Philippa Garson Class Struggle There’s nothing like an avalanche of blunt facts to send politicians and theorists scuttling back to the drawing board – at least one hopes so. When confronted with the disturbing, grainy footage of real life, rather than the crisply sanitised version stamped on to the pages of our many White Papers […]
Claude Kabemba A Second Look The rebellion against the government of President Laurent Kabila in the Democratic Republic of Congo stands at the crossroads. Divisions within the rebel Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD) movement and within the Uganda/Rwanda rebel alliance has placed a serious question mark on the ability of the rebels to win […]
Robyn Hofmeyr Jeremy’s friend and neighbour Sunday, a typical highveld winter evening. Temperature inversion, the smell of thousands of coal-smoke fires. It’s early evening, not a great time if you’re the parents of young children. My youngest kid is fractious, he wants his bottle and clings to my trouser leg while my older kid whines […]
Mungo Soggot The Pretoria High Court has dealt another blow to the Mpumalanga Gaming Board by refusing leave to appeal against a court order instructing them to hand over videotapes and documents of its deliberations. The decision is the latest in a series of court orders which have reversed or implicitly questioned decisions taken by […]
DAVID SHAPSHAK, Johannesburg | Thursday 5.40pm. STORMERS player representative Andy Marinos and captain Corne Krige will face an independent disciplinary committee hearing next Thursday about their team’s refusal to play in a Super 12 semi-final. The Stormers were crushed 33-18 by the Otago Highlanders on May 22 after they refused to take the field unless […]
Luvuyo Kakaza Even under the best circumstances the chances of becoming an international music star in rural Transkei are slim. But for a woman to launch a musical career from the poverty- stricken village of Mqekezweni, the odds against success are astronomical. Madosini Manquina (60) has taken on those odds and beaten them. After years […]
THURSDAY, 6.00PM: WITH the panic of a market crash abating, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange dragged itself through a very lacklustre Thursday. All key indices ended at the low-end of the trading range, with Andre Crawford-Brunt of Deutsche Morgen Grenfell describing the day as “soggy”. There was praise all round, however, for Reserve Bank governor Chris […]
SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Friday 9.00pm THE Independent Electoral Commission admitted huge errors in its accounting of unverified results late on Friday night as results continued to swing like a pendulum over and then back again behind the mark of an African National Congress two thirds majority. Results late on Friday afternoon showed the […]
living from the soil Ian Clayton Out of a population of 180-million in the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), only one in 10 has a job in the formal sector and only about 20% of the economically active population have jobs, a Norwegian researcher, Liv Torres, has established. This gives an unemployment rate of nearly […]
TANZANIA and Kenya plan to co-host the 2004 African Nations’ Cup finals, the Football Association of Tanzania (FAT) said on Monday. FAT Secretary-General Ismail Aden Rage said FAT and its Kenyan counterpart, the KFF, reached the decision when top officials of the bodies met in Nairobi last week. Rage represented FAT in the meeting while […]
TONY LAWRENCE, London | Friday 11.00am. PAKISTAN and South Africa meet on Saturday in what may prove to be a dress rehearsal for the World Cup final. Mark I, however, will be as hotly contested as Mark II. South Africa, edged out by Pakistan as tournament favourites over the last few days, badly need to […]
A PASTOR from Rwanda’s Episcopal Church and a former army major were condemned to death for genocide Thursday by a special military tribunal, official radio announced from Kigali on Thursday. “The military court condemned to death gendarmerie major Anne-Marie Nyirahakizimana and pastor Anastase Ngirinshuti for genocide, murder and association with criminals,” the radio said. It […]
The discovery of minutes that expose how the National Party regime sealed the fate of Matthew Goniwe and three others could be the most important breakthrough during the past five years where discovering the truth about our grisly past is concerned. For the first time South Africans have been presented with concrete evidence that the […]
David le Page Free cellphones are subsidised by the cost of the contract – that’s why you generally need to take out a 24-month contract, and why cellphones are often locked so they can only be used on one network. Which raises some obvious questions. How much do contracts cost if you’re not buying a […]
THE International Monetary Fund on Thursday hailed Sudanese moves to reverse 20 years of economic decline but called for “broader and deeper” reforms to consolidate gains made to date. The IMF, according to a summary of recent discussions of the Sudanese economy by Fund directors, expressed satisfaction with Sudan’s implementation of IMF-monitored programs in 1997 […]
Wally Mbhele makes very bold statements about the disunity of the African National Congress in the Free State (“Fresh splits in the Free State ANC”, May 21 to 27). And the article has done a disservice to the understanding of the nature of Free State politics. Essentially, Mbhele sees red in the ANC where it […]
Last weekend M-Net presented prizes totaling R230 000 to the winners in the various language categories of the annual M-Net Book Prize, given to a novel published within the previous year. The winners were: l English: The Tikieline Yuppie by Mehlaleng Mosotho (Vivlia) l Afrikaans: Op Soek na Generaal Mannetjies Mentz by Christoffel Coetzee (Queillerie) […]
Alex Sudheim The 1999 Durban Designer Collection was a bold attempt to knock fashion from its elitist perch and teach it how to live by its wits on ground level. One of South Africa’s most prominent style events celebrated its 20th birthday this year by throwing the silky plumed bird of fashion out of the […]
FRENCH President Jacques Chirac sent a message to Moammar Gadaffi praising the Libyan leader for his efforts to bring peace to Africa, Libyan state television said on Thursday. Chirac said “France supports Colonel Gadaffi’s efforts to establish peace and stability in Africa,” the television station said. “Libya plays an important role in the Mediterranean area, […]
`Historic” is not the way most observers have described this week’s general election. The black majority, with the exception of the inhabitants of rural KwaZulu-Natal, voted overwhelmingly and predictably for the African National Congress, while the opposition parties squabbled over the crumbs of “minority” voters. But any event that at once signals the exit from […]
Chris Gordon The Angolan government published its accounts for the first time in April, revealing that it has no foreign exchange reserves. While the short-term financial position has been improved by an oil-backed loan and signing fees from new deep-water exploration areas, the longer-term position depends now on Angola’s relations to the major international financial […]
Andrew Muchineripi in Durban Soccer The moment of truth has arrived for Bafana Bafana after a 2000 African Nations Cup qualifying campaign that has proved more difficult than many supporters expected. South Africa lead the Group 4 standings with seven points entering the penultimate round this weekend followed by Gabon with six, surprise packets Mauritius […]
Ken Barris THE STOOPING OF AQUILA by Tony Spencer- Smith (Manx) Tony Spencer-Smith won the 1992 M-Net Book Prize for a teen novel, The Man Who Snarled at Flowers. The Stooping of Aquila, an “erotic thriller”, is his first for adults. The book is in the Wilbur Smith mould – villain Damion Storm is a […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week Celebrity is a major force in one’s life. Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Telly Savallas – you name it. At age 24, working in a video store while a film school student, I was ordered by huge black bodyguards to get “Mr Reynolds” a glass of water. I filled up […]
NIGERIA’S first parliament in more than 15 years opened Thursday in Abuja, electing a former state governor from southeast Nigeria to the country’s third-highest ranking constitutional position. The 109-member Senate and 360-member House of Representatives, elected in landmark polls in February, were declared opened by the clerks of the two assemblies. The upper chamber elected […]
SOUTH Africa’s Greg Emslie narrowly lost to Australian Taj Burrow in round three of the Quiksilver Pro in Cloudbreak, Tavarua Island, Fiji on Wednesday. The 22-year-old East Londoner progressed to round four of the competition behind Burrow, who is earmarked as a potential future surfing world champion. Emslie’s loss will give him an event placing […]
John Matshikiza I enter Namaqualand from the south, the day before the elections. I have left behind Malmesbury and Riebeeck-Kasteel, small towns in the north of the Western Cape that cling to another age, a hundred years ago and more. Each town radiates outward from the solid little white church at its centre. Beyond are […]
Peter Dickson Four trees planted by Govan Mbeki decades ago – before the long years on Robben Island – cast their welcome shade over the rundown house and shop in the dust bowl of Kwa- Sofutha, outside the decaying Transkei town of Idutywa. Since the windmill gave up the ghost in the 1980s and the […]
THURSDAY, 11.30AM: DESPITE a slight increase in new vehicle sales from April, May sales fell sharply compared to the corresponding period in 1997, reflecting the overall sluggishness in the economy and uncertainty in international markets. The National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of South Africa now expects that an anticipated recovery in the vehicle sales market […]
There’s retro, as in Oasis’s admiration for the Sixties, and there’s retro, as in Kula Shaker’s note-for-note reconstruction of them on their new album called Peasants, Pigs and Astronauts. This follow-up to their chart-topping debut, K, covers the same territory as before, mixing up shimmery, Hammond organ- infused psychedelia and a philosophy that boils down […]
Gavin Dudley With the recent media emphasis on global telecommunications, meaning that more people around the world are in touch more of the time, we could reasonably expect our cellphones to continue working wherever we are in the world. Sadly this is still not the case, though this is not a limitation of telecommunications technology, […]
He walked free and, with him, a nation began the walk to freedom. He became head of state, and it seemed as if patience and justice had created a new politics for the people, one without bigotry or repression.