AFRICAN National Congress members disgruntled with Mpumalanga Premier Mathews Phosa’s leadership made personal submissions to the party’s president,Thabo Mbeki, during his low-key three-day visit to the province earlier this week. The series of meetings, initially planned as a review of the ANC’s organisational status, reportedly included a series of one-on-one meetings between Mbeki and unhappy […]
Point for point, the two measure up, but the raw statistics are deceptive. What should be clear is that we are not really comparing like with like. Britannica is a text-based leviathan, a mass of information, some of it rather long in the tooth, sometimes too detailed, but often impressive in its scope, though making […]
Andrew Worsdale The Siege was the number-one box office hit in South Africa this week and has grossed R1 979 136. But many Muslim organisations would like the movie banned. Director Edward Zwick’s thriller has been causing controversy around the world. The film revolves around an FBI agent attempting to root out an Arab-American “terrorist” […]
Donna Block Share World I have a New Year’s confession to make: my husband and I are personally responsible for keeping the world economy ticking over. This small feat has been accomplished by madcap, non- stop spending. You name it, we’re buying it with cash, cheques and credit cards. We are spending in shops, malls […]
AN investigation called by National Police Commissioner George Fivaz into allegations of perjury against Western Cape Assistant Commissioner Adam Blauw has been completed, Fivaz’s office announced on Thursday. The documentation has been forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions and will be released for discussion after the director has considered the matter.
A REPORT into the August bombings of two United States embassies in East Africa has faulted several government agencies for failing to properly assess the security threat. The report, released by the US state department on Friday, found that the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam had not been provided with adequate security against […]
FORMER European soccer champions Ajax Amsterdam will form an affiliated squad in Cape Town, the Dutch club said on Thursday. Ajax Cape Town will be set up to play in the South African Premier Soccer League, the club said in a statement. The Dutch side, for whom Benni McCarthy plays, is training in South Africa […]
Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH In its January 6 issue, The Washington Post reported: “United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has obtained what he regards as convincing evidence that UN arms inspectors helped collect eavesdropping intelligence used in United States efforts to undermine the Iraqi regime, according to confidants who said he is deeply […]
IN a case of coals to Newcastle, buyers from Saudi Arabia are interested in acquiring 141 camels to be auctioned off by the Botswana police next month. Camels have been used for patrolling the Kalahari desert since last century. The Botswana police is cutting back its camel inventory from 171 ships of the desert to […]
Linda Chisholm:A SECOND LOOK If the matric exam did not exist, South Africans would have to invent it. As one of our major social institutions, the matric exam results each year signal whether we are succeeding or failing as a nation. This year’s results were no different. Whether they are a major or a minor […]
THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON by Jane Smiley (Flamingo) Jane Smiley is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, and in her new book she returns to rural life in the United States’s Midwest. This time, though, she goes back in time to the years leading up to the […]
FRANSCOIS-XAVIER HARISPE, Abidjan | Friday 9.00pm. THE fragile one-day-old ceasefire in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown crumbled on Friday as rebel insurgents intensified their attacks against positions held by the pro-government Nigerian-led intervention force, Ecomog. Information was scarce on what areas of Freetown are in rebel or Ecomog control, as most phone lines are down […]
THE National Party has lost its appeal against a decision by the press ombudsman that the Mail & Guardian was justified in publishing details of a police investigation into its leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk. The article, NP leader in bizarre sex probe reported that a Western Cape criminal, John Hermanus, had laid charges of sodomy […]
LACK of funds, textbooks and teachers has prevented Tanzania from effectively carrying out Aids education among students, an official with the Ministry of Education and Culture has said on Friday. The Daily Mail newspaper reported that that a curriculum for Aids was introduced in 1990 but did not reach class rooms until last year due […]
against Aids David Gough in Dar es Salaam Mashaka is the best-known truck driver in Tanzania, and his exploits are famous. He spends most of his time on the roads of East Africa, rarely sees his wife and has a girlfriend in every town. Mashaka became ill a few weeks ago and Tanzanians are holding […]
Chiara Carter Moves by a South African company to create a free trade zone on a tiny island off the West Coast of Africa have been slammed by environmentalists. West African Development Corporation (Wadco) has won a contract to operate a free trade zone stretching across a third of the island of Principe – a […]
Belinda Beresford and David Shapshak The Department of Health has reassigned the posts of more experienced hospital medical officers to make way for inexperienced interns for its community service programme. Senior doctors charge that funding cutbacks have meant that rather than creating new posts in areas deprived of medical care, the community service plan for […]
Chiara Carter and Marianne Merten In the mythology of the Cape Flats’s Americans gang, the six white and seven red lines on the stars and stripes flag represent crisp banknotes stained in blood. Criminologist Don Pinnock says this representation, integrated into the gang’s initiation ritual, illustrates key elements of Cape gangsterism – money, violence and […]
Adam Mars-Jones HEAVY WATER AND OTHER STORIES by Martin Amis (Jonathan Cape) Without the story State of England, this would be a dismaying volume to come from the champion British fiction writer of his generation. Unlike his tightly themed previous collection, Einstein’s Monsters, this one brings together early work (two stories from the Seventies, one […]
Emma Forrest First Person Among the strangest remakes in recent years is Cruel Intentions, a teen reworking of Dangerous Liaisons. Just what the world needs: a just-17 version of one of the great pieces of Western literature. It seems like a pathetic concept, the point being that you simply don’t play those sort of cynical, […]
A NIGERIAN newspaper says the bodies of 25 soldiers serving with the West African intervention force Ecomog that were killed in Sierra Leone were returned to Nigeria in secret and buried. The newspaper said the bodies were flown into the country on Monday night and buried at the army cemetery inside Ojo military barracks in […]
Ferial Haffajee The exhibition is not linear in any way, but is instead divided into 12 positions. The major positions include: Fortification: From the first one built at the Cape in 1652, architecture in South Africa has been characterised by a series of forts. Later, forts in the Eastern Cape were constructed to stake the […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week American independent films have that intelligent edge that has been missing from Hollywood productions since the late 1970s. Not even Francis Ford Coppola has made a really decent movie since Apocalypse Now, and that was in 1979. Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66, which opens at cinemas this week, is a […]
Andy Capostagno Cricket And so it’s 4-0 and pretty soon now, highveld summer weather permitting, it will be 5-0. We have already run out of excuses for the poor performances of the West Indies and gone through adjectives with which to describe them. About the only thing we haven’t done is to take a serious […]
CAMPAIGNING for the second round of Nigeria’s elections wound up in on Friday, with warnings that violence may mar the process. Millions of voters go to the polls on Saturday to elect governors and assemblies for the 36 states of the Nigerian federation. This following local government elections in December. Next up will be the […]
INTERNATIONAL credit rating agency, Moody’s Investor Services, has reconfirmed South Africa’s investment grade status and upgraded the outlook for the rating from negative to stable, the finance department announced on Thursday. The department said that Moody’s had indicated it is concerned about the rate of economic growth and the low level of employment creation but […]
Friday night: Alex Sudheim The water in the bath has turned cold, clammy and grey. I’m blissfully asleep when violent explosions rip through the silent night. In an instant I’m on my feet, skidding dangerously in the slimy tub and sending swampy waves slopping over the edge. Clinging to the towel rail, I peer out […]
Encarta or Britannica?The encyclopaedia giants on CD-Rom go head-to-head. Roger Plant adjudicates Britannica seems a synonym for encyclopaedias, carrying that authority which a market leader can command long after it ceases to be earned. Until a few years ago, many conscientious families might still have considered investing in its 32 volumes. Yet by 1996, sales […]
Chiara Carter Concern about the National Party’s decline in voter support has led to several senior party members mooting the possibility of unseating their leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, before the elections. While no clear contenders have emerged, there are several factions jostling for power in the party and a strong drive for a change in […]
million Ferial Haffajee The high matric failure rate has cost the state more than R100-million, raising questions about the efficacy of the examination system. With all the results now in, the average matric pass rate is 55,1%. The financial losses incurred stand in sharp contrast to the desperate needs of poor schools. Almost seven in […]
THE South African Broadcasting Corporation was served a second subpoena on Thursday in an attempt to force it to hand over to investigators video footage of the lynching in August 1996 of Hard Living gang co-leader Rashaad Staggie. Staggie was shot and burned to death by a vigilante mob in Cape Town in the first […]
Mail & Guardian reporter The Mail & Guardian and the Freedom of Expression Institute have won a landmark legal battle in the Cape High Court which could see changes made to the Defence Act, particularly the way the army conducts its courts martial. “The present case is a perfect example of why the provisions [of […]