Theatre: David Le Page A NAKED queen scrabbles in the dirt of a filthy dungeon, fighting off rats with a crucifix and babbling her way almost deliriously through the Lord’s Prayer. This is the opening of French Gray (at the Market in Johannesburg), a story not only of Marie Antoinette’s last hours, but of her […]

Ann Eveleth Deputy President Thabo Mbeki avoided confrontation with French President Jacques Chirac over France’s controversial nuclear testing programme and its handling of the recent Comoros coup during a state visit to Paris this week. Mbeki made the official state visit at Chirac’s invitation to discuss a financial protocol and an agreement on the protection […]

Janet Wilhelm Appearance: Historically disadvantaged patriarch with a penchant for dark designer suits and flash cars. Must be difficult to belong to a disadvantaged group? Not if you had the job of bantustan (sorry, homeland, sorry, independent state) leader. As Bophuthatswana president he consoled himself with lavish government spending — and evidence to the Skweyiya […]

Cinema: Stanley Peskin RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA’S sharp, engrossing screenplay for Merchant Ivory’s Jefferson in Paris provides a richly complex experience. The film begins in Pike County, Ohio, where the history of Thomas Jefferson (a very accomplished Nick Nolte), the third president of the United States (1801- 1809), is probed by a journalist. Interviewing a black […]

Dance: Craig Hedderwick FOR just under a month, coinciding with Johannesburg’s Arts Alive festival, the Dance Factory in Newtown has showcased some of the most exciting contemporary choreography around in Dance ’95, which closed on a high note last weekend with a programme of festival highlights. The Soweto Dance Theatre’s Elevated Underground, choreographed by Collen […]

Just outside Johannesburg last weekend, a group of South Africans met with a group of Cubans. It was a non-governmental meeting — civil society, not happy to leave matters to governments, working out the potential for cooperation between the two countries. It was also a rare meeting of international solidarity where South Africans were not […]

Mighty McDonald’s — with some 16 000 restaurants in 84 countries — has been outwitted by a crafty South African who this week won a court battle for the right to use one of the world’s best-known brand names. At the end of the first stage of the hamburger war, there’s ketchup on the floor […]

Neil Bierbaum Delays are expected in the issuing of new commercial radio licences in order to ensure the sale of South African Broadcasting Corporation stations. The Independent Broadcasting Authority has been accused of intending to delay the licensing of new commercial radio stations in order to ensure the sale of the SABC radio stations at […]

To get doctors to use their medicines, companies give them free drugs, which the doctors sell at huge profits. Hazel Friedman reports on the practices which have made our drugs the most expensive in the world MANY of South Africa’s 6 000 dispensing doctors receive free bonus drugs which they sell to consumers at high […]

Sheena Duncan, former president of the Black Sash, responds to allegations in a new book that her organisation compromised liberal principles Jill Wentzel says in her Author’s Note that her book The Liberal Slideaway is a “subjective account of life in the liberal community during the last 14 years.” Of course, it has to be […]