destructing Mercedes Sayagues The owners of the town house I rent ring early on Monday morning. Their neighbour Allen Dunn was tortured and killed by a hit squad Sunday afternoon on his farm in Beatrice, 40km from Harare. Can I vacate the house in two days? They are panicking. My mouse crashed on the floor. […]
ROB DAVIES, Cape Town | Friday 11.30am. CATS fullback Thinus Delport, fresh from a solo demolition of the Blues last week, will be looking for another big performance against the Chiefs in Bloemfontein on Saturday. Delport is currently one of the hot favourites to be selected for the Springboks against Canada and England, and another […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION A good deal of last week’s SABC current affairs output was given over to Mr Thabo Mbeki. In two faintly embarrassing appearances he generously donated us the benefit of his wisdom. First up was the annual State of the Nation speech, which turned out to be more a state of the state […]
Luvuyo Kakaza CD OFTHEWEEK Busi Mhlongo’s second album, Urban Zulu, released five years after her debut, Babemu, held the number-one hot spot for two hard-hitting months in the world charts, edging ahead of notable veteran Afro-beat stars such as Congolese virtuoso composer Ray Lema and Femi Kuti. Now with the release of Urban Zulu: The […]
Paul Edmunds REVIEW OFTHEWEEK Are 35 sagmakers more effective than a few well-aimed jabs? Yes and no, it would seem, in light of Soft Serve 2: Art at Play, which took place at the National Gallery in Cape Town on Friday. The boxing metaphor might seem inappropriate when recounting tales of a multimedia art happening, […]
unveiled Sarah Bullen It was fortuitously good timing for Gensec to launch its new investment in a week when the markets watched, white-knuckled, as the currency dipped to stomach-lurching lows. Particularly as the unit trusts the company unveiled, ahead of a marketing blitz aimed at the rand-phobic South African investor, promise to take your money […]
DAVID SHAPSHAK, Pretoria | Friday 9.15pm. THE Northern Bulls ended the season on a high by winning their first Super 12 match in 11 starts this season when they beat the Hurricanes 47-33 at Loftus Stadium in Pretoria on Friday. The home team withstood a tenacious late charge, scoring two tries in the dramatic 17 […]
The economic turmoil in Zimbabwe appears to have begun when an IMF and World Bank- inspired adjustment programme was implemented Rehad Desai News coverage from Zimbabwe has typically centred on the abuse of human rights unleashed following President Robert Mugabe’s defeat in the recent referendum. Coverage has therefore tended to produce more heat than light. […]
Children’s books must bear many re-readings Lesley Cowling The words “bedtime story” conjure up a cosy picture: mom or dad cuddled up in bed with little one, both happily absorbed in a book. The reality, of course, is quite different. The child, instead of falling off to sleep after one reading, insists on hearing the […]
Ivor Powell The SABC’s chief executive, the Reverend Hawu Mbatha, was axed this week as a major restructuring of the troubled corporation’s top management kicked into action. Senior sources in the public broadcaster said that a letter amounting to a dismissal was sent this week to Mbatha under the signature of SABC board chair Dr […]
Grant Shimmin OLYMPICS When Josia Thugwane won the marathon title at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, it was a victory that came out of the blue, for the world of road running and for South Africans in general. He might have been the national marathon champion and have won several times in and out of […]
Forget soppy R&B and angry hip-hop – feisty Irish pop-rockers the Cranberries are in town Riaan Wolmarans In the mid-Nineties, you could not go to any decent alternative or rock club without, at some time during the evening, hearing the crashing opening chords of the Cranberries’ powerful song Zombie. Then, people would scurry to the […]
ROB DAVIES, Cape Town | Thursday 5.10pm. A MIDFIELD battle of epic proportions awaits when the Sharks take on the Stormers at King’s Park in a final-round Super 12 match on Saturday. Pieter Muller, current holder of the Springbok jersey at inside centre, will face up to newcomer De Wet Barry — one of the […]
Tour boss has the credentials to put some backbone into the weakest of teams – he’s a former secret police chief Neal Collins in London It’s probably safe to say that Zimbabwe has recently slipped rather low in the average Englishman’s top 10 holiday destinations. Ticket sales for the first Test against the Southern Africans […]
Born in a township, she spent her first six months in jail with her mother. As a successful singer forced into exile by Pretoria, she became a symbol of resistance. Now back home and with a new album, she has become a totem of the African renaissance Maya Jaggi When Miriam Makeba left South Africa […]
If land hunger is the way blacks in Zimbabwe most acutely experience the legacy of white supremacy, in South Africa the comparable black experience is lack of access to capital. We either correct this shortcoming or we bid goodbye to any possibility of a prosperous and peaceful South Africa. Apartheid set out systematically to destroy […]
Public reaction to sentencing practices has probably had the most significant impact upon the legitimacy of the judiciary. Over the past 12 months we have witnessed considerable dissatisfaction as a result of perceived lenience in the imposition of sentences for rape. For these reasons a comprehensive report authored by leading academic Dirk van Zyl Smit […]
Andrew Worsdale Local films will be represented at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, even if they were produced and directed by foreigners. Leading the pack in the Un Certain Regard section of the festival is The King is Alive, which screens on Friday night. The film is a co-production by Lars von Trier’s Danish company […]
GHANAIAN mining company Ashanti Goldfields has reported a 68% fall in first quarter profits on Thursday, reflecting a lower realised gold price than a year ago.Earnings fell to $6,9-million, or six cents a share, from $21,5-million, or 20 cents, a year earlier as the average gold price obtained by the firm slid to $345 an […]
Michael Vlismas GOLF Harvey Penick, the legendary golf teacher, once said: “No pretty woman can miss a single shot without a man giving her some poor advice.” It is for this reason that a certain golf correspondent kept his mouth shut while watching Joanne Norton practice her putting earlier this year. Norton was struggling to […]
Cedric Mayson SPIRIT LEVEL A double page spread in the current issue of The Teacher highlights the challenge of religious education faced by our schools. In the old days, religious education was frequently boring, indoctrinated, or ignored. We need to bury it for good to rest in peace or pieces. Our new Constitution states that […]
A documentary about the transformation of Pretoria’s JG Strijdom Square is to be screened at a Canadian film festival Thebe Mabanga and Connie Selebogo A Pretoria-based black film-maker’s story about an apartheid-era icon is about to enjoy a world-wide audience. Pule Diphare’s JG Strijdom is Very, Very Dead will be shown at Halifax Input 2000, […]
Anyone who argues for socialism will find allies in the ANC, the party’s secretary general said this week Jaspreet Kindra African National Congress secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe this week committed the party to the cause of socialism and said South Africa should follow the Chinese and Cuban socialist models of economic policy. In a wide-ranging […]
Who better than David Ginola to replace Princess Diana as the Red Cross’s ambassador on landmine control? On the eve of his trip to Cambodia, the Gallic glory boy talks to Denis Campbell The dark sunglasses, non- descript grey clothes and floppy hat pulled down over his eyes are a poor disguise. Almost everyone in […]
ANGLO American has confirmed that it is in early discussions to form “an online joint procurement venture” with other metals mining companies. “We are in preliminary discussions with several parties but do not have any details yet,” an Anglo American spokesman said on Wednesday. The spokesman said the company will provide the market with further […]
Brenda Atkinson When someone whom you love, and who is close to you, is raped, your heart’s selfish poems become so much emotional litter. The way your heart feels the world is as if it had never really beaten before this moment, when the phone rings, and the voice breaks: she was raped. She is […]
spiritual Martin Thorpe Football may be a religion but it does not appeal to the pope in its present incarnation. God’s assistant manager has laid down the law to some of the European game’s movers and shakers about the dangers of Mammon. During a 45-minute audience with a high- powered Uefa delegation at the Vatican […]
Neil Thomas TAKING STOCK Small investors are dazed and confused. So they should be; a lot of big, professional investors are feeling pretty much the same. It’s time to take a deep breath, shake our heads and try to get a clear view on our investments. It also helps to remember that we are living […]
Nigella Lawson BODY LANGUAGE There’s a poster, a huge sky-stretching poster: it features a woman, or her almost bare torso; shoulders, neck, a transparent black T-shirt over unconcealed – indeed, heightened – nipples. It’s an advertisement for Vogue.com (that’s Vogue-dot-com) though the dot is typographically missing. I don’t say it isn’t witty (and the other […]
Andy Colquhoun RUGBY Picking a Springbok squad for the coming tests against England and Canada has probably been as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel. Once Nick Mallett and his panel of Francois Davids and Wynand Claassen had swept aside the belly-up Sharks and Bulls bobbing about uselessly on the surface, they’d have found […]
FOUR UN military observers — three Britons and a New Zealander — evaded capture by rebels in Sierra Leone with a daring trek through the jungle. Britain’s defence ministry said Friday the the observers had been working with Kenyan peacekeepers in Makeni when they became aware of the “fairly heavy” presence of rebels from the […]
THE African National Congress is pushing ahead with plans for centralised control over the five proposed megacities in the country, namely Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Pretoria and Port Elizabeth. Despite opposition to the executive mayoral system, which vests all authority in the mayor, the ANC said it is confident of adopting it even in provinces […]