Anna Tack Nothing is for free, or so the trusim goes. But in these days of high-tech toys like music samplers and computer scanners seamlessly colonising everyone else’s ideas through a superimposition here or a misrepresentation there, the question of who owns what has assumed paramount importance worldwide. And on the cyber highway the issue […]
Nick Cumming-Bruce in Bangkok The skyscrapers on Bangkok’s skyline, once a sign of Thailand’s place at the centre of Asia’s boom, are now conspicuous symbols of a shocking and, for investors, unnerving bust. Typical is the prestige office block overlooking the manicured surroundings of the Bangkok sports club but abandoned, half-built, by a now penniless […]
Kevin Toolis went to Namibia in 1987, an idealistic rookie journalist eager to join the struggle against apartheid. He was deported. Ten years later he returned We were driving south along the thin, two- lane road that runs through Ovamboland, the former war zone in northern Namibia, when we saw something ahead shimmering like a […]
Dror Eyal: The festival circuit It would be easy to dismiss Oppikoppi as the valley of drunken louts; to concentrate on an estranged man committing suicide; on the drunkenness, debauchery and the sexual harassment. But in any society of 15 000 odd people, including those whosnuck in under duvets in the boot, there will be […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) wants to target certain companies for a pilot project where union officials would sit on the board to allow co- determination and decision-making. The suggestion is made in the report by the September Commission, appointed to consider new strategies for the union movement. Cosatu says […]
THURSDAY, 5.30PM AUDITOR-General Henri Kluever on Thursday responded to allegations by Mineral and Energy Affairs Minister Penuell Maduna that he had dishonestly accounted for R170-million missing from the Strategic Fuel Fund by saying his office’s handling of the SFF accounts was honest and above board. “I have been in the civil service all my life […]
Francis Murape Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s recent land offer to ex-combatants may be a little too late. The liberation war veterans’ protests have assumed, not only anti- corruption, but anti-government overtones as well. About 500 of the former fighters, demanding payments from the corruption-riddled War Victims Compensation Fund, on Monday drowned Mugabe’s speech at the […]
The good ship SS Graigaur slipped its moorings and set sail from the State Theatre last week, carrying on board a youthful, starry-eyed writer called Athol fugard, en route to a date with artistic destiny. Also on board, Jennifer Steyn, as his young mother-cum-muse, and Owen Sejake as the burly Kenyan donkeyman. The autobiographical voyage […]
jailed Gaye Davis and Gustav Thiel Three-year old Patronda Kelebogile Morwe was found dead in a zinc bath in her home in Ramatlabama Village near Mafikeng in the North West Province this month. She had been raped and strangled. A boy aged 13 has been arrested. A fortnight ago on the Cape Flats in Cape […]
Robert Kirby : Loose cannon The residual loyalty the British royal family continues to inspire – even at this far end of their old Empire – is often quite bewildering. One would have thought that, by the end of the 20th century, the stubborn parasitical existence of any royal houses anywhere would be tolerated only […]