Kelwyn Sole SONG TRIALS by Mxolisi Nyezwa (Gecko) For a number of years now, Mxolisi Nyezwa’s poems have appeared in local and international journals, as well as forming part of the 1992 collection Essential Things. In addition, he is editor of one of the most innovative literary journals published at the moment, Kotaz. Nyezwa is […]
THE Central Bank of Swaziland said on Thursday it has eased exchange controls in a bid to boost foreign investment in its capital market. The bank said it has scrapped the requirements that non-residents seek its approval to invest in quoted companies and repatriate their profits. Non-residents still have to seek central bank approval to […]
Shaun de Waal NOT QUITE THE THRILLER OFTHEWEEK Tom Cruise has big plans for his Mission: Impossible franchise. The role of superspy Ethan Hunt offers him a well- paying action-movie base from which to venture in more challenging directions – Eyes Wide Shut, for instance, or his brilliant turn in Magnolia. Moreover, being co-producer as […]
Steve Whiting CRICKET The “back from the brink” one-wicket win over England at Canterbury last Sunday gave South Africa’s women cricketers more than a glimmer of hope in a five-match series that seemed to be slipping into oblivion after they lost the first two – it also gave them a hope of being taken seriously […]
Robyn Alexander THIRTEEN CENTS by K Sello Duiker (Ink Inc) SKYLINE by Patricia Schonstein Pinnock (David Philip) Each of these intriguing first novels opens so as to immediately absorb the reader into its first-person narrator’s world. K Sello Duiker’s Thirteen Cents begins with 12-year-old Azure’s introduction of himself – “Ah-zoo-ray. That’s how you say it.” […]
Howard Barrell The new opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), is likely to win at least one out of every five town council seats in the forthcoming local government elections. It has a realistic chance of taking control of Cape Town and, if the African National Congress has difficulty in getting its vote to the […]
AN African warrior, stuffed, preserved and on show in Spain for 100 years, is going home for burial after a Haitian doctor complained to the United Nations at the undignified treatment of his remains. Thus ends a dispute which rose to the level of an international diplomatic incident with several African states challenging the right […]
Chris Buchanan The liberation of our gambling laws, allowing a manifestation of mega casino resorts in metropolitan areas, has done very little for the architectural integrity of our new nation. Long have we strived for that identity that would render our commercial, retail and hospitality developments reminiscent of an African ethos, rather than a post-modern […]
penguins The number of polluted seabirds could skyrocket as oil leaking from the sunken Treasure spreads up the West Coast Marianne Merten Maritime and conservation officials are racing against time to contain the ecological disaster off the Cape coast as oil slicks have spread from Green Point, Cape Town, up the West Coast to Dassen […]
Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH If your electoral commission was like the one in my country, Ghana, which consistently ignores opposition demands on registration of voters, the reopening of electoral registers, and also rejects indeed any other request that the ruling party does not endorse, you would appreciate what President Robert Mugabe and his […]
Guy Willoughby describes putting together his new play about Olive Schreiner’s forgotten brother Will ‘The only duty we owe to history”, declared Oscar Wilde, “is to rewrite it.” Eighteen months ago, a National Arts Council grant in hand, I set out to do just that – or at least to refashion the historical record about […]
SIXTY people were killed when their bus was swept away in floods caused by torrential rains. Police said the bus, travelling from the capital to Harar in the east, was caught in floodwaters near Wollenchiti, 125 km south of Addis Ababa. The bus was carrying 66 people. The bodies of 60, including three children and […]
It would take decades and cost billions to map the human genome, they said. Tim Radford tells how it was done Scientists have just finished deciphering the genome – the book of human life. Their DNAblueprint will change everything. The once undreamed-of knowledge has already begun to alter agriculture, forensic science, archaeology, biology and medicine. […]
Online recruitment sites are prospering in South Africa, where the keen hunt for jobs is many locals’ top priority Rupert Neethling Surfing for a job? You are by no means alone. What’s more, online recruiters are eager to hear from you. Especially if you’re in information technology (IT). Indeed, the first thing a South African […]
Casinos are gambling on making a cool R2- billion a year – but they’ve had to go to the ends of the earth to get people there Mary Dover The race is on for five of the six licensed casinos in Gauteng to be complete in all their glory. It’s official: kitsch, glitz and glamour […]
SOUTH Africa and Botswana have signed a bilateral military pact on defence and security, SABC radio news reported on Friday. Speaking at the signing ceremony in Gaberone, SA Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota said the time had come for Africa to control and manage its political and military conflicts. The agreement would bind the two countries […]
Peter Eaton NOT THE ART MOVIE OFTHEWEEK ‘It’s an epic. It’s a big, big movie,” claims writer and director Tim Robbins of his Cradle Will Rock. Actually, it’s so huge that it hurts and just doesn’t to know what to do with itself for a its 132-minute length. Purporting to be “a (mostly) true story”, […]
Belinda Beresford With Sanlam, the bastion of Afrikanerdom, and Metlife, the embodiment of black empowerment, set to disappear from South Africa’s financial markets, will the new joint venture mean the end or the beginning of black empowerment in South Africa? Sanlam and New Africa Investment Limited’s (Nail) life assurance subsidiary, Metropolitan Life (Metlife), are due […]
Barry Streek The large-scale firing and retrenchment of workers on Western Cape fruit farms will cause huge damage to rural civil society and to the quality of life in the province but it won’t make the industry productive and internationally competitive, two University of Western Cape (UWC) researchers have concluded. They also dismiss claims that […]
SOUTH Africa is to host the biggest aerospace and defence exhibition ever to be staged in Africa in early September, the SA Air Force said on Friday. SAAF chief Lieutenant-General Roelf Beukes said the show at Waterkloof air base near Pretoria would feature about 250 exhibitors from all over the world. Briefing reporters at the […]
Riaan Wolmarans CD OFTHEWEEK ‘You know I’m not dead,” sings Billy Corgan confidently on Everlasting Gaze, the hit opening track of The Smashing Pumpkins’ latest CD, Machina:The Machines of God (Virgin). But on the track Heavy Metal Machine, he wonders:”If I were dead, would my records sell?” And the Pumpkins are dead, for all purposes, […]
Africa’s bid to host the World Cup for the first time is undermined by the Confederation of African Football’s refusal to choose either South Africa or Morocco as the better candidate Connie Selebogo, Nawaal Deane, Merryman Kunene, Thebe Mabanga and Jubie Matlou When the Federation of International Football Association gets to vote for the host […]
Belinda Beresford Holding a telecommunications conference in Nigeria was a fitting act since the country encapsulates the problems and the lure of telecommunications in Africa. Last week’s Global Information Infrastructure Commission (GIIC) conference was being held in Africa’s most populous nation and one laden with natural resources. Yet the country’s infrastructure is collapsing. Seventeen companies […]
THE UN Security Council debated on Thursday a British proposal to ban trade in diamonds mined from rebel-held areas of Sierra Leone. Diamonds are the major source of revenue for the Revolutionary United Front rebels, who in May took 500 UN peacekeepers hostage. The proposed resolution says that “all states shall take the necessary measures […]
INNOVATIONS Got a gold card burning a hole in your wallet? Shame. Head on over to www.eluxury.com, which is filled with the outrageously expensive commodities peddled by LVMH: Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton. If you’re not intimidated by names like Dior, Salvatore Ferragamo, Celine, Bottega Veneta, or you just don’t know why they could be intimidating, […]
Thebe Mabanga The man who has been central to the process of compiling and selling the 2006 World Cup soccer bid is a publicity-shy divorcee who would rather get on with a behind-the-scenes role than become the operational face and voice of South Africa’s bid. Danny Jordan, the CEO of the country’s World Cup bid […]
The run-up to the International Aids 2000 conference starting in Durban on July 9 has been dogged by controversy Timothy Trengove-Jones If asked to name a single issue that drew into unambiguous focus the most pressing dilemmas facing this country today, one would have to answer HIV/Aids. But, immediately upon giving that answer, one would […]
FORMER brothers-in-rebellion and now Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda will try to mend fences on Saturday after their armed forces clashed earlier this month in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The pair are expected to try to settle their differences in two days of meetings, in the wake of heavy […]
Ivor Powell The University of the Witwaters-rand is embroiled in a major embarrassment after it emerged that one of its distinguished research fellows was serving as representative for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF while he was accredited to represent the university. As a visiting research professor in the university’s political science department, Zimbabwean academic Professor […]
The illness is closely linked to the explosion of the Nigerian drug trade in South Africa Paul Kirk The Lonsdale hotel has seen better days. The air conditioners rarely function, the lights do not work, the swimming pool is empty and full of garbage, and rooms can be rented by the hour. Visitors are greeted […]
Thebe Mabanga IN YOUR EAR The convergence of the Internet and radio was an inevitable development in the face of rapid technological advancement. For radio, the need to broadcast over the Net is a logical development from its initial use of the Net to advertise. Once advertisers and listeners start reading about the station on […]
Steven Friedman WORM’S EYE VIEW Sometimes “fixing” a problem can make it much worse. Local government after the pending elections may be an example. There is wide agreement that many municipal governments are not working well. Far from meeting the ambitious development goals set them by national government, local councils often battle to balance their […]