This was one of the details about his personal life that have so far […]
Last time Tom Jones was in town, Soweto was simmering and it was uncool to play SA. MARIAMcCLOY looks back at the tours of that time A GOLD Rolls Royce and women throwing their panties at him – that’s what Adele Lucas, who worked publicity for Southern Sun at the time, remembers of Tom Jones’s […]
FINE ART: Suzy Bell WHETHER for his trippy screen savers or portraits of peace, Bangalore artist Venkataraman Balu has been dubbed the master of the collage medium. He’s not simply absorbed in creating beautiful art, but in focusing on a global mission for peace through art. ”Art is a wonderful way to communicate the essence […]
BONGANI NDODANA discovers Gilgamesh, a serious musical collaboration that specialises and harmonises in world music SOMEWHERE in the imaginary crossroads between rock, classical music and the music of the East, floats the creative energies of an ambitious, quirky quartet of white twenty-somethings, striving to make sense of what seem to be musical contradictions. Labels are […]