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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Robert Kitson Rugby England have a new captain, whatever the result of the Rugby Football Union’s (RFU) inquiry into allegations that Lawrence Dallaglio took and supplied illegal drugs may be. Martin Johnson, the captain of British club side Leicester, will lead his country on the forthcoming tour of Australia and the subsequent World Cup with […]
Phillip vanNiekerk >From the Editor’s Desk Back in 1987 I helped a friend who was standing for the Labour Party in the northern England seat of Grimsby in the election of that year. The constituency organiser was a man whose day job was a garbage collector for the council and he had a grimy set […]
RSI may be caused by confusing the brain’s electrical systems. To rewire it, your fingers need a discriminating sense of touch. So, Roger Dobson asks, anyone for a game of Braille poker? Forget painkillers, physiotherapy and surgery – playing poker with Braille playing cards may be the way to rid ourselves of the growing plague […]
Neil Manthorp in Amsterdam In time South Africa’s cricketers may reflect on the decision taken three weeks ago not to read any newspapers in England as one of the better ones during the World Cup campaign. Despite performances so compelling that not even English journalists could be disparaging, their coverage remains steadfastly tinged. The prevalent […]
Brave Over the last year and a half, Jann Turner has visited Eugene de Kock in jail several times. She found him angry and haunted `Eugene wants to see you. He says he doesn’t bear any grudges.” The call came from a lawyer I’d met during my work on SABC’s Truth Commission Special Report. Eugene […]
The David Gleason Column Now that the euphoric Mandela years of transformation are about to become history, the hard part will begin. The imperative for the next president will be to deliver growth. And that, given the bizarre policy actions adopted by the Reserve Bank, is being made more difficult daily. Governor Chris Stals is […]
Aaron Nicodemus A Joubert Park clinic nearly killed a pregnant woman last week during an illegal abortion. The abortion was performed on a 32-year-old Soweto woman who was seven- and-a-half-months pregnant, nearly four months past the legal limit. The woman was sent in a metered taxi from the Hillcrest Family Planning Clinic on May 13 […]
South African art history, such as it is, is marked by a pattern of selective amnesias and cyclical returns. Remembering Legae, the Goodman Gallery’s homage to this artist, who died earlier this year, is a return, if you like, that offers a fascinating insight into that history, a still point in which to consider the […]
Nashen Moodley Political parties in KwaZulu-Natal are making last-ditch efforts to woo a largely apathetic Indian electorate, using remarkably similar strategies. Opposition parties are attempting to convince the Indian population that it is a marginalised minority and are fuelling insecurity within a community already fearful of the triumvirate of crime, affirmative action and Africanism. Indian […]
Nobody will ever mistake Manchester United for anything other than the product of Alex Ferguson’s irresistible will. The team who, on Wednesday, attempted to return the championship of Europe to Old Trafford after an absence of 31 years are so identifiably Ferguson’s that the mark he has put on them might have been made with […]
movies Emir Kustirica talks to Fiachra Gibbons about politics, his art – and the war When he’s not brawling on the streets of Belgrade with men who make Arkan look like Mary Poppins, challenging people to duels, or playing in Serbian rock bands, Emir Kusturica is winning the Palme D’Or at Cannes. No other director […]
Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress are set to romp home next Wednesday, June 2, with about 70% of the vote – well over the two-thirds majority that excites ANC supporters and horrifies the opposition. The turnout across the country should be high, averaging out at about 90% of registered voters. Apart from the […]
Loose cannon Robert Kirby With apologies to Christopher Logue I shall vote for the ANC because Felicia Mabuza-Suttle says it will improve my image. I shall vote for the ANC because 65 murders a day isn’t nearly enough. I shall vote for the ANC because the ANC loyally supports Allen Boesak in his many Christian […]
Barbara Ellen Body Language Not so long ago, the world seemed to be full of women only too eager to invest in shop-bought tits. These days, it seems to be more about downsizing. In a nod to Amazons hacking their right breasts off because they interfered with shooting arrows, a British policewoman explained last week […]
Neil Coleman Right to Reply `It’s the economy, stupid!” This famous adage from Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign is quoted in the Mail & Guardian’s election coverage last week to correctly raise a concern about the absence of intelligent debate in our elections around core economic issues. Unfortunately, neither Howard Barrell (“Making an art of […]
Gary Younge talks to South Africans who are thinking of moving to greener pastures At the entrance to the Sandton library, John Gambarana is doing a roaring trade in fear. With the help of an overhead projector and a few corny jokes the emigration consultant has taken just one hour to craft a psychological narrative […]
all In a recent edition of the American Bar Journal, the problem of race in the legal profession received comprehensive analysis. Black lawyers speak of glass ceilings in white legal firms, black jurors refer to the manner in which they are distrusted by white counsel and black candidates for judicial office report on significant racial […]
Deon Potgieter Boxing The cards will be stacked against Lehlo “Hands of Stone” Ledwaba at the Carousel, Pretoria, on Saturday night. He’ll be stepping into the ring against former World Boxing Association bantamweight world champion John Michael Johnson hoping to become the third South African this decade to hold the International Boxing Federation’s junior featherweight […]
A PETROL bomb has exploded at the house of a leader of South Africa’s United Democratic Front in Nyanga, a black suburb of Cape Town, police said on Wednesday. Nobody was injured in the attack on Erasmus Ndakane’s home in the area where five politicians have been killed in the run-up to South Africa’s June […]
MORE than five million Malawians have registered to vote in general elections on June 15, the electoral commission said on Wednesday. Chairman James Kalaile said the voters represent 102% of the projected number of eligible Malawians. Voter registration has been hit by a number of problems, causing it to be extended twice and forcing a […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 7.15pm AN election rally by opposition United Democratic Movement president Bantu Holomisa was disrupted at the University of Cape Town on Thursday by a rowdy group of African National Congress-supporting youths. About 1000 rowdy ANC supporters almost took charge of the rally, jeering Holomisa when he tried to speak, […]
SOUTH African national under-23 coach Shakes Mashaba wants total commitment from his young Bafana Bafana for their first leg Olympic qualifier against Togo in Lome on June 13. “We will focus on tactical and technical work before we leave for Togo and will only play against local teams during our preparations for two weeks,” Mashaba […]
A TENTH neighbour of Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi has become a crime victim, justifying claims the Andrew Murray Road in Bryanston is “crime street”. The latest victim is Andre van Heuvel, whose house was the second robbed this week. No arrests have been made in connection wth the break-in.
AFRICAN National Congress stalwart and former Rivonia trialist Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada was on Wednesday granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Kathrada applied for amnesty in respect of charges of sabotage that led to him to be sentenced to life imprisonment on June 12, 1964. The TRC announced, however, that Kathrada was not granted […]
FORMER Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar has turned down an offer to coach the newly-formed Cape Town Ajax next season, officials said on Sunday. The decision comes despite the 42-year-old Zimbabwean’s remarkable achievement in taking the newly-promoted Seven Stars to fifth place in the South African premier league on Sunday. It was the best finish for […]
TUESDAY, 6.30PM: A CONTINGENT of seven South Africans will compete in the 1998 African Weightlifting Championships in Algiers from the beginning of June. The competition will be unique in that female weightlifters will also be allowed to compete. The inclusion of two women, Bronwyn Gertse and Loriaan Daniels, in the South African side may be […]
THE East London magistrate’s court will on Friday pass sentence on former national pace bowler Makhaya Ntini, who was in April convicted of rape. A mandatory ten-year jail sentence for rape in terms of new laws would signal the end of his meteoric rise to stardom from a rural townships outside King William’s Town. Ntini’s […]