Karen Harverson THE platinum market, although sensitive to sudden increases in supply, is unlikely to be hit too hard when the United States sells off its strategic stockpile of platinum as announced in September 1994. “The US has not yet decided how much of its 453 000oz of platinum will be sold off or when […]

CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale PAUL VERHOEVEN and Joe Eszterhas’ latest collaboration, Showgirls, is at once the tackiest movie ever made by a major Hollywood studio and a satisfyingly bitchy backstage melodrama overlaid with all the usual sexual peccadillos common to both men’s previous work. Verhoeven’s first major hit was the Dutch art film The Fourth Man, […]

Symbiotic relationships between established and emerging enterprises are paths to solidifying black identity, reports Meshack Mabogoane VISTAS of low-cost housing and other public works projects, coupled with elaborate affirmative action measures formulated by government, are cementing relationships between established (largely white) and emerging (mainly black) enterprises. The construction industry is on its way to becoming […]

Ann Eveleth reports on the bizarre trial of KwaZulu-Natal rightwingers accused of a fantastic plot to take control of the province THE white right wing wanted a volkstaat. The Inkatha Freedom Party wanted a Zulu kingdom. Pat Hlongwane wanted explosives. And the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging wanted to wipe out African National Congress township strongholds in KwaZulu-Natal. […]

A LETTER written by one of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s lawyers to Nelson Mandela says it all: “Were quiet diplomacy pursued in South Africa … I doubt you would be alive today.” Our humiliation at Friday’s executions in Nigeria is complete. The question facing South Africa now is how to proceed. We have snubbed the Nigerian national […]

The faces of 1996: This week and next, we speak to the four new recipients of the Standard Bank’s Young Artist Awards DANCE: Itumeleng oa Mahabane SOUTH Africa’s “current wonderboy of contemporary African choreography”, Vincent Mantsoe, is sitting patiently, fingering his bead necklace, in the lobby of the Braamfontein Recreation Centre, where the Moving into […]

CINEMA: Justin Pearce IN Grief, a television production company occupies offices that used to house a brothel, and, as their producer remarks, it’s now a different kind of prostitution that goes on there. Making low-budget daytime television is prostitution in more than one sense though, as much about the displaced gratification of desire as about […]

Rowan Callaghan THE Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), which has helped over half-a-million people and paid out over R1-billion so far this year, is to begin improving its service immediately. The steps are the first in a range of changes it will introduce to improve its public image. The Department of Labour reports that so far […]

Funds destined for community cultural groups have been redirected back to the performing arts councils. HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on the ensuing fracas CULTURAL war is being waged over cuts in provincial funding promised to community cultural structures by the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology. The battlelines have been drawn between the Gauteng-based Arts […]

Worldwide African Investment Holdings has withdrawn its Free-to-Air shareholding to pursue satellite interests, writes Niel Bierbaum WISEMAN NKUHLU’S Worldwide African Investment Holdings has given notice that it intends to withdraw as a shareholder from Quentin Green’s Free-to-Air consortium. According to spokesman Joe Makobe, WWAIH intends to pursue direct-to-home satellite opportunities “rather than waiting for terrestrial […]