Gaye Davis in parliament THE huge task of writing the country’s new constitution began in earnest this week as political parties squared up against each other in sometimes acrimonious debate, spelling out their vision for the document which will become the supreme law of the land. Deputy President Thabo Mbeki rejected the notion of continued […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin IN Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption, the penetentiary of that name is used metaphorically to claim that imprisonment can be a state of mind. Charged with a double murder of which he is innocent, Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) spends 19 years in prison. There, reduced to the number 37297, he comes to […]

Charity tournament: It’s for a good cause but the four teams won’t be handing out favours on Saturday SOCCER: Nelson Rashavha THE 1995 soccer season kicks off in earnest on Saturday, and as usual the Iwisa Charity Spectacular should produce controversies, hype, rousing football, plenty of ball skills and, hopefully, lots of goals for spectators […]

Mark Gevisser and Stefaans Brummer AS acting Agenda head Nico van Burick’s career hangs in the balance following Weekly Mail & Guardian disclosures about his military past. It has emerged that the citizen force unit under his command, Saltie, was involved in “dirty tricks” propoganda. Van Burick responded to the disclosure that he headed Saltie […]

Can President Nelson Mandela’s visit to India free South Africa’s international personality from the stranglehold of the past? asks Peter Vale UNTIL now, the foreign policy of the new South Africa has reflected, more than anything else, apartheid’s authoritarianism. How else is one to understand the behaviour of the Department of Foreign Affairs which tried […]

Analysts set to work assessing whether this week’s 400- point drop heralds the beginning of a major slide, reports Jacques Magliolo Industrial bears were out in force this week at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange after the market fell by 400 points in two days. Screams of ”Sell” reverberated around the corridors of that esteemed establishment, […]

Stefaans Brummer FORMER superspy Craig William-son — the one former agent that knows more than most about the ”dirty tricks” of his apartheid bosses — this week was at loggerheads with Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister Pik Botha and other National Party politicians over their handling of the police indemnities saga. Williams warned NP politicians […]

Jan Taljaard in Petoria ‘AND this,” shrilled the corporal, the fierce pitch of her voice asserting itself as part of an armoury of authority, ”… this is the breech block! What do we call it?” ”The breech block …” 30-odd voices mumbled in hesitant reply. ”I shout at you, therefore you shout at me! What […]

Eddie Koch RITUAL murder and witchcraft cases are on the increase in rural and urban townships of the Transvaal. In the latest incident, a local radio station reports that a young woman was abducted by a gang of ”cannibals”, kept as a sex-slave in an underground cavern near Katlehong and forced to eat the body […]

CINEMA: Digby Ricci WITH all due respect to devotees of horror fiction and over-ingenious theorists, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is an intermittently profound potboiler, not a literary masterpiece. It staggers beneath the weight of tedious digressions (most notably, the absurd saga of the ”sweet Arabian”, Safie), ponderous moralising, and a host of improbabilities excessive even for […]