Jaspreet Kindra ‘I have to confront governments,” said Mary Robinson, the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, in a matter-of-fact tone. She was responding to the fact that she had ruffled the feathers of quite a few governments with her approach to the advocacy of human rights. Whether questioning the legality of Nato’s bombing of […]
Matthew Krouse CD OFTHEWEEK Evaluating the quality of foreign music is a tough task. If you don’t know anything about Japanese music, for example, and you get to hear it, how do you know whether you’re in the presence of brilliance or mediocrity? Especially since Japanese vocal music, in particular, is full of strained notes […]
Ebrahim Harvey left field Are we beginning to see the emergence of a sinister, faceless and cowardly anti-democratic political reaction in our country? If recent death threats against Patricia de Lille, Judge Willem Heath and staff of e.tv arising out of the controversial arms deal are anything to go by, we do, indeed, face something […]
whipping boy It is estimated that about 5% of people who regularly bet on racehorses make a profit which means it is possible! The bad news is that it is not easy. It requires the ability to perform long hours of hard, meticulous work, an analytical mind, iron discipline and patience. The gambling industry depends […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION How refreshing to watch a television documentary that leaves you with a feeling of hope; in this case that the excesses of human craving can be met without permanent loss to the natural world. Sea horses have long been under siege and their numbers have become dangerously low. In this wise these […]
#David McKay Brian Gilbertson, chair of Billiton, collects clocks. Isn’t that odd as well as intriguing? Odd because Gilbertson is renowned in mining circles for the more outward shows of his material success: the ostentatious commuting to and from his Johannesburg office by helicopter, the Porsche apparently permanently on display in an underground bay at […]
THE people of the remote Richtersveld area near the Namibian border have lost the first round of their long legal battle against the state diamond company Alexkor to reclaim their land. The people of Richtersveld instituted an action in the Land Claims Court against Alexkor and the government in terms of the Restitution of Land […]
Howard Barrell The government plans to set up a White House-style presidential press corps to improve dramatically communications with the media and the South African public, President Thabo Mbeki announced this week. Mbeki said that he and the government were treating as a matter of urgency an improvement in the flow of information and perspectives […]
Life has not been all rosy for the decade-old sector, which boasts about 80 stations on air Thebe Mabanga and Jubie Matlou ‘There are many of us [refugees] living in the township. I feel that I am part of the community. For instance, more than 500 people turned up at my wedding in Nyanga township, […]
THE European Union says the presidential poll that returned Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni to power this month took place “normally”, but acknowledged reports of bad practice. Sweden, currently chairing the EU, said the community hailed “the efforts made by a national group of Ugandan associations which monitored the vote.? The Union, however, “is not unaware that […]
Bruce Whitfield Transport consulting firm Terrafin is probably going to have to negotiate its way out of an acquisition it made in 1999 if it’s to have any hope of restoring investor confidence. The company has come under renewed pressure this year following negative media reports about its empowerment strategy and its scheme to enable […]
After 10 Old Trafford years, the winger tells Daniel Taylor that his best is yet to come Ryan Giggs has a contract worth millions of pounds binding him to Manchester United, but he can still remember the days when the club that is now the richest in the world would not even give him a […]
Serjeant at the Bar Human Rights Day is a cause for considerable satisfaction among all South Africans. Forty-one years ago the massacre at Sharpeville occurred because we were governed by a system that preferred to kill opponents rather than permit dissent. The significance of Human Rights Day is that it personifies our change from a […]
Andy Capostagno rugby There are a number of truisms that are regularly trotted out when the Super 12 is in progress. There is no such thing as an easy game, beware the team that can win away from home, it’s about peaking in May and not in March, don’t get carried away with home wins. […]
BENIN?S convoluted and long-running polls finally veer to an end on Thursday with a second-round runoff pitting President Mathieu Kerekou against low-profile candidate Bruno Amoussou. Some three million voters are eligible to cast their ballot in the presidential elections, which have been marred by withdrawals of two prominent candidates who trailed Kerekou in the first […]
Peter Robinson cricket At least one school of thought about Test cricket holds that the only way to go about the business is to win your home series and cross your fingers and hope not to be beaten when you travel abroad. This view is not so much defeatist as pragmatic. Different conditions, different food, […]
The failure of the Proteas’ lower order is a worry despite the second-Test victory John Young The traditional virtues of South African cricket pulled the coals out of the fire in Port of Spain again and ignited the Proteas’ hopes of joining a very exclusive group of cricketers to win a Test series in the […]
Two leading congressional inquisitors into former US president Bill Clinton’s pardon of sanctions-buster Marc Rich also worked against the embargo Josey Ballenger The role played by fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich in supplying oil to South Africa’s apartheid government, violating international sanctions, has been buried in the furore over the pardon he was granted in […]
Deon Potgieter boxing Dingaan Thobela may find himself in the ring in the early hours of the morning of April 22 again contesting the World Boxing Council (WBC) super-middleweight world title he was robbed of in Canada in December. Whether he faces Glen “Crybaby” Catley or Eric Lucas, Thobela will steal the spotlight from the […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo badminton One of South Africa’s Cinderella sports, badminton, received a boost this week when Morten Frost, the most-capped Danish badminton player, was appointed director of performance and national team coach. Frost represented Denmark 78 times and spent 12 years in the top three men’s single international rankings, with seven years as the undisputed […]
Roshila Pillay The government has yet to formulate and implement legislation to prevent the trafficking of women and children, despite being a signatory to a United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, which includes a protocol on trafficking in people. South Africa first ratified a UN convention in trafficking and prostitution in 1951. This week […]
Neal Collins soccer In London, where snow is falling to mark the start of spring, English soccer fans are forced to migrate even further north, into the barren tundra region of Merseyside to keep track of their Holy Grail: the World Cup. Last seen a millennium ago (AD 1966 to be precise), they have been […]
Belinda Beresford The true HIV infection rate may be closer to one in eight South Africans, rather than the one in nine suggested by a government study released this week. Using statistical models from the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA), researchers have estimated that about 5,3- to 5,4-million people in South Africa are carrying […]
Fiona Macleod Tribal chiefs in charge of a private game reserve in northern KwaZulu-Natal are determined to save Sahib, the mighty African elephant bull stranded in exile in a German circus. The chiefs came forward this week to offer Sahib sanctuary in their community-run reserve, after Northern Province conservation officials rejected the Mayibuye Sahib project […]
Alex Sudheim fine art Trevor Makhoba is no stranger to controversy. He has an uncanny knack for disinterring some of the more uncomfortable impulses squirming beneath South African society’s skin. This is all over his show Rebound, currently at Durban’s NSA Gallery. Like a surgeon cutting into flesh to remove a subcutaneous cyst or a […]
Some walked a few paces and broke into a sprint, some ran all the way, but most devotees made it through the fire-walking ritual, reports Gavin Foster It’s a grey, drizzly day, but the coals are pumping out the heat and the crowd is restless. A rhythmic drumming keeps people praying and waiting their turn […]
Steven Friedman Second look All those who matter in our society are eager that we become “world class” in many things. Encouraging people to serve society without profit is not one of them. While we battle to outdo the world in business, sport or Constitution-making, in offering incentives for giving to non-profit organisations we lag […]
Zo Wicomb’s new novel will be launched this week. She spoke to Jane Rosenthal David’s Story (Kwela), the new novel by South African-born Zo Wicomb her first fiction since her acclaimed story sequence You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987) has been well worth waiting for. It began as a conventional novel on the […]
Bryan Rostron The devil continues to have a fine run in South Africa. Hansie Cronje, by his own admission, accepted Satan’s silver. When that cheesy old horror film The Exorcist was recently rereleased, earnest churchmen begged us not to watch in case we were lured by the celluloid wiles of Beelzebub. Two weeks ago in […]
Maggie Davey Outland by Roger Ballen (Phaidon) Roger Ballen’s new book of photographs has been published by the venerable British art publishers, Phaidon Press. Roger Ballen recently sold a second batch of photographs to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Roger Ballen sold precisely one picture in South Africa in his nearly […]
The company’s appointment of a state watchdog as a sightholder has created a conflict of interest Mungo Soggot The man appointed by the state to advise on whether diamond producers should be exempted from paying export tax has been made a sightholder by the diamond giant De Beers. Being a sightholder means that MacDonald Temane, […]
An audit report has found that the office wastes much-needed money and resources, and has little contact with its own hospitals and clinics Paul Kirk Following a series of exposes by the Mail & Guardian, auditors have recommended that the national office of the South African National Tuberculosis Association (Santa) be closed down. The audit […]