A marketing study determines that the quickest way to access South African black youth is through subcultures. Justin Pearce reports Ultraviolet light glows on the fluourescent grafitti-style murals. Ambient techno throbs in the background as the guests, their rave tickets hanging round their necks, down smart drinks before entering the venue. Can this really be […]

Television: Hazel Friedman IT was punted as the show that would transform the face of television, the first magazine programme conceived and created for an all-African audience. But now that the curtain of hype has been lifted, Front Row, M-Net’s bright new brainchild, appears to be little more than a familiar tune played in a […]

Classical Music: Coenraad Visser MAIN interest in Johannesburg this week was in two symphony concerts featuring Laura Mikkola, the young Finnish winner of last year’s Unisa/Transnet Piano Competition and recently silver medallist in the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Competition in Brussels. Her performance of Schumann’s piano concerto, with the Transvaal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Christopher Dowdeswell, […]

Eddie Koch Documents which suggest that a bus-making company used a private security firm — headed by a former Special Branch policeman — to plan a third-force campaign of “deliberately and openly hostile terrorism” against selected targets of the National Union of Metalworkers have been handed to police for investigation. Documents on letterheads of the […]

John Seiler Former Bophuthatswana strongman Lucas Mangope must be charged for a series of frauds — including the theft of mining royalties and homeland security funds — that total R22-million, according to the report of the Skweyiya Commission. The report will have massive political repurcussions, as it will be released today by North West Premier […]

Cinema: Justin Pearce MOST gangster movies these days have a rap soundtrack. Little Odessa has Russian chorales. And it’s these ponderous, bass-heavy anthems which set the tone for the film: it’s turgid. Locating itself in the Russian Jewish neighbourhood of Brighton Beach in New York, Little Odessa suffers from a malaise not uncommon in films […]

Ann Eveleth Only the wind stirred in Ebu-hleni when Rogers Ngcobo took the podium last Sunday. Tens of thousands of white-robed Nazarites, who had gathered in the tree-cloaked shantytown to mourn the death of their spiritual leader Bishop Amos Shembe, listened in stunned silence to his message. Ngcobo, a local bottle-store owner and non-Nazarite, told […]

Eddie Koch South Africa’s “oil baron” Marino Chiavelli earned US$7,5-million a month for brokering a clandestine deal in 1980 that ensured thousands of barrels of oil a day was shipped into South Africa in contravention of the international embargo. This is one of the details contained in the new book Embargo: Apartheid’s Oil Secrets Revealed […]

Fine Art: Ruth Sack PAVED with good intentions, the Right to Hope project was perhaps destined to stumble into predictable pitfalls, especially given its ambition and its hopes. Consisting of three separate exhibitions in Johannesburg, one of which will tour the world for two years, and a multifarious educational component, it was set up to […]

Perplexed about the complex issues surrounding privatisation of state assets? The International Finance Corporation offers this parable at the beginning of its latest publication, attributing it to an anonymous agency official. “To privatise is to drive a two-horse cart. The cart is the enterprise in question. One horse is called Political Goals and is flighty […]