Leonard Doyle John Sweeney and Peter Beaumont Algeria is the winner of an alternative world cup – for the worst abuser of human rights. The garland of dishonour emerges from findings in The Observer’s Human Rights Index, launched to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With the backing of a […]
Stephen Bierley Tennis The warning from Russia’s Yevgeny Kafelnikov is brutally blunt: “Tennis has a big problem and is slowly going downhill. We definitely need to make some changes.” Nobody in their right mind would ever pretend that tennis, an essentially middle- class game, could ever rival football or any other of the world’s major […]
Mercedes Sayagues A SECOND LOOK The news of Alioune Blondin Beye’s death in a plane crash found me writing in my mind an angry letter to the Mail & Guardian, prompted by its latest stories on Angola. My anger was not about the stories nor directed to Beye (although nothing bad is said about the […]
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg Pieter Toerien’s Alhambra theatre is the perfect setting for a South African staging of Alan Ayckbourne’s classic Absurd Person Singular. It’s a trademark Ayckbourne nudge-nudge wink-wink; “oh-don’t-worry- about-Tom-he’s-out-there-playing-with-Dick kind of farce”, and the three couples that inhabit the three kitchens during three Christmas eve parties in the play are […]
President Nelson Mandela’s comments at the opening of the South African Communist Party conference that the growth, economic and redistribution (Gear) stratety is the fundamental policy of the African National Congress and that he will brook no opposition to it is just the latest sign of the ANC’s irritation at public criticism from its own […]
Swapna Prabhakaran A quiet and mostly unseen battle has been raging for months around KwaZulu-Natal’s waste dumps. Two waste dumps were officially closed down last year and another collapsed in a disaster that left the province with a hazardous waste-disposal crisis. The chaos began after floods and mudslides last September wreaked havoc with the province’s […]
leaders SACP Gauteng: RIGHT TO REPLY Sechaba ka’Nkosi’s article, “SACP split over who will lead” (June 19 to 25) uses the politburo meeting held on June 16 as a basis for so-called disunity. From our understanding of South African Communist Party procedures, nominations start at branch level, then go to districts and are finalised at […]
Chris Roper On stage in Cape Town The play Sadako is described as “moving and uplifting” in all the press mentions, and you tend to forget what these clichs really mean until you see them expressed around you. When the lights go up at the end of the play, the man next to me is […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby What do you say about South Africa 96, Wales 13? It’s difficult to get a true sense of perspective when one team has scored 15 tries and yet is disappointed about not cracking the 100 barrier. Perspective comes with distance and on Saturday I was not at Loftus Versfeld, but at the […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi and Rehad Desai The gauntlet thrown down to the South African Communist Party on Wednesday by President Nelson Mandela could be the final bell for the SACP in its battle to re-establish itself as an effective political force on the South African landscape. Mandela’s tough speech to delegates at the SACP’s 10th national […]