Staff Reporter

Guy Willoughby Comedy, drama, car chases, derring-do … at this crazed end-of- decade/century/millennium/world party season, the Cape has it all, although mostly offstage. Other managements are desperate to compete with our town’s longest-running entertainment – the South African police’s extraordinary efforts to help, or hinder, the seasonal killjoy bombers. Here’s a shortlist of the goodies […]

shook the world “Search in your past for what is good and beautiful. Build your future from there.” – Paul Kruger, 1902 “The only white race that has steadily been going backwards to barbarism.” – Sir Garnet Wolseley comments on the Boers during the Anglo-Boer South African War “E=mc2” (Energy equals mass times the speed […]

Christian Figenschou They’re the stuff of dreams, nightmares, aspirations and obsessions, freedom and empowerment; of all the inventions of the past 100 years, the motor car best captures the essence of the 20th century. The first self-propelled wagons were described as long ago as the 17th century, and the 19th century saw steam-powered carriages, but […]

Shaun de Waal The books that most profoundly shaped the thought of this century were written before it began – Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859), Karl Marx’s Das Kapital (1867), and Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams (1899). Each in its way was at the epicentre of a movement that rippled out […]

The theatres may have been empty, but 1999 saw massive new audiences for television and music, writes Charl Blignaut Television One day near the beginning of 1999 a producer at Generations was called to reception at the SABC studio to “deal with a situation”. Waiting for him with a letter in her hand was an […]

In South Africa we should perhaps have called the Y2K bug something more indigenous – Tokoloshe 2000 would be appropriate, writes Gavin Foster Remember the tokoloshe? The little man with the tail who was blamed for everything that could possibly go wrong? When the goats strayed it must have been the tokoloshe that made their […]

barbarians Millennial fears of Y2K chaos and resulting social disorder are merely expressions of intense political anxieties, writes Bryan Rostron ‘Imagine,” said the minister’s adviser, pointing at the sprawling squatter settlement on the mountain opposite my home, “as clocks tick over to 2000, if government computers crash, power failures, communications, police and army disoriented.” He […]

Robert Kirby We approach the end of the century and it’s nowhere to be found. The long- awaited, enviously portentous but never threatening: the Great South African Novel is yet to be written. It’s not that there hasn’t been a wealth of human experience in this country. This century kicked off with a boisterous local […]

When fame is an open book, Christ, Shakespeare and Lenin lead the list of icons who have inspired the world’s authors, writes Martin Kettle in Washington If fame is having a book written about you, then as the subject of no fewer than 17 239 books, Jesus Christ remains the most famous figure in the […]

A hundred years ago Marlow, the steamboat captain in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, mused about the rape of the Congo, then in full fury under the Belgian King Leopold. The conquest of the Earth, which “mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is […]

Aaron Nicodemus PERSON OF THE YEAR … CHARLENE SMITH Charlene Smith’s home has become a national clearing house for information on rape and Aids. She receives five or six calls a day from rape survivors, asking for help and support. She gets calls from government officials, women’s groups, doctors, policemen, insurance companies, men married to […]

Robert Kirby remembers his childhood and the part three men society politely termed ‘mentally deficient’ played in it My first clear memories of the Durban where I was born and grew up were of the war years, the early Forties. A domestic world of absent fathers and uncles, mothers’ heads bent to static-filled wartime radio […]

Andy Capostagno It should have been the best of times, but far too often it was the worst of times. Australians will not remember the cricket and rugby world cups of 1999 in such negative terms, but the truth hurts. Here were two tournaments four years in the making, on comfortable growth curves from successful […]

In the mid-1800s, it was derided by Europe as an ‘experiment in gross vulgarity’. Today, it bestrides the world culturally, economically, technologically and militarily. Christopher Hitchens charts the unstoppable rise of the United States Who looks at an American book?” asked the Reverend Sydney Smith scornfully in the Edinburgh Review of the mid- Victorian epoch. […]

EASTERN CAPE: Makhenkesi Stofile Grade: B+ In a style not dissimilar from that of President Thabo Mbeki, “Stof” has become impatient for delivery and intolerant of inefficiency. He has insisted that African National Congress mayoral candidates are appointed by him. He has held an anti- corruption conference which resulted in practical suggestions and time frames. […]

It was a momentous year. The gold price collapsed; the first black Reserve Bank governor took the helm; the face of black empowerment was changed forever; and privatisation was propelled to the top of the economic agenda, write Donna Block and Mungo Soggot Gold, the metal that defined South Africa in the twentieth century, went […]

Ellen Bartlett There has been a lot of speculation lately about what the Mail & Guardian plans to do regarding its tradition of designating a Bug of the Year – that is, naming the bug that has had the greatest impact in the last 12 months. The question, in short, has been: will the M&G […]

TONY LEON: Democratic Party (official opposition) NATIONAL ASSEMBLY SEATS: 38 Grade: B- His Tonyness was hardly likely in Parliament to be able to match his performance in the election, and he has not. This is in part a price of success. Increasing your party’s National Assembly representation fivefold in a single election takes energy – […]

stay the same Neil Manthorp flicks through the past century of cricket as we head into the next The day the famous Dr WG Grace, in the autumn of his career, replaced the bails after being bowled and said to the startled bowler: “The people have come to see me bat, not you bowl, sonnyE…” […]

The United Nations marked the 1990s as a decade for natural disaster reduction, but 1999 has been one of the worst on record. Tim Radford reports Here is how to become a disaster statistic. Move to a shanty town on an unstable hillside near a tropical coast. Crowd together as more and more people arrive. […]

Paul Kirk It would have been the ultimate New Year’s party – toasting in the millennium on board a ship once billed as the largest moving object in the world. But plans to rebuild the Titanic seem to have sunk while still in shallow water. Nearly two years ago, in January 1998, CEO of the […]

Isabel Hilton Jiang Zemin, president of the People’s Republic of China, can look back on 1999 with some satisfaction: it was the year in which he began to make his bid for immortality, his place in the pantheon of Chinese leaders, alongside Mao and Deng. So far, he could say to himself, so good. Some […]

SOMALI gunmen last week captured 33 foreign fishermen said to have been fishing illegally in Somali waters and vowed to punish them under Somali law, according to local elders on Wednesday. The fishermen, who were captured off the the Somali Ayl coast in the region of Garowe, along with their 1000-ton fishing trawler, include two […]

intelligence and depth Gavin Evans It’s in the nature of those who attract epthets like “great”, “the greatest”, and now, of course, “the greatest of the millennium”, that a large proportion of the population should at least have vivid recall of how, why, and where this exalted human being came to their vicarious attention. I […]

South African film production began with the Anglo-Boer War – and remained in the trenches, writes AndrewWorsdale Cut to SouthEAfrica at the beginning of the century. The country is at the forefront of film-making internationally. No one in the industry is bitching about viability. It’s really Hollyveld, and it’s amazing. Given the dreary state of […]

COMMISIONER of prisons Khulekani Sitole, under investigation by the attorney general for corruption and mismanagement, has announced the suspension of his alleged accuser, KwaZulu-Natal provincial commissioner Thandiwe Kgosidintsi. Sitole said Kgosidintsi was under investigation herself, and was engaging in a personal vendetta. Meanwhile the Correctional Services Management Board, which met yesterday to discuss the allegations […]

Unless policymakers put their money where their mouths are, the position of women in the new century looks set to be as bleak as the previous one, writes Khadija Magardie Decades have passed and generations have grown up since the feminist movement first burst on to the world arena, promising women change and revolution in […]

report card Making the Grade What the scores mean A – Take a bow. You’re doing an excellent job B – Good, but room for improvement C – You’re OK, but that’s all we can say for you D – Get your act together. You’re verging on useless E – Do yourself and the country […]

Two thousand years of Christianity is too much, yet somehow not quite enough, argues Shaun de Waal The year 2000 looms. What are we celebrating, or about to celebrate? Two millennia of Christianity? Or a triumph of marketing in which we’ve forgotten the product but been dazzled by the catchphrase? Not that it really is […]

CONTROVERSIAL former Truth Commision investigator Dumisa Ntsebeza is one of seventeen black acting judges appointed on Tuesday by Justice Minister Dullah Omar, who said he aimed to widen the pool of potential candidates for full-time positions to “ensure that it will be possible to promote representivity at a much faster rate”. Omar’s most senior appointment […]

ARCHBISHOP Desmond Tutu, who is currently in resident in the United States, is to be honoured by the New York Stock Exchange by ringing the closing bell of trading on December 23. The ringing of the bell forms part of the stock exchange’s Bridging the Millennium programme, a series honouring distinguished leaders of this century […]

HOLIDAY traffic to Cape Town has been diverted to Rawsonville after a mudslide caused by heavy rain blocked the tunnel on the N1 just outside the city. Traffic officials said on Wednesday night that they were unsure when the tunnel will be re-opened. No-one was injured in the mudslide.