More than 50% of the world’s population live in cities and a phenomenally higher percentage is projected by 2020 David Macfarlane and Glenda Daniels Globalisation has led to a crisis of poverty and social disintegration in cities around the world. Traditional cities as coherent spaces of communal interaction are being overtaken by metropolitan sprawls. Reconstructing […]
The Olympic Games are just two months away and Sydney is gearing up for the big event Grant Shimmin in Sydney I was finding it a little difficult to believe. I mean, here I was in the city where it would soon all be happening and there seemed to be nothing to tell me about […]
Grant Shimmin You’ve got to feel sorry for the Aussies. (Well, you might if they weren’t the people who kept thumping us at every sport under the sun.) Here they are, organising the Olympics in a host city that has every natural advantage going, and things just keep going wrong. You don’t have to look […]
Matthew Krouse ‘Will those who want to see the Nguni spirit possession please proceed to level two …” the instruction rang out above the din of revellers who had come to launch the Urban Futures conference exhibitions programme. The halls of Newtown’s MuseuMAfrika, on July 10, had not seen anything quite like it before. Dried […]
Heather Hogan Also known as “Mandela’s children”, the Birth to Ten (BTT) project, a collaboration between several universities and organisations, has studied thousands of children for the past 10 years to gauge the effects of urbanisation and political transformation on their growth and well-being. In 1989 the project began studying 3 275 children from the […]
Paul Kirk KwaZulu-Natal has been hit by a wave of farm invasions in which thousands of squatters have stormed farms, stripping millions from the value of the province’s agricultural output. The invasions have destroyed at least 4E000 agricultural jobs in the Mangete area near Stanger on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast, where most of the 63 […]
The father of Venus and Serena has coached them into the history books. But his greatest achievement may have been to teach them there is more to life than tennis Richard Williams (no relation) and Duncan Campbell What he likes best is to get people off balance. One day he will be talking about buying […]
With Aids rampant and no cash for Western drugs, Africa is condemned to hopelessness and resentment Maggie O’Kane Malita Maxwell has Aids. But so does just about everybody else in the women’s ward of Chiradzulu hospital, with its broken air conditioner, smell of old, sweet urine and greasy mattresses covered in bright green plastic. In […]
Charlene Smith on being misquoted by the president who last week accused her of ‘racist rage’ How do you measure a president’s success or otherwise? By examining those he chooses to blame for his failures. President Thabo Mbeki and the Democratic Party’s Tony Leon have sent long letters to each other about HIV and rape […]
Thebe Mabanga in your ear South Africa badly needs a national music chart. One needs to be able to log on to the Internet or pick up a paper and be able see what song is flavour of the moment for the majority of entertainment consumers. Radio, by definition, has a crucial role to play […]
Laura Tisdall (13) and Polly Tisdall (11) in Didcot, Oxfordshire The moment the Hogwarts Express steam train finally puffed into Didcot Railway Centre last Saturday with JK Rowling on board was just totally magic. We’d been waiting for ages and ages with hundreds of other people, clutching our copies of the new Harry Potter book. […]
king David le Page and Mungo Soggot Some of the more controversial dealings of De Beers, the Oppenheimers and the United States government have been cast in a new light by a South African government request that the diamond conglomerate explain its ties with Maurice Tempelsman. Tempelsman, most renowned as a former consort to Jacqueline […]
David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY The brigade of determined faces that is the Tour de France has been hurtling across the television screen again and once more, after witnessing the agony of the proceedings, I come away puzzling: why do they do it ? Once upon a time, and a very long time ago it was, […]
The Aids 2000 conference in Durban has focused the world’s attention on how South Africa is dealing with the pandemic Belinda Beresford South Africa has been one of the sleeping behemoths of sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to Aids. The country has the greatest number of HIV infections in the world, accompanied by a fast […]
Ebrahim Harvey LEFT FIELD In the apartheid days the tiny black middle class, many of whom were drawn into the maelstrom of the anti-apartheid struggle because all black people were oppressed and denied equal opportunities, played a progressive role. Today, employed in the corporate and state sectors, or operating businesses, their numbers having swelled substantially, […]
Johannesburg | Friday 11.00am. VOLVO is to use South Africa as a base for exporting catalytic converters and alloy wheels to its global assembly plants. The plan, just announced, is one of the first of several countertrade projects to get the go ahead linked to the defence agreement between South Africa, BAE Systems and Swedish […]
ball Merryman Kunene Bafana Ngonzwane, a Standard 7 pupil at Malvern High, hails from Dobsonville in Soweto. He and his friends, Gift Sibeko and Vuyo Mrali, have long abandoned playing football in the township using balls made of plastic, bricks for poles and the occasional R5 bet that comes with it. All three have enrolled […]
Marianne Merten It is not unusual to see asylum seekers gathering outside the locked doors of Customs House on Cape Town’s foreshore as early as 7am. Hours later, the narrow linoleum-tiled corridor outside the fifth floor refugee office is a jumble of languages, frustration and patience worn thin among the dozens of applicants and home […]
President Thabo Mbeki has launched a campaign for an international economic system more advantageous to developing countries Howard Barrell President Thabo Mbeki is not given to timidity when it comes to “the vision thing”, as George Bush called it. Having declared his intention as vice president to rouse Africa into renaissance, as president he is […]
A BRITISH model who flew to Cape Town earlier this week to promote the plight of thousands of penguins struck by an oil spill off the Cape coast is having something of an identity crisis. The saga began when the International Fund for Animal Welfare announced Alex Gain, winner of the Sun newspaper’s Babe of […]
Harry Pearson Last week I attended one of the jewels in the sporting calendar, the village first- school sports day. It was a sunny afternoon, the attendance was good and all the children got a chance to take part. As the afternoon progressed I watched kindly mums wink at six-year-olds who had just finished last […]
Andy Capostagno rugby It is likely to be a quiet evening in Couran Cove on Saturday. At their retreat on Queensland’s Gold Coast, the Springboks will be digesting the opening Tri-Nations Test between Australia and New Zealand. And maybe as they tuck themselves up in bed for the night, they will ponder the fact that […]
Simon Bowers Like one of the young sorcerer’s own spells, Pottermania is producing some unexpected results in bookshops across the globe. While many stores agree that JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – the teenage wizard’s fourth adventure – is the fastest selling book they have seen, the hype and hysteria surrounding […]
SAFAIR, the aviation leasing division of Imperial Holdings, announced three transactions worth more than R200-million, involving four passenger jets and a cargo aircraft. THE company has leased two McDonnell-Douglas MD81 jet airliners to Spirit Airlines, a US passenger carrier, for a period of eight years. In another deal, Safair purchased two additional ex-Austrian Airlines McDonnell-Douglas […]
Muff Andersson I had to fight for the picture above of former president Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg mayor Isaac Mogase and Professor Lindsay Bremner of the University of the Witwatersrand. Madiba’s protocol person told me to get lost. He will not do it, she said, exiting the council venue that had been hosting her boss. But […]
Frans Botha will be on a hiding to nothing on Saturday when he fights a great heavyweight champion Gavin Evans I suppose I should admit to some bias here: first, I feel passionately about Lennox Claudius Lewis. Second, I’m not so wild about Francois Johannes Botha. The Botha thing I can get out of the […]
Angus Begg TRAVEL Simultaneously smiling and serious, the blond forty-something wildlife exec called me over to his stall. It was the Indaba 2000 in Durban, the Southern African tourism industry’s annual showcase to the world. “You’ve got to see this,” he said, with a fair deal of enthusiasm. I already had, or so I thought […]
A FUEL fire erupted again at the scene of the blaze in which more than 250 people died this week while villagers risked their lives scooping fuel still gushing from the vandalised duct. Flames leapt eight metres into the sky and a huge column of smoke billowed into the air above the village of Ovire […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The Human Rights Commission (HRC) has given Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe three weeks to explain his attack on the Mail & Guardian at the media racism hearings, saying his accusations constitute a prima facie violation of the Bill of Rights. At the hearings in April, Radebe – on behalf […]
Glenda Daniels Occupational health and safety inspectors from the Department of Labour are resigning in droves and some have been suspended amid mounting concern about a major overhaul of the department. The exodus of staff coincides with a backlog of 5 000 unexamined accident cases, including 700 fatalities at workplaces across the country. In just […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION As I begin writing this I await a call from the SABC’s ever helpful Marj Murray, who is busy finding out who was responsible for the bizarre pageant-cum- circus-cum-Sun City Showtime extravaganza which attended the formal opening of the Aids 2000 conference in Durban. The SABC itself didn’t bother to supply its […]
POLICE ‘arrested’ an escaped penguin waddling down a railway line at Cape Town station. A police spokesperson said it was believed the penguin had escaped from the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds emergency cleaning station in an old railway shed at Salt River where birds contaminated by oil from the sunken […]