Gaye Davis SOUTH Africa’s new status as not only a democracy, but one where women have significant representation, has not come about without cost. The influx of women into Parliament has drained the women’s movement of some of its dynamos. Speaker Frene Ginwala identified the problem in her keynote address to a conference on Gender […]

Provincial governments may be on the verge of bypassing the IBA, reports Justin Pearce Provincial governments, furious at being sidelined by SABC television coverage, are planning to hit back at the Auckland Park monolith. Representatives of eight of the nine provinces met last month in Ulundi to discuss their unanimous concern that the SABC is […]

Ann Eveleth ENGEN’S oil refineries are the biggest air polluters in the Durban South Industrial Basin, a Durban Water and Waste representative Niel MacLeod said this week. He told about 200 delegates at a workshop on pollution problems affecting residents of Austerville, Wentworth, Merebank, Isipingo,Lamontville and Umlazi, that Engen produces nearly 48 percent of sulphur […]

Passing trend, ritual adornment or self-mutilation — whichever way you look at it, body piercing is ‘in’. Malu van Leeuwen investigates IN Tsukamoto’s cult film Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a metal fetishist inserts a large tubular bar of steel into an open, self-inflicted wound in his thigh. We may not have reached this level in […]

A Garankuwa liquor wholesaler is fighting a battle in court with South African Breweries over contaminated quart beer bottles. Pat Sidley reports A FASCINATING tale of bootleggers, shebeens, condoms in beer bottles, monopolies and homelands is unfolding in the Mmabatho Supreme Court as beer giant South African Breweries fights a court case which, if it […]

Foreign affairs’ plans for the allocation of its budget took a bashing from MPs in Parliament, writes Gaye Davis MPs grilled Foreign Affairs Director General Rusty Evans this week, asking why his department’s R1,13-billion budget did not reflect South Africa’s new foreign policy goals. Figures presented by Evans to Parliament’s portfolio committee on foreign affairs […]

CINEMA: Trevor Steele-Taylor WALERIAN BOROWCZYK’S infamous erotic fable The Beast (La Bete), made in 1975, is one of those curiously carnal works the French are so adept at. Echoes of the Marquis de Sade, Georges Bataille and Joris Karl Huysmans rub shoulders with the music of Domenico Scarlatti, the bestiary of Jean de la Fontaine […]

South Africa’s arms industry will be discussed in Parliament next week. Armscor spokesman Krish Naidoo looks at the industry’s options IN the hope of reaping a peace dividend, the form, composition, and even the need for an indigenous arms industry has predictably come under public scrutiny. Some 800 companies make up the defence industry in […]

Marketing Clive Simpkins GOING to the movies has always been a somewhat ritualistic event. Right from my childhood, going to Johannesburg’s Yeoville “bughouse”, as we used to call it, was a great adventure. Buying “coolies” (cool drinks) and noisily wrapped sweets was all part of the entertainment, as was being daring enough to rest your […]