Thebe Investment’s latest venture is into the entertainment business, reports Reg Rumney THE formation of a joint venture between cinema chain Ster-Kinekor and Moribo Investments, the subsidiary of ANC-linked Thebe Investments specialising in sport, entertainment and sporting ventures, aims to bring cinemas to black areas. It kicked off with the opening of a cinema in […]

Two transvestites, a stripper and a urologist’s secretary were interviewed live on stage last week. Michael Dresden was there CHARLES J FOURIE, the award-winning Afrikaans fringe-close-to-centre playwright and sometime director, is the ringleader of an extraordinary new series of shows at Cape Town’s Long Street Theatre. The format is a live interview, on stage, and […]

Drew Forrest THE number of shack dwellers in the Johannesburg municipal area has trebled in the past year, and the first shacks are starting to rise on golfcourses and parkland in the city. A year ago, according to Johannesburg’s director of urbanisation, Cedric de Beer, there were 2 000 shacks in the city housing 8 […]

Farouk Chothia THE Zulu prince who sparred publicly with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi on Sunday night’s Agenda television programme charged this week that the minister of Home Affairs has his own secret agenda: he wants to be king of the seven-million-strong Zulu nation. In his first in-depth interview since Buthelezi interrupted his appearance on the SABC, […]

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not only for his extraordinary exposes of Nazi war crimes but also for his volatile lawsuits against producers, has withdrawn from the South African International Film Festival.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 […]