Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON We should all be grateful to Kader Asmal for giving a whole new meaning to the term Moral Rearmament. Spawned in the late 1930s, the original Moral Rearmament movement advocated absolute morality, private or public. Which is more or less what Asmal likes to advocate as the precept for quite a […]
The racist reporter Why should we be educating an illegal immigrant and providing him with a job, you racist idiots (“Man dies after four days in waiting room”, April 3 to 8). He belonged to another country, illegally entered ours, turned to crime and got what he deserved when he was shot by the police. […]
Swapna Prabhakaran: Movie of the week In Shooting Fish, a cheeky British version of the American Dream, Dylan (Dan Futterman) and Jez (Stuart Townsend) are down-but-not-out unemployed twentysomethings who dream of owning a mansion and a million pounds each. In the meanwhile, they live in squalor inside a huge old gas tank, furnished with various […]
Ann Eveleth United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa said this week he would ask Judge Willem Heath’s corruption watchdog to probe the involvement of close associates of Thabo Mbeki in the privatisation of tourism parastatal Aventura. Holomisa said Deputy President Mbeki and his entire office “should have recused itself” from a Cabinet committee set up […]
Although most smaller local enterprises are in a state of denial about the year 2000 computer glitch, a recent survey reveals they are at the highest risk, writes David Shapshak Local government structures together with small and medium businesses have emerged as high-risk areas most likely to be affected by the year 2 000 computer […]
Adam Haupt The South African Screenwriters’ Laboratory (Scrawl) is one of those laboratories which South Africa’s Oh Schucks … society would never have imagined possible during the crocodile years. In fact, many film makers (and those trying to break into the predominantly white male industry) still whinge quite tearfully that the future of filmmaking is […]
Krisjan Lemmer Last week Die Burger ran a sanctimonious article chiding two eminent neurologists for disclosing details of former president PW Botha’s stroke in his spat with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The crime the medics commited: disclosing to the world, without asking Botha’s permission, that the old crocodile had probably become mentally unstable as […]
Anthony Egan MY WINDS OF CHANGE by Wilhelm Verwoerd (Ravan, R59,95) If ever a country deserved a “paradox” theory of history, it is South Africa. Where else would one find a situation where today the grandson of HF Verwoerd, the grand architect of modern apartheid, is a member of the African National Congress, the movement […]
Victoria Brittain The fourth anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda will be marked this week at Bisesero, where new evidence shows Tutsi survivors fought hand-to-hand battles against Hutu extremists led by local officials and businesspeople for 10 weeks. The survivors’ testimony also reveals how French soldiers drove away, leaving wounded and starving Tutsis at the […]
David Coldwell Have you ever wondered if the labourer mowing your lawn or the cleaner of your office might have been an engineer, a scientist or a successful business person had they had access to a good education? The question may be a little cliched and the same could certainly be asked in New York […]