Mungo Soggot went to Ogies to visit the man who looks after the world’s largest oil storage facility, apartheid’s oil stash IT is difficult to believe Frikkie Cloete when he points across a bleak mielie field in the middle of Mpumalanga and says “all this is oil – for 6km that way”. But Cloete, manager […]

BAFANA KHUMALO travelled to the Karoo to visit the set of the film Paljas, a collaboration between Katinka Heyns and Anant Singh MANY a traveller, in the relative comfort of his train compartment, has rattled past this dusty cell and thanked his god that it was not his home. The house on the side of […]

Cape Marion Edmunds THE Cabinet has dispatched a crack team of civil servants and international experts to Bisho to investigate the administrative chaos in the Eastern Cape. The team, which includes a deputy director- general, chief directors and Swedish and British experts, is spending two weeks in the Eastern Cape and will report back with […]

THE little girl’s head was jerked back, seeming to stare longingly up the hill toward those who had fled without her. In the town below, young thugs pranced through the streets celebrating her brutal death. One of them had skewered the child through the throat as they hunted down people who had once been their […]

David Beresford WHATEVER the cause of the Samora Machel air crash, there is one scandal involving the actions of the South African authorities which has not been fully exposed – relating to Mozambique state documents on board the aircraft. A little more than a week after the crash a diplomatic row blew up with allegations […]

Mac Maharaj details his department’s new plan to modernise all aspects of South Africa’s transport management WE all take the existence of roads, railways, airports and harbours for granted and only curse the inconvenience when confronted by traffic jams, accidents, ungovernable taxis and airport strikes. Still, in our better moments, most of us believe that […]

Alan Finlay TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS by Phil Crow (Wordsure, R20); THE END OF THE LINE by Craig Lock (Minerva, R49,99); AFTER THE ECLIPSE by Tom Rymour (Discobolus Readware, R70) SET in the English department of a certain Rondebosch University, Twilight of the Idols is an uneven text of sometimes accomplished ideas but, on the […]

South Africa’s tourism industry has massive potential but a few greedy operators could kill the golden goose, David Shapshak and Rehana Rossouw report Cape Town is fast becoming one of the most expensive tourist destinations in the world with widespread profiteering in its hospitality industry. While South Africa’s tourism industry has the potential to generate […]

Hazel Friedman VIDEO might have killed the radio star, according to the Buggles – that irritating bubblegum group of the1980s. But at the opening of Scramble, an exhibition on the video as art medium, not even the most sophisticated of techno-conceptual strategies could match the power of live performance. This took the form of a […]

Glynis O’Hara QKUMBA ZOO have lost the “C” in their QCumba – but not the “Q” in their quirk. Arista Records in New York has decided the “K” makes more sense – otherwise people go round saying “QSumba Zoo”, they say. To which one can only reply – what school did these people go to? […]