Mercedes Sayagues While Zimbabwean MiGs drop bombs on eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, back home the independent press is bombarded with other ammunition. Last Friday, 150 toyi-toying, flag-waving, fiery youths in Zanu-PF T-shirts stormed the building of The Standard. They burnt a copy of the newspaper and threatened to torch the offices if the paper […]
John Higgins It’s embarrassing to introduce an academic superstar to a small audience in a large hall. “There may be just my theory of literature class here,” I murmured, as we hurried towards the lecture, adding silently, “all 10 of them!” Could the unfashionable topic, “Marxism at the Millennium”, draw in the crowds on this […]
President Nelson Mandela has been named joint winner of a Nigerian honour recognising exemplary leadership in Africa.
Shaun de Waal Finding Peter Mayle’s book about France, Toujours Provence, in the contemporary fiction section of a bookshop recently, I pedantically pointed out that it wasn’t fiction and should perhaps be in the travel section. “But it’s travel fiction,” said one of the assistants, clearly not swayed by my arguments. I was reminded of […]
Cameron Duodu:LETTER FROM THE NORTH When I ended my column last week with the words, “that’s another story for another day”, little did I realise that “another day” was to come so soon. For now my own king, the Okyenhene, Osagyefuo Kuntunkununku II of Akyem Abuakwa, has also “gone to Banso” – the resting place […]
Music: Malu van Leeuwen `I ain’t fucking satisfied! I ain’t satisfied!’ Keith Flint of Prodigy is not satisifed with a screaming audience of thousands, he’s not satisfied with those hands in the air showing him the finger like all good dance punks. Flint marches round the stage with his hair (what there is of it) […]
Howard Barrell:OVER A BARREL As President Nelson Mandela prepared his farewell to Parliament this week, I could not help feeling that the grand old man was not the only person deserving of applause. Every MP could also justifiably take a bow. So, too, could each South African. For Mandela’s farewell on Friday March 26, the […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Namibia’s political stage was shaken this week by the formation of a new political organisation which threathens to cut into the power base of the ruling party. Ben Ulenga, respected veteran of the governing South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo), broke ranks to form the Congress of Democrats and prepare for the general […]
Donna Block Last year I wrote about the London and Frankfurt exchanges merging and how that was going to give European investors bigger and better trading opportunities. Well, forget it. Then I gave you the low-down on lots of other European exchanges that were poised to take off. Forget that too. You can forget it […]
Lisa Buckingham A new equities index, which will include the world’s largest and most international companies, is to start in London later this year. FTSE International, the organisation that operates Britain’s share indices, is about to sign a contract to run the new benchmark, which has the working title Global Multinational Index. A series of […]
THE South African Under 19 rugby team got their 1999 IRB/Fira Junior World Championship campaign off to a winning start on Wednesday night in Newport, Wales, with a hard fought 17-12 victory over Newport Juniors. Wing Jacques Booysen, centre Jean de Villiers and lock Louis Holtzhausen scored the sides’ tries while talented flyhalf Daniel Philander […]
AMANDA COETZER is out of the Lipton Championships in Florida, after American Serena Williams beat the ninth seeded South African 6-4 6-0 on Wednesday. Williams now faces Martina Hingis in the event’s semifinals, after the Swiss top seed crushed Austria’s Barbara Schett 6-1 6-1 in 42 minutes. The 18-year-old Hingis has not dropped a set […]
Greer van Zyl Scientists at the largest malaria conference ever held in Africa, which took place in Durban last week, were upbeat about forming alliances to fight malaria on the continent. >From humble beginnings in Dakar two years ago, the Multinational Initiative against Malaria (MIM) has burgeoned into a global movement aimed at controlling the […]
Peter Dickson Within a day of being spirited away overnight, Port Elizabeth’s stolen Sophakama High School turned up all over the place after a wild donkey chase in the city’s Kwazakhele township. Port Elizabeth community policing board chair Vuyisile Njikelana was on his way to work in Motherwell last Wednesday when he spotted a donkey […]
Wonder Hlongwa A Nigerian syndicate defrauding Durban businesspeople and professionals has been identified by the police, and three of its members have been arrested. The suspects had, on several occasions, approached wealthy people and offered to double their money through various schemes. After raiding the suspects’ house, detectives recovered a large amount of counterfeit notes. […]
Natalie Angier is a biologist with a poet’s gifts. Her previous book, The Beauty of the Beastly, redeemed the despised denizens of the animal underworld, the cockroach, the dung beetle, with wonderfully vivid presentations of their functions and evolutions. In Woman: An Intimate Geography, she charts the marvels and miseries of half of our own […]
Emeka Nwandiko Forget about a rematch of boxing heavyweights Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield taking place on South African soil. A far weightier contest takes place this week at the Old Edwardian Society in Houghton – a unification bout between the current Draughts World Champion and the world champion for morabaraba. Ron King flew to […]
Deon Potgieter Boxing There’s no stopping former three-time world cham- pion Thulani “Sugarboy” Malinga. After “breaking” his hand on Saturday in a world unification bout in Denmark, Malinga, the World Boxing Federation’s (WBF)super middle-weight world champion, was forced to withdraw in the 10th round of the fight and relinquished his title to his opponent. Matt […]
A NIGERIAN herdsman who discovered an 8500-year-old canoe has asked his local government to build him a house next to where the ancient relic is kept, the News Agency of Nigeria said on Friday. Malam Yau (59) appealed to the Yobe state government to provide him with a place to live as he received a […]
The pilot radioed Luanda repeatedly: “Permission to climb; permission to climb higher.” It was the first clear indication of war in the provinces. The small Beechcraft plane, heavily laden, was struggling to its maximum air height to avoid possible Unita missiles as it flew over the city of Malange. Luanda had been subdued, but calm […]
BOWLS South Africa (BSA) said on Thursday it had banned Neil Carroll until August 31 next year for an anti-Semitic slur, overturning a lighter sentence handed down by the Central Gauteng Bowls Association. Carroll, who allegedly joked that he did not want to “play with that Jewish boy”, was suspended for two years by the […]
WEST Rand police said on Friday that they have arrested eight suspects in connection with the robbery at the Roodepoort Cascades Shopping Mall which left a police officer and a suspected robber dead and several people wounded. The shoot-out took place earlier with an armed gang which ambushed security guards at the mall. Police confronted […]
David Gough in Nairobi and Martin Kettle in Washington A California lawyer who was suspended two years ago for “ambulance chasing” tactics is spearheading a series of legal claims – some against the United States State Department – by hundreds of Kenyan victims of last year’s US embassy bombing in Nairobi. According to some estimates, […]
A LEADING forensic scientist has verified that a note claiming Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has “information which could be the end of the ANC” is indeed her handwriting, Democratic Party leader Tony Leon said on Thursday. Leon and the DP challenged Madikizela-Mandela to come forward with the information and also challenged Deputy President Thabo Mbeki to “clear […]
Poverty and short-sighted planning are hindering effective and permanent service delivery to rural communities, writes Charlene Smith In the rush to deliver, government departments are ignoring the fact that many rural communities are unable to pay for the services provided, which is leading to the collapse of projects around the country. Poverty and planning that […]
CAPTAIN SOLO, controversial radio personality in the October 28 1997 Zambian coup attempt, died after being shot in the attempted coup’s aftermath, defence lawyer Sacika Sitwala told the Lusaka High Court yesterday. Sitwala denied that any of the accused in current proceedings was the mysterious Captain Solo, saying the only evidence the prosecution advanced about […]
Now that the touching Allan Boesak tragicomedy is grinding down, the political apologists have again been hard at work, trying to explain it all away. Of the more occult deconstructions have been those emanating from that master spinner of words, Mr Thabo Mbeki. It was from Mbeki’s office that the first truly imaginative Boesak mitigation […]
Michael Brooks A new Dude could do away with city slickers. Instead of expensive consultants to interpret the terrifyingly complex modelling programs used by many businesses, the job may be done by software being developed at Leeds University, United Kingdom. Dude (decision-support user documentation environment) gives other applications a user- friendly interface and produces “active” […]
Andy Colquhoun Rugby There is a rhythm to the rugby season by which we followers of the game can measure out the advance of each year. The pungent scent of braaing meat hanging in the air of the Pretoria suburb of Sunnyside can only mean that the Blue Bulls are once more on the rampage […]
A few years ago, I attended a lecture by a Canadian constitutional lawyer, David Beatty. Briefly, his thesis was that the most important task for a judge in a constitutional state was to balance the rights guaranteed in the Constitution with the provision that such rights may be limited by government action. In short, the […]
The latest chapter in her continuing fascination with pathology, psychosis, sick humour and sleazy soap opera is Shireen James’s new play Viagra Falls. James is the writer/director of When Suicides Meet, a meditation upon the inner torment of Sylvia Plath, and Alice Threw The Looking Glass, a harrowing and gruesomely comic portrayal of a young […]
At first glance, wars in Southern Africa and Yugoslavia have little in common. Barely a decade ago American and Soviet strategists might have linked them to their global rivalry and to the risk of nuclear war. Today such conflicts are isolated, with external involvement responding to a new diplomatic drumbeat of regional solutions for regional […]