DEREK MALCOLM meets Emir Kusturica, the Bosnian director, whose film Underground opens in SA this week HE looks like a veteran rock star, tall and handsome if slightly dishevelled from too much touring. But Emir Kusturica, who hails from Sarajevo, is a film-maker without a rock star’s vanity. He speaks quietly and with conviction off […]

A partnership between government and private sector has been formed to tackle development backlogs, writes Lynda Loxton Government and the private sector are investigating innovative financing packages to foot the estimated R170-billion to R230- billion bill to tackle infrastructure backlogs throughout the country. They met behind closed doors in Cape Town last week to examine […]

Rehana Rossouw President Nelson Mandela spent a windy, hot hour at the annual choir competition at the Athlone Stadium in Cape Town at the weekend, promising coloured voters a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow nation. It was the second time this year he has taken time out of his hectic schedule […]

The Home Affairs Department plans to charge exorbitant fees for permanent residence, work permit and visa applications, reports Marion Edmunds All visitors to South Africa are going to have to pay up as the Department of Home Affairs is poised to charge for visas. And would-be permanent residents are in for a bigger shock — […]

different views Simon Ndebele ‘That’s where the school used to be”, says Simon Ndebele, pointing to a piece of veld dotted with fragments of rubble. “My parents helped build it in 1946, and it became a wonderful place of learning for the Tswana aristocracy. By 1956, with the help of the missionaries, we had a […]

Arts and Culture Minister Ben Ngubane responds to allegations in last week’s M&G that he knew about a secret ‘slush fund’ Hazel Friedman’s article, “How much did Ngubane know about secret funds?” (M&G March 29 to April 3) raises two issues of concern regarding my relations with Pact (Performing Arts Council of Transvaal). The first […]

Lucienne Fild in Windhoek FOLLOWING weeks of acrimonious debate, the controversial book about Swapo’s abuse of detainees, German clergyman Siegfried Groth’s Namibia: The Wall of Silence, was released at the weekend. The book’s revelations have threatened Namibia’s reconciliation process and calls have been made for a South African- style truth commission. Members of the public […]

BALLET: Stanley Peskin ‘Fairy lands are fearsome too.” This line by Salman Rushdie seems to me to summarise the especial attraction that Swan Lake continues to exert after more than a hundred years in the ballet repertoire. In this great work, classical purity of line is transfigured into a means of passionate inventiveness and expression. […]

Labour’s controversial proposals have pitted it against business, write Jacquie Golding- Duffy and Madeleine Wackernagel Labour and business were in direct conflict this week with the release of labour’s proposals on growth, development and job creation. The document says “hard choices” have to be made by the economic elite if social equity is to be […]

Eddie Koch The Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week faced challenges on three fronts just as it was gearing up to hear applications for amnesty later this month from agents who committed human rights abuses in the apartheid era. Firstly, the families of four murdered activists announced they will launch a Constitutional Court application for […]