Glenn Frankel reports on how leading UScigarette companies used trade laws to prise open a lucrative new market ON THE STREETS of Manila, “jump boys” as young as 10 hop in and out of traffic selling Marlboros and Lucky Strikes to passing motorists. In the coffee shops of Seoul, young Koreans light up foreign brands […]

ANDREWWORSDALE discusses the season’s children’s films, and some of his own all- time favourites PROBABLY the greatest kid’s movie of all time is The Wizard of Oz because it appeals to adults and their progeny, maybe because the wicked witch is a bit terrifying for toddlers. My favourite kids’ movies of the past year, Babe […]

A witness’s life was endangered when Attorney General Tim McNally released her from the state protection programme, writes Ann Eveleth THE family of a South Coast witness to violence this week accused KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally of endangering her life. The witness – a former Inkatha Freedom Party member who turned state’s evidence early […]

apartheid The truth commission has been asked to investigate the role English-language papers played in apartheid, reports Rehana Rossouw ENGLISH-language newspapers might have been regarded as liberal during the apartheid era, but some of their editors had “bent over backwards” to accommodate police in suppressing the truth about human rights abuses, journalists claimed this week. […]

A new government approach to NGOs is needed, argues Ben Turok on the eve of NGO Week AS the non-governmental organisation (NGO) movement prepares for the celebration of NGO Week nationwide, we have to admit that the new South Africa owes the movement an apology. It has to be acknowledged that the consolidation of democratic […]

Amy Lawrence WHEN World Footballer of the Year George Weah considered boycotting an exhibition match in America, it was no prima donna tantrum. Weah’s motives to pull out of a game were based on global emotions. When he presses his talented feet on to a football pitch, he is as much ambassador for Liberia as […]

Stephen Gray NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER by Langston Hughes (Scribners, R44,95) WITH his Collected Poems in two volumes recently published in the United States, the work of Langston Hughes (1902-67) is set for a revival. The exhaustive biography of him by Arnold Rampersad is in paperback as well, spurring reprints of Hughes’s work, most of which […]

hallucinatory drumming Jann Parry in London BODE LAWAL is a man possessed. In his solos for Sakoba Dance Theatre’s programme, New Moves in African Dance (at the Purcell Room), he seems in the grip of spirits, who speak to him and for him. Sometimes they are ancestral spirits, sometimes his own sense of curiosity and […]

Colin Blane in London WHEN Ethiopia’s long civil war reached a climax in 1991, cameraman Mohamed “Mo” Amin, who died at the age of 52 in the hijacked Ethiopian airliner crash off the Comoros Islands last weekend, was filming the rebel takeover of Addis Ababa and the shelling of the imperial palace. Mo had dramatic […]

Anthony Kunda in Lusaka AN alliance of seven opposition parties that boycotted the elections – led by former president Kenneth Kaunda – has vehemently vowed never to recognise or respect the new Zambian government because “it was elected fraudulently.” Dr Rodger Chongwe, chairman of the Liberal Progressive Front, said this week: “We will hold demonstrations, […]