There’s too much theory, too little skill on this year’s Martienssen Prize exhibition, argues IVOR POWELL WHAT is to be said about the Wits University fine arts department’s Martienssen Prize Exhibition, which opened this week at the Gertrude Posel Gallery? Just that the most arresting piece on the exhibition in fact isn’t on it at […]

An agreement by South Africa to store Iranian=20 crude oil has incensed environmental groups and human=20 rights advocates, reports Rehana Rossouw THE oil trade and oil money are probably the dirtiest=20 in the world, and South Africa was soiling its human=20 rights track record and possibly its environment by=20 agreeing to store Iranian oil, say […]

Gaye Davis and Eddie Koch MARIUS SCHOON is to sue former spy Craig Williamson for=20 R1-million in damages arising from the 1984 parcel bomb=20 which killed his wife, Jeanette, and six-year-old=20 daughter Katryn in Angola in 1984. Williamson has said he wants to apply for amnesty=20 before the truth commission. In terms of the act, […]

South Africa has committed itself to an injection of=20 human rights principles into its foreign policy. As one=20 expert argues , there is no simple, mechanistic way to=20 do this. To refuse to have any contact or trade with=20 countries who show disrespect for human rights is to=20 condemn ourselves to a return to international=20 […]

AS the Truth Commission comes into being, it is as well=20 to dispel some of the humbug surrounding it. There are those who argue that this commission will=20 discover that strange phenomenon called The Truth. Even=20 if we were naive enough to believe that truth was=20 something a group of wise people could find in […]

Until now a secret, SA’s classification of potential=20 arms-buying countries reveals 30 blacklisted countries,=20 reports Stefaans Brummer NIGERIA, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen … These are some=20 of the 30-odd countries blacklisted by South Africa’s=20 new human rights-leaning classification of arms client=20 countries. The secret list is published by the Mail Guardian today. The classification is […]

GOLF: Jon Swift THE South African Professional Golf Association (SAPGA) is bidding to include three European Tour tournaments in this year’s event roster. In this, there is potentially a lot of long-term benefit. But there is some less than welcome news in the shorter term. It could be argued that the inclusion of the Lexington […]

The Western Cape has come out tops as South Africa’s most competitive province in a report issued this week on the competitiveness of the nine provinces by the Foundation for Research and Development (FRD). Gauteng ranked second, followed by KwaZulu/Natal, Free State, Eastern Transvaal, North-West, Eastern Cape, Northern Province and Northern Cape. The provinces were […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin FRANCO ZEFFIRELLI’S Sparrow is imitation Luchino Visconti (perhaps a homage to The Leopard) and ersatz James Ivory, in particular A Room with a View, which it resembles on a number of occasions. Sparrow is undoubtedly expensive and opulent, but ultimately it emerges as no more than a dime-a-dozen Zeffirelli film. Here is […]