Gail Smith With everyone clamouring for the attention and income of the youth market (the black is silent), The Kwaito Storm is an event-in-waiting. Set to take place on Saturday night, October 31, at Johannesburg’s Electric Workshop, it promises to bring together some of the hippest, most happening of the blackoisie, kwaito’s latest and greatest, […]

South Africa supports the aims of Jubilee 2000, but it seems we don’t qualify for debt relief. Ann Eveleth reports Each year the South African government spends as much money paying interest on its R338-billion debt as it does on education, but the Department of Finance insists there is no easy way out. Jubilee 2000 […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube Of all the irritating things about SABC TV, I think the one which bothers me the most is its inflexibility – a hangover, like so many aspects of the present service, from the previous policy-makers. SABC3 decided – and please don’t think I’m knocking this decision – that on Saturday […]

as a 23-year-old French man A 13-year-old boy goes missing in San Antonio, Texas. Three years later, he is found, alive, in Spain, with an appalling tale of kidnap and a paedophile ring. His family is overjoyed to have him home safe. But things are not quite as they seem. Nick Davies reports Just more […]

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s prison comrades have been freed. But they are still struggling to come to terms with the horror of ordeal, reports Alex Duval Smith Aa ke, Aa ke Pya Ogoni aa ke Iilee yira na ko Yoo-ue a zia-i Arise, arise, Ogoni people arise We shall no longer allow people to cheat us – […]

Justin Arenstein Mpumalanga’s government battened down the hatches this week and refused to release any information about its dealings with a shadowy business network reported to be channelling funds into the African National Congress’s 1999 election coffers. The network was reportedly set up in 1996 under the control of three holding companies and relied heavily […]

Shirley Kossick OKAVANGO GODS by Anthony Fleischer (David Philip) CHILDISH THINGS by Marita van der Vyver, translated by Madeleine van Biljon (Penguin) In Okavango Gods, Anthony Fleischer tells the story of Pula Barotse, a Hambukushu youth who straddles the divide between Western modernity and the ancient beliefs and myths of his own “people of the […]

Robert Kirby A FIELD GUIDE TO WILD FLOWERS OF KWAZULU-NATAL AND THE EASTERN REGION by Elsa Pooley (Natal Flora Publications Trust) Let me begin by declaring a thoroughly personal interest. I have known Elsa Pooley for many years. She and her family have been close friends of mine since we first met in 1960s. Her […]

Review of the week Brenda Atkinson The worldly cynicism of student advertising work is wonderful for its predictability and passion, depressing for the inevitable brevity of its life-span. As such, this year’s AAA School of Advertising/Oxygen Award exhibition was a vaguely poignant affair that made me wonder just what happens to youthful irony when it […]

For a long time all Bloemfontein could offer was lots of vleis, rugby and the sound of veldskoene on its pristine pavements . Being black was no fun in this town in the province where you weren’t allowed to take a leak. But Mangaung, as it was called before the right-wing trekked in, is losing […]