Rehana Rossouw PEOPLE Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) campaign in Cape Town is beginning to affect police attempts to combat crime, the South African Police Service (SAPS) claimed this week. Western Cape police representative, senior superintendent John Sterrenberg, said between April and last week Pagad held 43 demonstrations and marches which have been policed by […]

Claudia Braude PRIOR to one of the lectures of the three candidates for the position of vice- chancellor at Wits last week, I bumped into Professor Alan Kemp, deputy vice-chancellor. The last time I’d seen him he was in the process of reviewing the continued viability of Wits University Press. “Have you succeeded in shutting […]

A new Johannesburg studio is moving body- piercing and fetishism into the mainstream. DROR EYAL pops by for a prick EVERYWHERE you go nowadays there are little techno babes in uncomfortable shoes, trying to score E, flashes of bare midriffs revealing discreet little navel rings. The happy shiny kids of tomorrow. Faceless techno music blasting […]

CAPTAIN Winston Scott, pilot astronaut, epitomises the new breed of astronaut now working at Nasa. His resum lists a set of intimidating accomplishments, from a first degree in music to a masters in aeronautical engineering, a career as a navy pilot, and then a mission specialist aboard the Endeavour for a nine-day space flight. He […]

Marion Edmunds TWO former intelligence agents – a man and his wife – who were fired after refusing to take a prescribed oath of loyalty to the 1994 transitional authority, are suing the government for more than a million rands for unfair dismissal. Papers have been filed in the Pretoria Supreme Court by Susan and […]

No Bjork and a lacklustre foreign line-up drove DROR EYAL to the second stage at the year’s biggest concert I WAS converted. I went down to see this over-hyped monument to PC rock, the 5fm Birthday Concert at Kyalami last weekend, plunging myself into an audience of 40 000 odd people and their collective sweat […]

Space is the place: From a locally made satellite to an interview with an American astronaut and a book on the Hubble telescope. Lesley Cowling reports THE object that will be South Africa’s first satellite to circle the earth is, at first sight, unimpressive. It’s a blueish box with a metal ring on one side […]

Telford Vice IN SEARCH OF WILL CARLING: AN EPIC JOURNEY THROUGH AFRICA TO THE RUGBY WORLD CUP by Charles Jacoby (Simon & Schuster, R90) RUGGER-BUGGERS who buy this book before spotting the subtitle may believe they are getting 343 pages of Rugby World Cup 1995 as distilled through the pen of an erudite Englishman. The […]

Glynis O’Hara WHILE prisons may no longer accuse people with artistic ideas of being “pansies”, and open their doors to a range of creativity projects, they most certainly do not want to pay for them. “We’ve been forced to shut down,” says Gary Friedman of Puppets In Prison. “We’ve worked for the past seven months […]

John Hooper in Rome ITALY’S most celebrated dramatist, Dario Fo, has been left partially blind by a stroke, he revealed in an interview published last week. For several months he had also had problems with his speech and memory. In July 1995, Fo called off a tour of Europe. At the time, he was reported […]