Mark Behr ‘I BOUGHT this huge tree to plant by the front wall,” a colleague says with a laugh: “I couldn’t get the hole deep enough so I walked across the road to where that white beggar always hangs around at the supermarket. I offered him R20 to dig the hole. He agreed and I […]
CINEMA Reviewed by: Derek Malcolm FEW opening films at the London Film Festival have caused such consternation as Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days. Yet, on the evidence of this futuristic epic (as well as Blue Steel and the highly successful Point Break), Bigelow is clearly one of the most proficient practitioners of pyrotechnical in-your-face film-making working […]
Constitutional law expert Dennis Davis takes a look at the pros and cons — and concludes that the new Constitution does us proud AT first blush, the Constitution of 1996 looks decidedly similar in structure and content to the interim Constitution which was cobbled together under the pressure of the Kempton Park negotiations. The significance […]
The Constitution has become a yardstick of the success and strength of the political parties … Marion Edmunds reports.
Eddie Koch THE lesson from this week’s truth commission hearings in Durban is that the effects of the organisation’s work can never be easily predicted. Instead of hearing evidence from mainly ANC- aligned victims — as was widely expected because of an Inkatha boycott — the commission ended up strengthening its non- partisan image and […]
Uganda’s president is waging an election campaign based not on economic prosperity and greater freedom, but on the country’s bloody past, writes Chris McGreal in Kampala YOWERI MUSEVENI, unlike most African presidents, has a record to run on. Campaigning for this week’s presidential election, Uganda’s leader could point to economic prosperity, greater social freedoms and, […]
Marion Edmunds THE most coveted documentation at Parliament this week was not the latest draft of the Constitution, but an invitation to the party to end all parties, the big bash to end it all held on Wednesday night at Fernwood, the Parliamentary Estate in Bishops Court. In the last late nights of the constitution- […]
Election workers fear that the postponement of the KwaZulu-Natal elections is a recipe for chaos, writes Ann Eveleth KWAZULU-NATAL’S elections are still in jeopardy despite a unanimous central government decision this week postponing the polls by one month. Inkatha Freedom Party local government MEC Peter Miller’s warning the delay would create enormous logistical problems was […]
An historic agreement between the government and teachers’ unions will affect the jobs of thousands of teachers, reports Rehana Rossouw A GROUP of negotiators has finalised the route to achieving equality in education and breaking down apartheid’s legacy of unequal funding for different races. Unequal spending will be erased by the year 2000, following an […]
‘A BIRTH certificate” for the new South Africa was the way Cyril Ramaphosa characterised the final Constitution when it was approved this week. And, as is the custom at times of birth, the parents put aside any misgivings about the future to celebrate the occasion. Amid all the ceremony, jubilation and celebrations there were grounds […]