With two dance movies coming out in October, we quiz you on movies about dancing (musicals don’t count) …
It appears that the knight in shining armour for the arts needs to be reminded that the power to appoint, to remove, to suspend, to do something at the NAC, resides with him, comments Mike van Graan.
South Africa must speedily address inequitable land ownership patterns to avoid Zimbabwe-style farm invasions, the International Crisis Group (ICG) has warned. The ICG, which deals with conflicts around the globe, said South Africa faced rising tension over land and should act quickly to avert a grabbing of farms.
Fifteen cats, 11 dogs, a pony and a llama live here, but this is no shelter, kennel or hobby farm. The 770-square-metre ranch on the sprawling campus of Texas A&M University is an orphanage of sorts, a place for pets whose owners have died. Its caretaker, one of the country’s top veterinary medicine schools, runs the place like a home, just what the pets’ owners wanted.
Free State local government councillors have had to face a dressing down by President Thabo Mbeki and the Free State minister for local government, William Kotsoane, after violent community protests against a lack of services. The popular uprisings started in Ntabazwe township, outside of Harrismith, where police killed a youth, Teboho Mkhonza, after residents demonstrated on the N3.
Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour said this week he is so ”gatvol” with corrupt warders who let prisoners escape that he will henceforth disregard procedures, suspend them without pay and then fire them. ”They can waste as much money as they want on Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration,” he said. ”At the end of the day, they will be the ones left without assets, not me.”
A day before the third anniversary of 9/11, Cape radio listeners were told that Jews are murderers of babies and children as well as conspirators who want to control the world. This week the radio station both broadcast and put on its website an apology to the Jewish community, after the M&G e-mailed questions to the station about the show. But a Jewish community leader says the apology is ”not good enough”.
The wheels of justice are grinding too slowly for the liking of a Johannesburg civil engineering company which has accused the Gauteng Department of Public Works and Transport of discriminating against black firms. Manong and Associates has written a letter to the Magistrate’s Commission expressing its unhappiness with the slowness of the judicial process.
”I have read that this and the other person is an intellectual. I too want to be an intellectual,” wrote Mr X to the Mail & Guardian some years ago. All communists and black consciousness proponents consider themselves intellectuals. It simply wouldn’t feel right if the average capitalist tagged himself as such. One has to be at least a little socially disgruntled to qualify.
For his new thriller <i>Collateral</i>, starring Tom Cruise, the director Michael Mann has ditched the first two acts — and jumped straight in at the denouement. He tells Dan Glaister why.