We’re a straightforward race, says Maori actress Rena Owen of her hard-hitting role in Once Were Warriors. She took time off to sip wine beneath Table Mountain with William Pretorius CAPE TOWN isn’t an ideal place for an interview. One would rather sip wine, look at Table Mountain and chat, especially as it’s Maori actress […]

THEATRE: Neville Josie A LARGE, rubbery balloon hovers over the performance space. It could be construed as a safe sex metaphor, if you’re into that kind of thing. Given the repressive times in which he lived, William Shakespeare was circumspect about most things, but not about sex. Take A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Plunging into his […]

Adriaan Vlok, former minister of law and order, pays tribute to an old foe I WANT to express my sincere condolence to the Slovo family and friends. He was a prominent, valuable and influential member of the ANC/South African Communist Party and he will be sorely missed by them. From an ideological point of view, […]

Native tongue Bafana Khumalo IT’S gone. It’s no more. The doors are boarded up and all the windows covered by huge steel shutters. There is silence. This is a sad day for me and I hope that my sadness makes me human in your eyes. The source of my sorrow is the demise of a […]

Shadley Nash Two youths from Sterkstroom are in hospital with bullet wounds after an irate resident shot them for stealing fruit from the trees in his yard. The bullet fired by the unnamed resident first passed through 14-year-old Patrick Zolani before lodging in the body of his friend, Willem Pretorius, also 14. Police said a […]

Being an ambassador now involves more than just holding one’s drink and making social chit chat, so perhaps we aught to select with more care, argues Peter Vale THERE has to be a better way to pick our ambassadors. Aside from the fumble over Allan Boesak, in the past month there have been two dropped […]

The legal profession, viewed with scepticism by the public, is in need of transformation, reports Dennis Davis WHILE 1994 brought about a legal revolution, the legal profession showed itself ill-prepared for these momentous changes. By the end of the year, numerous constitutional judgments had been delivered by the supreme court and, with few exceptions, the […]

Joe Modise’s attempt to gain cabinet approval for four new corvettes will not be plain sailing, reports Stefaans Brummer DEFENCE Minister Joe Modise is experiencing opposition from the ranks of ANC cabinet colleagues in his quest to buy the navy four new patrol corvettes — at a cost roughly equal to the R2,5-billion Reconstruction and […]

A unique scheme allows workers to become co-owners of the farm they once only laboured on, reports Gaye Davis LIKE his father before him, Herklaas Botha (26) started working the land just as soon as he was old enough. But it was always someone else’s land. When he arrived at Whitehall Farm, near Grabouw, six […]