THURSDAY, 11.30AM: KAIZER Chiefs beat Qwa-Qwa Stars 2-0 in a ho-hum performance at the Johannesburg Stadium on Wednesday night. Chiefs were far from impressive, but still won the match in their usual display of mediocre but effective soccer. Chiefs looked far from the club most likely to snatch the Castle Premiership victory from Mamelodi Sundowns […]
Ivor Powell Six truckloads of weapons delivered to Inkatha Freedom Party strongman Phillip Powell represent only a fraction of the arsenal distributed by former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock to agents of the apartheid regime. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)is in possession of evidence that in advance of the 1994 elections, enough weapons to […]
THE Judicial Service Commission has backed high court judge Edwin Cameron to fill a vacancy on the Constitutional Court, according to a report in Business Day. The majority commission view in favour of Cameron, who disclosed his HIV-positive status this week, will be communicated to President Nelson Mandela, who will appoint a judge to fill […]
A UNITED Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation report on the food outlook for Africa has described the situation in the Great Lakes region as “precarious”. Efforts to increase food production are hampered by “persistent insecurity, sporadic violence and bad weather,” FAO said in a news release on Wednesday. In Burundi, it said food difficulties are […]
Matthew Krouse Down the tube These nights I don’t feel much pressed to go out, looking for something I can very well experience in my lounge. With music playing on television through the night, I can read my books, do my drugs, make my love and drink myself to death without interruption, to some of […]
Apartheid was essentially about exploitation; autocratic rule by a so-called “elite” who used the mechanism of racism to kept themselves in power while guzzling piggishly at the fat of the land. The removal of that virus of racial oligarchy is what the people of South Africa of all races, religions, creeds and sexual orientations thought […]
TWO good samaritans who tried to help a hijack victim were themselves hijacked as they pulled over to the side of Impala road in Roodepoort on Tuesday afternoon. West Rand police say Gustav van Aswegen stopped his car and Theunis Holtzhauzen his bakkie to help Johannes Swart, who was standing on the roadside after being […]
Early in the millennium, boxing’s premier title will return to Africa, writes Gavin Evans Think of the world heavyweight champion, and it’s big Americans who come to mind. From Jack Johnson to Evander Holyfield, all the great ones have been drawn from the south and east flanks of the United States. In fact, for only […]
Michael Finch Athletics If Elana Meyer was looking for a sympathetic ear after her disappointing London Marathon performance last Sunday, she’d better not look to Gwen Griffiths. The newly crowned South African marathon champion was far from impressed by the performance of Meyer and believes the star needs a major rethink of her strategies. Meyer, […]
PAUL EJIME, Lagos | Friday 11.00am. FORMER Bafana Bafana coach Phillipe Troussier says Japan, the first Asian side to play in the World Youth Championship final, can beat Spain on Saturday to lift the trophy, said former Bafana Bafna coach Philippe Troussier on Friday. “We respect Spain, but we can still win,” warned Troussier, who […]
In 1835, the Xhosa King Hintsa was killed at Nqabara, near Willowvale in the Eastern Cape. The amaXhosa say that the king was treacherously cut down while escaping from a British army camp, where he had been negotiating terms of surrender after half a century of continuous war against the invading power. The British side […]
The great bar-coded ID saga has finally ended. Kortbroek and Tony got a klap. And we can all (if we have our bar-coded ID) go and vote on June 2. The lawyers made a fortune and political parties have been taught that disputes of a political nature are best dealt with politically and not legally. […]
Lyn Gardner Last month a little-known theatre group called Frantic Assembly played Singapore’s Zouk Club, described by dance guru Judge Jules as “the best club on the planet”. When they last played London, in the informal surroundings of the BAC theatre, the crowd looked like the overspill from one of the capital’s trendier nightclubs. That […]
The father of African film, Ousmane Sembene, who is in South Africa developing a new movie about the effects of colonialism on Africa, spoke to Bafana Khumalo Many an African liberation fighter has made the journey to the land of the Russians, to learn the art of shooting. So has Ousmane Sembene, the Senegalese novelist […]
Deon Potgieter Boxing South African boxing administration, suffering from allegations of favouritism and vested interests, is failing to transform itself as ordered by the government – which stepped in to solve the infighting. Minister of Sport Steve Tshwete set up an interim boxing commission to restructure the sport’s administration when the South African National Boxing […]
Hunting’s ethical custodians caused unethical carnage in Mozambique, reports Dave Larsen Top officials of Safari Club International (SCI), the United States-based international hunting organisation which sets ethical standards for the industry, are being investigated after they allegedly took part in an illegal elephant hunt in northern Mozambique. The hunt took place in contravention of a […]
Sarah Ryle At last an economics professor has done something useful. He has worked out that punters who chose the six least popular numbers from the British National Lottery’s list of 49 stand to make an average weekly return of 11% on their stakes. The magic numbers – 36, 41, 46, 47, 48 and 49 […]
Robert Heller Twenty wealthy Americans have just made off with booty exceeding a whole year’s net profit for Merrill Lynch, the world’s largest securities firm. You don’t need the FBI to track down the suspects. They head the 20 top companies, from Walt Disney to General Electric. Their combined salaries, bonuses and long-term compensation (mostly […]
Astronomers are excited about the discovery of the first multiple-planet solar system outside our own, writes Aaron Nicodemus Announcement of a discovery of a multiple-planet system reminiscent of our own solar system has created excitement throughout the world, offering the first suggestion that planetary systems like our own are abundant. The three planets, which rotate […]
Casinos aim to capture 8% of the total disposable income of gamblers. David le Page explains how they work out the odds Out at the unsetting Sundome Casino on a Monday night, there’s no shortage of willing cash-cow customers hanging round the tables and lining up at the slots like Pavlovian dogs waiting for bells, […]
>From Shopping and Fucking to Fugard in New York, director Yael Farber has been on a roller coaster ride, and she’s not about to get off, writes Charl Blignaut `It seems like insomnia isn’t just a Jo’burg thing,” says Yael Farber’s too-awake voice down the line from New York. It’s the middle of the night […]
THE United Democratic Movement won its first by-election on Wednesday. The UDM’s Frederick Konstabel beat the African National Congress’s candidate by 258 votes to 148 in a by-election in Zoar in the Western Cape, UDM spokesman Dr Johna Steenkamp said on Thursday. The by-election was the third contested by the UDM. The New National Party […]
Jack Schofield Three of the world’s best-known companies – Microsoft, America OnLine (AOL) and Yahoo! – are locked in a billion-dollar battle to give you something for nothing: a “portal”, or gateway to the Internet, where Web wanderers can start when they go online. Portals attract millions of users, and consequently lots of advertising. With […]
Ann Eveleth South Africa’s “other half” – the rural poor – will descend on the birthplace of the African National Congress this weekend to thrash out a new charter demanding their fair share of the economic pie. Delegates from rural communities across the country will meet at the national Rural Convention in Bloemfontein to draft […]
ENGLISH is likely to be the sole language of record soon in South African courts. Business Day reports that the Judicial Service Commission is set to issue a directive to high courts that English be the language of record, but that the courts “encourage people to use any one of the 11 official languages”. The […]
Niki Barker The already cash-strapped KwaZulu-Natal Nature Conservation Service faces further financial stress, with the disclosure this week that a considerable sum of money deposited with the embattled New Republic Bank (NRB) in Durban has been frozen as a result of NRB being placed under receivership. It is claimed that the conservation service deposited R48- […]
ECOMOG, the Nigerian-led intervention force fighting rebels in Sierra Leone, on Thursday began to clear a stretch of highway linking the Freetown peninsula to the eastern interior. With the recapture last Friday of Songo, a town 45km east of the capital, Ecomog troops have begun moving along the volatile road toward Masiaka, where rebels of […]
Howard Barrell THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THABO MBEKI by Adrian Hadland and Jovial Rantao (Zebra) Our political institutions in South Africa are immature and largely untested. Our system of proportional representation places parliamentary seats more within the gift of party bosses than of bodies of voters. And internal African National Congress processes allow for […]
In 1990, the world’s economic centre of gravity was Tokyo. Share and property prices were in the stratosphere, Japanese banking, electronics, automotive and steel companies were all-victorious, and the economy seemed armour-plated. Yet the true miracle was not Japan’s economy but the delusion on which it was based – a gigantic asset-price bubble whose explosion […]
Andrew Kay The 25-year-old Johannesburg Youth Orchestra (JYO), which had its annual subsidy cut without warning last year, has formed the Orchestra Company to raise funds through the private sector for the various youth orchestras affiliated to it. Judging by their full concert schedule, and the enthusiastic reception they receive at recitals, the strategies seem […]
Respected journalist Max du Preez was axed this week by the SABC. This is his version of the events of the past 10 days “He who is scared of a hyena’s howling, is he who has smeared himself with fat” – old Shona proverb. Forgive me, I have just discovered a book on Shona proverbial […]
A decade after Lockerbie, the West has at last got its men: two Libyans who London and Washington say planted the bomb that killed 270 people. But the case is not that open-and- shut, says Russell Warren Howe More than 10 years after the fatal crash of a Pan Am airliner on the Scottish village […]