Chris McGreal in Kigali ZAIREAN rebels say they have launched an assault against the main diamond-mining region, threatening a major source of the elite’s wealth and potentially providing the insurgents with an important means of funding their war against ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime. The Rwandan-backed insurgents are headed toward the regional capital, Mbuji-Mayi, […]

The intitiative to form a new Afrikaans organisation drew the support of the Afrikaans establishment – but not its traditional critics, writes Rehana Rossouw CONRAD SIDEGO, former South African ambassador to Denmark, assured the last speaker at a meeting of Afrikaans people at the weekend that the colour of her skin had nothing to do […]

The competition for an FM licence has begun in Cape Town, with former political prisoners pitted against black businessmen, writes Marion Edmunds WHILE there are only two competitors for the licence for Cape Town’s first new FM commercial radio station, both have so much in their favour that the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) will find […]

Government moves are giving impetus to changes in rural financing, reports Madeleine Wackernagel THE transformation of the Land and Agricultural Bank gained momentum this week with the announcement by the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Derek Hanekom, that it would in future fall under its jurisdiction, rather than that of the Ministry of Finance. […]

Vusi Mona and Joshua Amupadhi GOVERNMENT proposals to give itself swifter powers to intervene on crisis-hit campuses are likely to face a rough ride from universities and technikons. The plans – part of the Ministry of Education’s Green Paper approved by Cabinet on Wednesday – follow a spate of campus upheavals, in which state intervention […]

Saliem Fakir INTEREST in South Africa as a testing ground for genetically modified organisms is increasing. This interest is shown mainly by multinationals such as Calgene, Pannar, Monsanto and Hoescht. But South Africa has no regulations to control modern biotechnology – the craft of creating artificial organisms – despite the threat it could pose to […]

The big guns are out, but this time they are profiting from protecting the wildlife. Eddie Koch reports on the phenomenal growth of the Conservation Corporation WHEN Dave Varty opened his company’s newest lodge on the banks of the Zambezi River last month, he identified a phenomenon that is helping to fuel exponential growth in […]

Angella Johnson THE woman entrusted with heading a government agency to advise small businesses is wanted by Swaziland police for allegedly misappropriating R211 000 of foreign donated funds intended to build township houses, it was claimed this week. Nonhlahla June Mkhwanazi, who has only held the post of chief executive officer of Ntsika Enterprise Promotion […]

Shirley Kossick YOUNG WIVES’ TALES by Susan Sussman (Headline Review, R59,99) MOLLY, one of the young wives of the title, is passionately involved with storytelling and is struggling to finish a dissertation on the subject. But the prologue – a marvellously evocative passage on the premonition experienced by Molly’s aunt – gives warning that danger […]

1 All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930). Archaic acting, yet still the mother of all battle films. Episodic, random; candid about mud, rats and lice … 2 La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937). The father of all anti-war films. Prison camp escape drama, acute about the behavioural artifices necessary to war. 3 […]