William Pretorius ALLOW children to make their own films and you won’t get Mary Poppins, as producer Brent Quinn discovered when he workshopped scripts with groups of children from Hillbrow, Lenasia, Eldorado Park and Soweto. The results form the project Developing Visions, part of the South African International Film Festival. The children were chosen from […]

Farouk Chotia ZULU king Goodwill Zwelethini has spurned Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s efforts at reconciliation. Speaking to about 10 000 people in kwaMashu last Sunday, Buthelezi said he had twice sent IFP deputy secretary general Mandla Zakhele “MZ” Khumalo (the sacrificial lamb for the Inkathagate scandal) to the monarch, offering two head of […]

Trevor Steele Taylor EMINENT French documentary filmmaker Marcel Ophuls, renowned not only for his extraordinary exposes of Nazi war crimes but also for his volatile lawsuits against producers, has withdrawn from the South African International Film Festival. Ophuls, who was due to arrive yesterday for the opening of the festival, cancelled his visit at the […]

# RENE MCLEAN: IN AFRICAN EYES (Triloka Records) Rene McLean is the very talented son of Jackie McLean, the American sax player of the bebop era who is still blowing up a storm. McLean, who plays flute and all the saxes, was taught by his father, and mixed with and was influenced by such luminaries […]

The seemingly impregnable infrastructure of the SABC is under attack — and it’s crumbling. Mark Gevisser reports on changes at Auckland Park AN SABC journalist, bleary-eyed from one too many late- night meetings of her transformation committee, looks up from the stack of organograms scattered around her: “Yes,” she says wearily, “things are changing here. […]

ON the eve of the launch of Weekly Mail & Guardian’s new supplement on nature tourism, environmental editor Eddie Koch has won a special merit award for his coverage. Koch won the award at this week’s SAB Environmental Journalists of the Year Award for his “consistently high standard and commitment to stimulating public interest and […]

RUGBY: Jon Swift IN the height of Cup final fervour, it would be well not to forget that this country is only a week away from the first test against Marcelo Loffreda’s Pumas. It would be foolish, considering the problems which currently face national coach Kitch Christie, to dismiss the tourists on the basis of […]

Gwen Ansell pays tribute to late great South African percussionist Makhaya Mahlangu MAKHAYA MAHLANGU is no more. The 42-year-old percussionist died in his sleep in the early hours of Monday morning. “Makhaya was a person who’d gone through many things in his life: poverty, oppression from the system. Yet he became one of the greats […]

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has decided that it will not speak to the Weekly Mail & Guardian until its concerns about our coverage of the federation are addressed. Transparency, it appears, is for everyone in the new South Africa except the labour movement. Coupled with the embargo was an instruction to the […]

Instead of depending on the government for a roof over their heads, a group of homeless women from Khayelitsha has started an innovative savings scheme. Justin Pearce reports FOR the women of the Victoria Mxenge Savings Scheme, development starts with coins in a jam jar under the bed. On Saturday, the group of 200 homeless […]