Pat Schwartz LAPALEBOMBO: An African Paradise by Gill Bosonetto (Puffin, R59,99) THE concept is great. All the sentiments are in the right place. Ulla Blake’s illustrations are charming. What a pity the author feels the need to anthropomorphise her animal characters in a particularly twee way! Imagine, if you will, a giraffe called Camilla, a […]

FILM: Derek Malcolm ‘SHE’S not far,” Mr Knightley tells Emma, when she complains that the marriage of Harriet has robbed her of her friend. “Almost half a mile,” complains her father in complete sympathy. Things that go on in the small town of Highbury indeed appear to be “of greater interest than the movement of […]

Advertising has invaded the quiet confines of a local art gallery. Hazel Friedman notes the reactions to this transgression RADIO 702 always says it best with sound, right. Er not quite. These days it also says it with sight (and site). In a first for South Africa, it has placed one of its advertising billboards […]

Marion Edmunds NATIONAL Public Service Commissioners are hoping to claim hundreds of thousands of rands of financial compensation for early retirement next year, even if they continue to work in the public service. Forty-four public service commissioners – appointed after 1994 in terms of the interim Constitution – will have to retire early from their […]

A retrospective of Jrgen Schadeberg’s work over the last 40 years confirms his enduring photographic eye. HAZEL FRIEDMAN spoke to him IT takes a strange kind of eye to be able to see life constantly through a lens — a kind of nomadic outsider-looking-inside perspective and a remarkable degree of detached curiosity. Not to mention […]

ART: Suzy Bell THE entire Victorian and Foreign collection should be sold,” said Andrew Verster with panache. “What?” shrieked the British Empire, “Has the man gone quite mad?” Certainly not. But have you walked into The “Pink Victorian Room” or “The Circular Gallery” lately? It reeks of colonialism — and we’re not just talking about […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy scrutinises the credentials of the newly appointed South African Broadcasting Corporation board members THE appointment of members to the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) board has been finalised, with President Nelson Mandela rubberstamping 16 of the 21 names submitted. But only five of the successful candidates seem to have specialist media experience, while […]

Joshua Amupadhi and Jacquie Golding-Duffy UNIVERSITIES and technikons discovered this week just how harshly the government has slashed their funding for 1997, with a string of institutions facing severe and damaging cutbacks. Universities including Wits, Pretoria, Natal, Transkei, Rhodes and the Orange Free State complained their government funding has been cut to “even much lower […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter PX, Transnet’s loss-making container shipment and consignment distribution unit, is on the road to recovery after the unions endorsed a restructuring plan, says Thabang Motsohi, deputy chief executive. The strategy, which involves closing 34 mini-depots, will see the company break even in the1998 financial year – after making a loss of […]

Glynis O’Hara THE disastrous Melville 100th birthday party in Johannesburg two weeks ago has run into money troubles. A meeting between creditors and the Melville Organising Committee was held at a lawyer’s office last week but no one from the committee would talk to the press. This week creditors were told the Melville Organising Committee […]