EGYPTIAN customs officer Gamal El-Ghandour will make history when he officiates at the Spain-Norway match in Rotterdam on June 13 becoming the first non-European to referee a Euro 2000 tie. El-Ghandour’s participation follows an agreement between football’s governing bodies in Europe and Africa to exchange referees for their top competitions. French referee Alain Sars took […]
THABO Mngomeni has retained the Bafana Bafana captaincy for the June 18 Cosafa Cup quarter-final match against Switzerland despite the team’s 4-0 thrashing by the United States in the Nike Cup at the weekend. The 20-man squad, which will be without the likes of Shaun Bartlett and Quinton Fortune because of club commitments, contains eight […]
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 […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Asmara | Friday 9.20am. ERITREA claims that Ethiopia has launched a “large-scale” offensive on its eastern Assab front, following small-scale attacks and intensive shelling throughout Thursday. It comes after Ethiopia claimed earlier that its military objectives have been reached and that its war with Eritrea is over. Asmara said Ethiopia has deployed three […]
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 […]
ESKOM’s pebble bed nuclear project has formed an international partnership with UK nuclear company British Nuclear Fuels, the Business Day reports. BNF is taking an estimated 20% stake in the scheme for about R100-million. The project is being led by Eskom, which has a 30% stake in it, and the Industrial Development Corporation, which has […]
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 […]
BAFANA Bafana are still the best soccer team in Africa, according to the monthly Fifa rankings. Morocco are are in second spot, with Tunisia in third. Egypt, Cameroon, Zambia, Angola, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria make up the rest of the top-ten. Somalia, who still compete despite a long-running war, are rated the least powerful […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Richard Bowker SLAVE TRADES AND AN ARTIST’S NOTEBOOK by Ari Sitas (Deep South) Ari Sitas’s new book, Slave Trades and An Artist’s Notebook, 190 pages long, .consists of just two poems – those of the title. Though geographically specific – the action of each poem takes in a ravaged and destabilised Ethiopia – the historical […]
Paul Kirk The Pietermaritzburg Regional Court heard sensational evidence this week about the involvement of National Intelligence Agency (NIA) operatives in political violence in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands. The head of the NIA in KwaZulu-Natal, Desiree Vasloo, testified after a number of her agents admitted to involvement in irregular activities linked to violence in the Midlands […]
New research shows that casual labour strips workers of their rights, and causes divisions among workers Glenda Daniels Labour market flexibility impoverishes households and marginalises workers from the workplace, according to recent research. Speaking at a labour seminar at the University of the Witwatersrand, Bridget Kenny, a researcher at the sociology of work unit who […]
For one week during 1971 the small Free State town of Excelsior was crawling with reporters from all over the world. A sex ring had been uncovered in which local farmers and businessmen were engaged in steamy escapades with their black maids. Zakes Mda reports I have recently become a frequent visitor to Excelsior, since […]
NEWS IN BRIEF The African National Congress this week sought to deny claims that controversial National Intelligence Agency (NIA) operative Thabo Kubu has been working at the party’s headquarters. Kubu, who is facing a prosecution by a closed board of inquiry for irregular activities while in the employ of the NIA, appears to have been […]