Melvyn Minnaar LIFESTYLE What becomes a legend most? In South African wine the compelling answer would be: keeping tradition on the roll. This weekend’s Nederburg Auction 2000, the 26th annual sale of “rare Cape wines” in Paarl, sports a zingy new logo. In place of the previous rather drab landbouskou design, a golden globe backs […]
A Sandton City salons opens its doors once a week to streetgirls for a free hair style – and a dose of self-esteem Boetie Damane The salon Hair Images attracts a celebrity clientele – stars like Yvonne Chaka-Chaka, Dennis “Chesa Mpama” Lota of Orlando Pirates, and Boom Shaka’s Lebo. On Tuesdays, sitting alongside such clients […]
Steven Friedman WORM’S EYE VIEW The “meaningless” may mean more than we think. One example may be parliamentary questions. The African National Congress wants to re-engineer them by allocating them to parties according to their strength. And it has scrapped “interpellations” in which MPs can initiate debates with ministers. This has drawn predictable reaction from […]
Fiona Macleod Ronnie Kasrils, former Umkhonto weSizwe head of military intelligence and democratic South Africa’s first deputy defence minister, gets to be the demolition man again when he blows a giant concrete overflow tower to smithereens. In his present role as Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry, Kasrils is planning to push the button that […]
Denzel Washington’s latest role, in The Hurricane, adds to a body of work that bears elegant testament to the black American experience Elvis Mitchell For a long time, Denzel Washington made a career out of suffusing old-school white liberal movies with a dizzying rush of flesh and blood. Take the well-meaning Cry Freedom in 1987 […]
David Moore A SECOND LOOK One of the things that makes the tragic events to South Africa’s north almost farcical is the historical amnesia of many of the commentators. How could the promoters of an “African renaissance” (is Andrew Young, former mayor of Atlanta, really one of them?) have ever held Robert Mugabe up as […]
NET WATCH The Salon free software book project is an innovative open-source publishing project about free software. Author Andrew Leonard is writing the as-yet-untitled book and posting bits online as soon as he can, while calling on the collective wisdom of the Net to keep him honest. “We’re publishing the book as a work in […]
A team of researchers is close to developing a drug that might help people with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Anthea Garman Human beings will live longer in the 21st century. But the bad news is that they will suffer more from brain denegeration diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. But, says Oxford University neuro- pharmacologist Susan […]
Iden Wetherell Zimbabwe’s headlong descent in to anarchy was given a further shove this week by President Robert Mugabe’s renewed support for land invasions and the refusal of police to rescue farmers from violent mobs of ruling Zanu-PF party supporters. The police said they didn’t have sufficient vehicles or fuel to intervene but, in reality, […]
working Connie Selebogo and Nadine Hutton Past grimy braziers belching gray smoke, a gust of wind reveals a group of women in the technicolor splendor of their swibelana, or traditional Shangaan dress. Cocooned in smoke, they are still vabombile – dressed to kill. This is no fashion show. It’s Johannesburg at 7am, and nestled between […]