ENGLISH club Bristol have signed Argentine scrumhalf Agustin Pichot on a two-year contract. The 24-year-old Pichot, capped 21 times, will link up with South African flyhalf Henry Honiball at the south-west club. “Agustin is the complete scrumhalf,” Bristol’s Australian director of rugby Bob Dwyer said on Wednesday. “He can run and he can tackle but […]
Niki Moore James Mthembu is a frustrated man. For five years, this tribal elder from the Mbila community in Sodwana, on KwaZulu-Natal’s unspoilt tropical coast, has been trying to get permission to build a small tourist resort on Lake Mgobozeleni. Sodwana falls within Maputaland, advertised extensively by government planners as the next El Dorado for […]
Opera Coenraad Visser The State Theatre’s production of Manon is a milestone in many respects. It is the first production of Massenet’s early masterpiece in South Africa, an all-South African cast does full justice to the rich score and a South African production team presents a unified artistic vision that draws on the best European […]
Once again American actors are starring in a film adaption of a South African play, but Danny Glover used his fame to further the anti-apartheid cause – and he’s a bankable star, writes John Matshikiza Art is about the suspension of belief -or, in a latter-day sophistication of this theme, the suspension of disbelief. You […]
Shaun de Waal Low-budget movie of the week In Rose Troche’s debut feature, Go Fish, a lesbian is put on “trial” by her peers for daring to contemplate the idea of sex with a man. This scene seemed to confirm some viewers’ worst fears about lesbians, but Troche’s intention was indubitably satirical. Her satire, though, […]
COMRADES Marathon 1997 champion Charl Mattheus, who withdrew from the down race at Kloof on June 16, is recovering following surgery to reattach his Achilles tendon on Monday. Following the operation, doctors are confident that Mattheus will make a full recovery and will be back on the road by early next year. “I am determined […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer It is just as well national soccer coach Trott Moloto is a reserved and very patient man otherwise he might be tempted to dish out a few “southern suburbs kisses” to certain members of the mainstream media. While this humble member of the Muchineripi clan is certainly not suggesting Bra Trott is […]
priority The Border Rural Committee (BRC) and Eastern Cape provincial office of the Department of Land Affairs were shocked to read in the Mail & Guardian (“Back to the bad old days”, June 18 to 24) the allegation of a lack of departmental interest in the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (Esta). The article […]
Angela Neustatter Body Language Mid-life isn’t what it used to be. The days when women of a certain age were expected to fade into the wallpaper, wearing beige crimplene and accepting they had reached their sell-by date, are no more than a memory. And what has caused this disruption of the definition of mid-life? The […]
THURSDAY, 12.15PM: THE South Africans at Wimbledon had mixed fortunes on Wednesday, with ninth-seed Amanda Coetzer, David Nainkin and Grant Stafford being shut out of the tournament. Wayne Ferreira, Mariaan de Swardt and Surina de Beer managed to win their matches and go through to the second round. Coetzer was looking a tad dodgy on […]
David le Page Finding out that there is a special cellphone service for deaf people was a little puzzling. After all, surely any phone with a vibrating alarm, which is pretty standard, and a normal short message service (SMS) – just as standard- can work perfectly well as a wireless communicator for deaf people? Sure […]
Review of the week Brenda Atkinson The art of design in South Africa has blossomed post-1994, nurtured by increased access to international production, and radically influenced by the aesthetics of digital technologies. You might still detest Simunye or any other of the SABC’s cheesy nation-building strategies, but you have to concede that their brand-building has […]
Riaan Wolmarans There are few things as irritating as seeing a suburban housewife sing the praises of the newest super-duper washing powder (“My husband is a mechanic …”) or hearing about the latest waist-slimming, brain-numbing exercise belt-cum-vibrator (order now and get this stylish set of porcelain ducks for free). Thankfully the ad industry does manage […]
There is a political tradition followed in some parts of the world which has it that a newly elected political leader should be given 100 days – a “honeymoon” period – in which to find his or her feet in office before being subjected to media and opposition criticism. Thabo Mbeki has already been occupying […]
Mercedes Sayagues Unita’s artillery rumbled 5km away. Malanje was surrounded. Panic ensued. The airport was swept by people desperate to get on a relief plane bound for Luanda. The Antonov had little safe time for take- off. Manuel’s mother lifted him over her head. A hand pulled him up on board. While his mother scrambled […]
TWO journalists in Malawi have been charged with inciting mutiny over a report on elections held last week, court sources said Thursday. Editor Horace Somanje and reporter Mabvuto Banda of the opposition newspaper the Malawi News pleaded not guilty to the charge Wednesday and were released on bail. The trial is expected to begin sometime […]
Larry Elliott in Cologne The World Bank is wooing the world’s biggest drugs companies with a multibillion dollar package of guarantees to encourage the development of a low-cost Aids vaccine for poor countries. Alarmed by the relentless spread of the HIV virus, the bank is proposing the creation of a global health insurance programme to […]
Justin Arenstein `Welcome to the bantustan” was the refrain echoing through Mpumalanga’s corridors of power this week following the virtual coup of the provincial government by former homeland leaders. The echoes will ring even louder if former KaNgwane homeland minister and discredited former environmental MEC David Mkhwanazi is appointed as special adviser to the premier. […]
Mercedes Sayagues The Supreme Court of Zimbabwe has lashed back at women’s groups critical of a recent ruling that used customary law to deny a woman the right to inherit. In May, activists protested that the ruling undermined women’s rights in Zimbabwe and narrowed the interpretation of the Legal Age Majority Act of 1982, which […]
respect you’ Sarah Ruden Okay, okay – don’t forget the United States entirely. You need those tourists, and you need foreign direct investment. But the irony is that economic progress is not going to happen if the South African government is craven in following advice from abroad. Current American economic policy, even as applied in […]
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki and Organisation of African Unity secretary-general Salim Ahmed Salim will address a conference on the theme of an African revival in Johannesburg in October, organisers said on Thursday. Former South African and Tanzanian presidents Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere, as well as UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, are among those who have […]
Troop movements on both sides of the Congo conflict belie the peace talks in Lusaka, writes Ivor Powell A massive showdown that could determine the course of the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo is looming in the diamond-rich region in the centre of the country. Regional talks in Lusaka this weekend aimed at […]
dangerous The Reserve Bank has been speaking to the IMF about the fund’s controversial proposal to sell gold for debt relief, reports Mungo Soggot Reserve Bank Governor Chris Stals said this week the gold price had fallen to “dangerously low” levels as South Africa’s top mining magnate and unionist joined forces to lobby against the […]
CHARLES MANGWIRO, Maputo | Friday 2.45pm. REGIONAL governments must begin involving rural communities in the management of natural resources if they wish to avoid cross-border water conflicts, European and African resource managers said in Maputo on Friday. The managers told delegates from nine southern African countries that water remained the region’s scarcest and most desirable […]
Marianne Merten Deputy justice minister Cheryl Gillwald was job-hunting when she heard the news of her appointment. She now laughs about it. When Gillwald realised she was not on the party list for re-election to Parliament she sent out her curriculum vitae. “I started job- hunting. I did quite a lot of hunting – I […]
Shirley Kossick A PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY JAMES: TWO WOMEN AND HIS ART by Lyndall Gordon (Chatto & Windus) After Leon Edel’s Pulitzer-winning five- volume biography of Henry James (1953-72) and numerous subsequent studies, it is difficult to believe that anything fresh is left to be said about James. Lyndall Gordon, however, proves this assumption […]
AN electric locomotive pulling 18 goods trucks derailed on Thursday at Rosenegal near Middelburg in Mpumalanga, causing damage of more than R100 million. Police said that the train driver and his assistant were missing. The train was on the way to deliver titanium slabs to Highveld Steel at Witbank when the accident happened at about […]
It’s irritating to be accused of stifling debate while debating. “Aids-denial” scientists are like Holocaust-denial historians. Of course they have a constitutional right to be heard – but Holocaust denial didn’t get cranked up until the 1980s, when every thinking person had known for 40 years that the Holocaust actually happened. Here, the government was […]
John Sutherland George Lucas’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which was released in South Africa this week, generated so much hype worldwide there was bound to be a backlash. One character, Jar Jar Binks, a computer-birthed frogboy, has been indicted of that most heinous culture crime: racist stereotyping. Jar Jar (created on screen by “animatics”) […]
RESCUE services were searching the sea off Angola’s southwest coast on Wednesday after a helicopter carrying a senior Angolan government official and at least four other people failed to arrive at its destination, an official said. Deputy Interior Minister Dario Ngongo was on board a police helicopter that left Luanda on Tuesday en route to […]
Shaun Harris Taking Stock The latest, long-awaited interest rate cut should have us all ecstatic. The drop in prime and home-loan lending rates from 19% to 18% certainly seemed to please some people, typically those commentators who herald every rate cut, drop in inflation and rise in gross domestic product as the dawn of a […]
Community management of natural resources is all the rage among conservationists. But is it really working, asks Saliem Fakir To promote the sustainable use of natural resources and to maximise benefits for rural communities, several community-based natural resource management projects have been initiated in South Africa, mainly by foreign donor agencies. These projects aim to […]