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 […]
A SECOND phone operator will be up and running in May 2002, the Business Day reports. The government announced on Thursday that Telkom’s monopoly is to end in less than two years. The paper says the news has been welcomed by several industry players amid expectation that lower prices and better service will result from […]
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 […]
THE fate of 11 senior Mpumalanga officials accused of lying about their qualifications will be announced on Friday when the Public Service Commission hands its investigation report on the issue to Premier Ndaweni Mahlangu. The 11 unnamed officials reportedly over-stated or invented their qualifications to secure high-paying government jobs. PSC chairman Stanley Sangweni will personally […]
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 […]
Paul Kirk The deputy mayor of Durban has been charged with assault after being accused of attacking four teenagers with electrical garden equipment, sjamboks and knobkieries. Mveli Mavundla, the African National Congress deputy mayor of Durban Metro, appeared briefly in the Umlazi Magistrate’s Court this week after allegedly assaulting four teenagers accused of being thieves. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 4.30pm. THE rand moved weaker on Friday, touching a low of R7,06 to the dollar, but retraced some of its losses later in the day. By late afternoon it was trading at R7,01 to the US currency. Traders said weak bonds and continued concerns about the situation in Zimbabwe weighed […]
In South Africa tasks normally performed by coroner units are the job of policemen assigned to mortuaries Khadija Magardie Policemen assigned to the medico-legal services wing of the South African Police Service perform tasks that make them more suited to medical scrubs than blue uniforms. Among other things, they prepare bodies for the pathologist – […]
In Africa today the suffering is caused from within. Wole Soyinka laments the loss of post-apartheid confidence and calls for stronger UN intervention A wave of anomie, even a breakdown of humanity, is sweeping across the continent that must be particularly galling to those who so confidently trumpeted an “African renaissance”. What we see today […]
David Le Page A dramatic report from the World Commission on Dams (WCD), based in Cape Town, has overturned the long-standing assumption that hydroelectric power is environmentally clean. According to the report, dams often release large quantities of methane gas from rotting vegetable matter. Methane is a 20 times more effective greenhouse gas than carbon […]
THE strike in Nigeria over recent fuel price increases entered its second day on on Friday, paralysing business activities, as well as international and domestic flights. “Our offices in Lagos are closed and we are not likely to operate on Saturday the Lagos-Nairobi flight. On Tuesday we did not fly into Lagos as scheduled because […]
Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH I was just telling myself that I was fed up to the teeth about whether “Africa” (one country) was a “lost continent” a “hopeless continent” or what have you, when the BBC asked me to appear on the TV programme, Newsnight, to discuss “the state of Africa”. As it […]
Moving beyond play readings, the Kultcha Klub takes on Gladiators, sex and life after death Robert Colman Anyone who’s looking for an intelligent, stimulating and safe one-night stand should try the Wits Downstairs Theatre in Braamfontein – you’ll find a tireless group of artists, who are launching a festival of 10 original South African plays […]
Tara Turkington An elderly Free State couple are fighting to return to their home of 65 years, after they were evicted two weeks ago by a farmer who sold all their possessions to pay for outstanding “rent”. David Maarman says he was born on the farm Mostertshoek in the Boshof District in the Free State […]