CINEMA: Justin Pearce KEN LOACH’S Raining Stones is the cinematic equivalent=20 of protest theatre — only without the protest. After a=20 decade and a half of Tory government, working-class=20 council housing estates in the north of England are not=20 happy places, and Raining Stones is an account of the=20 misery created by unemployment, a broken-down […]

Members of Parliament paid fines of R22 500 for absenteeism last year. And, according to the register, which is known to be inaccurate, a number of MPs may pay up this year as well. IFP MP Dr DR Madide was away for 37 days between February and June this year, and the ANC’s chief whip […]

Marion Edmunds The Department of Foreign Affairs is to adapt its definition of the ‘family’ to suit the new South Africa. Before 1994, diplomats living in overseas missions recieved certain allowances for their ”dependants” or children. Now Foreign Affairs wants to change the definition of ”dependants” to make it possible to include members of the […]

Marthinus Basson’s production of Cabaret is chic,=20 decadent — and well researched, writes ANDREA VINASSA ‘DIE lewe is nie ‘n cabaret nie,” says dreadlocked=20 stage mechanist Eugene Smith in Capab’s dank canteen.=20 In the beleagured world of ”restructuring” and=20 ”transformation culture”, Smith does the work of three=20 mechanists (operating pulleys for trapeze work and=20 other […]

The IBA report will precipitate a rush for satellite=20 television. Neil Bierbaum reports THE rush for satellite television is on. If the=20 Independent Broadcasting Authority reports stands –=20 bringing a two-year wait before South Africa gets a=20 private terrestrial television station — new=20 broadcasters will take to the skies. This is the implication of the […]

SOCCER: Lungile Madywabe COFFEE is the only instant thing Orlando Pirates’ new coach, Joe Frickleton knows. According to him, football is about hard work, patient development of the team, formulation of a winning combination and finding good strikers to put the ball into the net. Frickleton recently came back to Gauteng after nine years with […]

Out-of-work miners are scratching a dangerous and illegal living through small-scale gold mining in the Eastern Transvaal, writes Fumane Diseko Retrenched miners in the Eastern Transvaal are risking their lives for gold, digging their own tunnels into the hills around Barberton to find the ore that can support them and their families. The narrow tunnels […]

South Africa’s foreign policy is a tug of war between realists, who are concerned with getting investment, and radicals, who want us to take the moral high ground, argues international affairs expert Jack Spence THE conventional widsom holds that a country’s foreign policy requires the definition and ranking of national interests based on the “immutable […]

Jo’burg Art Gallery has found an unlikely audience — in street-photographers and their clients. RUTH SACK THE Johannesburg Art Gallery has for years expressed the desire to become meaningful, relevant and, perhaps, useful to its immediate neighbours — the people who occupy and commute through Joubert Park. Well, it’s happened — though not in the […]

THIS week, millions of people all over the globe will be falling over themselves to buy a product that hardly any of them will ever see. It is a revised set of instructions to run the basic functions of IBM- compatible computers. The product is not innovative (its rival has been selling something similar for […]