Transforming human tragedy into humorous – or humane – entertainment is a daunting and, some may say, dubious task. It didn’t work when Anne Frank and her family were turned into a musical. But it did when Roberto Benigni took similar anti-Semitic subject matter and turned it into a mass- appeal movie. Perhaps the success […]
Moses Qomoyi Right to Reply It is not at all clear what Ted Baumann and Diana Mitlin are attempting to prove in “The unpleasant truth of housing delivery” (Letters, May 21 to 27). Although their article appears to be intended as a critique of housing delivery, it develops into a general attack on South Africa’s […]
Tara Turkington Northern Cape Premier Manne Dipico is confident he will be back in his office the week after next. At 40, the country’s youngest premier is charming in a down-to-earth and engaging way. “Take me as Manne, man,” he says with a flick of his wrist, “I’m just Manne.” Dipico stayed the five-year distance […]
DAVID SHAPSHAK, Johannesburg | Thursday 5.00pm. Gary Teichmann has retained his Springbok captaincy in a 32-man squad named by coach Nick Mallett on Thursday. The number eight and Natal skipper missed the last four weeks of the Super 12 with a knee injury – which precipitated a captaincy scare. Also named is another key player […]
A COMMERCIAL Bank of Malawi official has said that local and international investors are taking a “wait and see” approach to the June 15 elections. Fred Kanjo, the bank’s head of economic research, sayd investors have adopted a more cautious stance before making any firm investment decisions. Malawi has experienced a growth rate of about […]
Rian Malan Crossfire Before we take off the gloves here, let us pay tribute to Piers Pigou for having the courage to defend the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s finding with regard to the infamous Boipatong massacre, or at least attempt to deflect attention from its real nature (A Second Look, May 21 to 27). It […]
A new crisis, a new premier, but firms enriched by the end of communism go on salting cash away, writes Simon Pirani Russian prime ministers come and go – Sergei Stepashin is the fourth in 14 months – but the flight of capital is constant. It flows through semi-legal and illegal channels into assets denominated […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The management of the Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) has agreed to pay compensation to victims of vicious assaults by the protection services on the campus. RAU management has bowed to pressure from black students, who have called on the Human Rights Commission (HRC) to probe human rights violations against them. Last […]
We talk of “subcultures” in a positive tone, expressing the potential of a kaleidoscope multi-culture to be vibrant and stimulating rather than its danger to come apart at the seams of its component parts. Difference does not equal opposition, and there’s a place in the sun for everyone. An intriguing visual microcosm of the complex […]
John Matshikiza With the Lid Off Isn’t there a fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm in which a young lad goes off into the world to seek his fortune, admonishing his old mother, who is not very bright, to make sure that she always locks the door securely when she goes out? And doesn’t the […]
Stephen Gray FRAGILE HERITAGE: A ROCK ART FIELD GUIDE by David Lewis-Williams and Geoffrey Blundell (Witwatersrand University Press) The surface of the rock shelter overlooking the offices of this newspaper is blank these days; the bright gallery of San paintings that celebrated how the country had been for millennia has dimmed and eroded off. On […]
Cameron Duodu Letter from the North The furore in South Africa over the right of the editor of the Financial Mail, Peter Bruce, to determine what political party the paper should support in the forthcoming election will amaze readers from the north. You see, we are not at all used to freedom of the press. […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week I remember taking my first cap of LSD (it was only a quarter) in 1982 when I saw Steven Lisberger’s Tron, which had Jeff Bridges as a computer programmer caught up in a game. The drugs and, for that time, dazzling special effects seemed to cancel everything out. I […]
Donna Block Share World They say variety is the spice of life. So if you’re looking to spice up your investment portfolio, warrants could be just the ticket. Warrants are a right to buy or sell a specific asset at a specific price for a designated period of time. They make it possible for investors […]
again A Super 12 rugby victory has once more slipped away from SouthAfrica. Andy Capostagno looks at some of the reasons for the failure Prepare the cold soup, it’s an all-New Zealand final. The Super 12 has again eluded a South African team, just when it seemed that the Stormers offered the best chance since […]
FACup Andrew Muchineripi Soccer For FA Cup read Bob Save Super Bowl, for Manchester United read Kaizer Chiefs, for Newcastle United read SuperSport United. The Red Devils defeated the Magpies 2-0 on the green turf of Wembley last Saturday and it would come as no surprise if the Amakhosi triumph by the same margin this […]
Howard Barrell Over a Barrel A senior member of our new security and intelligence apparatus, who has professional frustrations the like of which could give a hippopotamus anorexia, has begun sounding more cheerful recently. “Why?” I asked him a few weeks ago. “Because,” he said, “things are going to change. We are getting ourselves a […]
By the time the next issue of this newspaper hits the streets our second general election will be over, Thabo Mbeki will be president-elect (as opposed to designate), the African National Congress will be the ruling party (probably with a two-thirds majority, as well as with KwaZulu-Natal) and many of our readers will no doubt […]
Doris Lessing joined the communist party in Rhodesia, left two children to go to England, and then explored mysticism. Emma Brockes finds the iconoclastic author has a talent to explore, move on and surprise It was in a caf in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, that Doris Lessing received her first, rather clumsily delivered death threat. This […]
Aids was a topic this week on SAfm’s morning talk show, hosted by Tim Modise. Donald G McNeil Jnr responds to some of the issues raised Dear Tim Modise, Iam the New York Times reporter who wrote the story about chimpanzees that are the source of the Aids virus being shot for the pot in […]
Matthew Krouse Down the tube It would be dangerous to flippantly dismiss Felicia Mabuza-Suttle’s current attack on evil as a crowd-pulling attempt at sensationalism. But in the way she presents herself, Mabuza-Suttle gives one no choice. The first part of her double show on child abuse, broadcast on SABC1 on May 24, was a case […]
Alex Clark THE HOURS by Michael Cunningham (Fourth Estate) Michael Cunningham’s new novel – winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction -may have been inspired by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway (working title: The Hours) but it quickly slips free of these moorings to become a far more daring, imaginative project than might be implied by […]
DEXTER CRUEZ, Colombo | Thursday 11.00am. SRI Lankans blasted their former cricketing heroes on Thursday for their dismal showing at the World Cup in England and said it is time captain Arjuna Ranatunga resigned. Sri Lanka, the shock winners of the 1996 World Cup, lost a crucial match against India by 157 runs on Wednesday, […]
Makhosini Nkosi The Inkatha Freedom Party could suffer a serious setback in KwaZulu-Natal if the African National Congress presses ahead with efforts to have the election in the town of Nongoma declared not free and fair. Senior KwaZulu-Natal ANC sources said the party intends bringing an application to the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC)to have the […]
Haroon Bhorat One of the key dilemmas facing the government is to eradicate, or at least reduce, poverty. The first step is to understand which are the most affected groups. In the labour market there are three groups which together explain more than 80% of the poverty in South Africa. They are unemployed people, domestic […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kampala | Friday 11.20am SOME 40 Libyan soldiers have flown into Uganda — uninvited — in a “premature” bid to impose peace in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, a Ugandan minister said on Friday. The Libyan foreign ministry announced on Thursday that “Libyan forces have arrived in Uganda to form the vanguard […]
Charlotte Denny Uganda has added its voice to calls for an overhaul of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) heavily indebted poor countries initiative (HIPC). In a letter to British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, Ugandan Finance Minister Gerald Ssendaula called for speedier debt relief. Currently, countries must spend six years on […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 4.00pm. A FORMER leader of the Democratic Party and veteran of liberal politics in South Africa, Zach de Beer, died at age 70 in Cape Town on Thursday after suffering a stroke. De Beer died at his Cape Town home, long-time colleague Colin Eglin said. De Beer quit politics […]
Peter Makurube For the next two weeks, Johannesburg city will be in feelgood mode because jazz pianist Pat Matshikiza is in town. His sojourn begins on Friday night (May 28) at the Bassline and ends next weekend when he heads for Kippies in the Newtown Cultural Precinct. Hopefully, Matshikiza’s presence in the city will rejuvenate […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday 8.00pm ONLY 770 votes were cast abroad on Wednesday, preliminary figures released by the Independent Electoral Commission on Thursday reveal. Chief electoral officer Mandla Mchunu said total is a preliminary one as not all figures have reached the IEC yet, and exclude diplomats. Mchunu said he is not overly concerned […]
WEDNESDAY, 1.30PM: SOUTH Africa’s women’s hockey team lost their final pool match at the World Cup against Australia in Utrecht, but gave the girls from down under quite a runaround in the match, which ended at 5-2. The score may look like a walkover, but the Australians had to pull out all the stops to […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni An attempt to broker peace between two notorious Western Cape gangs by taking them to the mountains was sabotaged a week before it could start. The National Peace Accord Trust had arranged to take the rival gangster groups on a “transformation trail” in the Drakensberg in KwaZulu-Natal last week. The aim […]