PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki signed the Skagen Declaration with Nordic prime ministers in Denmark on Thursday. The Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden – have “noted the enormous challenges the African continent continues to face at the dawn of the 21st century”. Officials said it was agreed that the continent’s challenges call for […]
ELECTIONS set for next March in Lesotho will be delayed because proper preparations have not been done. Deputy Prime Minister Kelebone Maope said on Friday that if preparations had started in May, the elections could have been held in March or April next year but the present problems will delay the process. Maope said there […]
PROTEAS offspinner Nicky Boje says he has “no idea” why he is mentioned in the tapes in possession of New Delhi police — which upon their release in April triggered off one of cricket’s worst match-fixing scandals. Boje told the King Commission probing alleged match-fixing in cricket on Friday that disgraced former Proteas skipper Hansie […]
The ANC has angered the Zimbabwean opposition by backing Zanu-PF Jaspreet Kindra Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has slammed the African National Congress’s endorsement of the ruling Zanu-PF, accusing South Africa’s ruling party of aligning itself “with despots”. The MDC has also accused the ANC of misrepresenting what transpired at […]
divisions’ Jubie Matlou and Sechaba ka Nkosi The long-awaited probe into the restructuring of the SABC has raised the possibility of privatising the corporation’s news divisions. The report by consultants Gemini, which was presented to the SABC board this week, recommends that an “ideal SABC news service would fully exploit business opportunities (that is, privatisation)”. […]
Neal Collins CRICKET Jimmy Adams was 22 yards away when Brian Lara began the innings of 375 which would change both of their lives. Lara’s Test record innings against England at Antigua six years ago started with the hard-working Adams looking on from the non-striker’s end. Their lives have been very, very different since. Jamaican […]
Khadija Magardie A newborn South African baby can expect an average of 40 healthy years. That’s the grim news from researchers, as the HIV/Aids pandemic slashes up to seven years of healthy life expectancy off the average South African life. Next to Sierra Leone, Malawi and Namibia, South Africa ranks as one of the lowest […]
John Travolta’s vanity project Battlefield Earth has taken 10 years to make and is set to be the turkey of the year Mark Morris There’s nothing like a real Hollywood flop. Not an average bad movie doing averagely badly, but a complete wreck of a film that makes you wonder what the hell anyone was […]
Barry Streek The government is spending R68-million a year fighting malaria and South Africa lost an estimated R19,4-million in productivity in 1998 and 1999 because of the disease, according to Minister of Health Mantho Tshabalala-Msimang. She told Parliament 26 445 cases of malaria were reported in 1998, 51 535 in 1999 and 24 047 up […]
Howard Barrell replies I have difficulty in viewing Parks Mankahlana’s article on my review of Thabo Mbeki’s first year as president as the response of a reasonable person. What criticisms my review contained fell comfortably within the norms of political commentary and debate. The review hardly warranted a response beyond recognition of it as one […]
Tracey Naughton Currently showing in Pretoria is an exhibition of Australian Aboriginal art owned by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Some may question this showcasing of Aboriginal culture, titled Seasons of the Kunwinjku, in the context of the Australian prime minister’s reluctance to offer an official apology for the effects of history […]
Guy Willoughby REVIEW OFTHEWEEK Andr Stander: policeman, bankrobber, escape artist, master of disguise, mere mortal, potent myth. The man who 20 years ago kept South Africans enthralled with his larger-than-life criminal exploits was all of these – and thus a more than fitting subject for maverick playwright Charles Fourie, whose one-man, multimedia exploration Stander opened […]
Sasol could soon join the great trek that has seen several top South African companies list abroad Belinda Beresford Sasol, the oil and petrochemicals company which was synonymous with countering anti-apartheid sanctions, has outgrown the country of its birth. The industrial weakling that was nurtured to shelter the apartheid regime from the vagaries of international […]
From semi-arid regions to thick mists and lush forests, the Soutpansberg area has it all Bridget Hilton-Barber No one can accuse the Soutpansberg of being namby-pamby. Out here, in the north of the Northern Province, the spaces are big, the scenery dramatic and the history suitably torrid. There are still unspoiled wilderness areas, the destinations […]
Philippa Garson CLASS STRUGGLE Two very different education “stories” dominated the news last week, both encapsulating the bizarre contradictions of this land. The first was the findings of the Curriculum Review committee, which in measured tones discussed its recommendations at a lengthy and fairly highbrow technical briefing. The second was the less palatable and frankly […]
The King commission of inquiry this week heard evidence that implies Hansie Cronje became involved in match-fixing shortly after taking over the captaincy of the national cricket squad Peter Robinson Hansie Cronje admitted to security consultant Rory Steyn that the tape recordings held by Indian police were authentic, although they had been edited, the King […]
exploding David Shapshak For once, you couldn’t really say that the film betrays a great novel. L Ron Hubbards’s novel Battlefield Earth is an epic mostly because it’s 1E064 pages long, not because it’s one of the great science- fiction novels of the genre. Hubbard is not the Tolkien or Asimov of his field and […]
Andrew Benson Monaco is an event that delights and maddens in equal measure. For all that Formula One revels in the picture- postcard perfection of the boats floating in its harbour under a cloudless blue sky, there are constant grumbles about the problems caused by holding a race in a place that has more vertical […]
Dale McKinley CROSSFIRE South Africa is a strange place to be if you count yourself as a political activist and/or commentator. It often seems as if this sizeable sector of our population is caught in a linguistic time warp, what with echoes of vain, glorious, nationalist verbiage ringing in our Southern African ears, resistant strains […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday 11.30am. ZIMBABWE’s white farmers will not be intimidated by President Robert Mugabe’s threats against them, a union farming official said on Friday, after Mugabe warned white farmers that they will die if they try to resist land invasions. At the same time political opponents say the president’s fighting talk will […]
Pensioners in the Eastern Cape are up in arms over chaos in the Welfare Department Peter Dickson Pensioners have rampaged through the Transkei, assaulting provincial Department of Welfare pay-out officials and taking others hostage, after the department quietly removed 20E000 welfare grant beneficiaries from the provincial register. The violent protests took place in Qumbu, Mqanduli […]
tourism Barry Streek Discussions are being held about the establishment of the Wild Coast National Park in Pondoland and the creation of the Maluti Drakensberg Transfrontier Park, which will include the Golden Gate and QwaQwa National Parks, says Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Mohammed Valli Moosa. He also says the decision to place 12 […]
Robert Potts BOSS CUPID by Thom Gunn (Faber &Faber) Thom Gunn’s poetry has always been celebratory. In the Fifties, as an English poet of the Movement generation, his icons were leather-clad bikers, Elvis Presley, soldiers – the rough, tough men of action – and he famously wrote “I praise the overdog, from Alexander/ To those […]
present Ben Joseph Wayne Barker and Claire de Jong have mounted an exhibition at the NSA Gallery in Durban entitled Lost & Found. The work is characterised by bold neon statements, such as Loss, Hunger, Memory, mounted on large constructions of disfigured books and wax. Suggesting the work of some of the pop artists, objects […]
NAWAAL DEANE, Johannesburg | Friday 12.30pm. SOCCER City will set the stage for a thrill-a-minute showdown between arch-rivals Sundowns and Chiefs in the BobSave Super Bowl final on Saturday. The berths for the final were decided following Chiefs’ 3-1 drubbing of Bush Bucks, while Sundowns went through with a 1-0 clincher against AmaZulu. Tradional pre-match […]
Britain has called for a ban on sales of diamonds from Sierra Leone that, as in Angola, have fuelled the country’s civil war Ewen MacAskill in Antwerp and David Pallister In a small room above the Diamond Bourse in Antwerp, a dealer expressed regret over the mutilations and deaths in the African civil wars in […]
An agreement by opposition parties to co- operate against the ANC in the local government elections in November appears to be part of a three-phase process of creating a stronger opposition entity Howard Barrell This week’s defection to the Democratic Party of 65 public representatives from other parties suggests a long-awaited and far-reaching realignment of […]
Jazz artist Errol Dyers has a new album, which he says is about who he is and how he speaks to people Thebe Mabanga The Cape is renowned for its laid-back splendour. It provides a perfect setting for artistic inspiration. It also possesses a rich musical heritage honed by generations of Khoisan communities over a […]
MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday 11.45am. SOUTH African cricketers Pieter Strydom and Henry Williams on Friday cast further doubt over Hansie Cronje’s statement that he never approached any other players to affect the outcome of matches for money. Strydom told the King Commssion of inquiry that Cronje approached him before the first Test against […]
In his exhibition with his partner Claire de Jong, Wayne Barker endeavours to be both sacrificial offering and high priest at the altar of truth Alex Sudheim Several years ago, on a cold winter’s night in downtown Johannesburg, I spent a few nervous hours with the vanguard of the South African avant-garde at a place […]
Barry Streek In its tough battle against crime, the police are battling with a chronic shortage of vehicles in South African cities, particularly in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The South African Police Service (SAPS) has estimated that the optimal number of vehicles it needs in Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, East London, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and […]
Brett Davidson LIFESTYLE At 5pm, Jo Stein heads for De Waal Park, with her dog, Lola – a cute cross- Staffie-Jack Russell. “Lola likes the park best,” she says. “More than the beach, more than the mountain. This is where all her friends are.” The park, nestled on the lower slopes of Table Mountain, is […]