Staff Reporter

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 8.30pm. THE strike by employees belonging to the South African Commercial Catering and Allied Workers Union on Monday forced the Edgars group to close certain operations, including shops in the Johannesburg CBD. Workers toyi-toyied outside shops, and several scuffles with police ensued, resulting in four workers being injutred and 10 […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Tuesday 5.45pm. LOCAL stock had a disappointing day on Tuesday, closing flat despite expectation that the latest bull run will roll on into the week. Dealers said the pullback was surprising, as all major indices except gold ended in negative territory. Markets were influenced by a both international and domestic factors, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Monday 7.00pm. APARTHEID security police killed Ruth First because they were unable to catch SA Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, Gillian Slovo told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s amnesty committee on Monday. Gillian Slovo, along with her sisters Robyn and Shaun, is opposing the applications for amnesty by apartheid agents Craig […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 9.45pm. SOUTH Africa’s 1998 Davis Cup record crashed to an embarrassing 10 played and ten lost after they were annihilated 5-0 by the Czech Republic in their World Group promotion/relegation tie on Sunday. The South Africans were already 3-0 down in the best-of-five-sets tie when captain Danie Visser decided to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, New York | Monday 11.30pm. THE United Nations Security Council held preliminary discussions Monday on an Arab-sponsored draft resolution demanding a UN investigation into the bombing of the El Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan by the United States last month. In particular the resolution demands an investigation into the US claim that the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maseru | Monday 10.00pm. SOUTHERN African troops will remain in Lesotho until order is restored in the country, the defence ministers of Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana said in Maseru on Monday. Speaking at the Lesotho government complex, the ministers maintained that the military intervention in Lesotho last week by troops from South […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday, 9.45pm. WESTERN Province’s hopes of reaching a semi-final berth on the Bankfin Currie Cup rugby table went for a dive on Sunday when they were beaten 24-17 by the Free State Cheetahs at Newlands. The match did not live up to expectations as both teams fell into boring patterns for […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kigali | Monday 11.30pm. THE rebels fighting to oust Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila have requested international humanitarian organisations to help shift about 20,000 Tutsi Banyamulenge from south-eastern Katanga province. Rebel-controlled radio Bukavu, monitored in Cyangugu across the border in Rwanda, said on Monday that the deputy governor of South Kivu, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.00am. KENYAN athletes dominated at the World Half Marathon Championships in Zurich on Sunday, with defending champion Tegla Loroupe and Paul Koech claiming the men’s and women’s titles, giving the nation a sweep of gold for the second year in a row. Loroupe covered the 21,1km course in 1:08:29 to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Libreville | Sunday 10.00am. THE Danish Minister for International Development, Paul Nielson, has warned African states with forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo that Copenhagen will cut off aid to them if a regional conflict ensues. “Should the countries involved get into a face-to-face confrontation my country will have no option but […]

Peter Makarube Live in Johannesburg They said jazz is dead but we have yet to see the coffin. With the establishment of the South African Jazz Foundation comes ample proof that the hippest art form is still alive – and well. At a recent media launch, held at the Hyatt hotel, the foundation was introduced […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer The Rothmans Cup spin doctors never cease reminding us that the competition is “unbelievable” and the multimillion-rand event certainly has generated more than its fair share of excitement. It has, however, also proved unbelievably predictable with Kaizer Chiefs, Sundowns, Manning Rangers and Orlando Pirates reaching the 1997 semi-finals and only one of […]

Simon Caulkin It’s as regular as the changing of the seasons. Every few months, a new survey triggers the familiar debate about soaring executive pay. But managers take no notice of the haranguings of unions and ministers, and the frustrated disapproval of everyone else; they just keep pocketing the cash. It is disingenuous to blame […]

Nic Paul On show in Durban What becomes of the sons of great men? Greatness seldom strikes the same family twice, and almost never one generation after the next (some South African examples, like the Tutus and the Ruperts come easily to mind here) and it’s an interesting question which Mahatma vs Gandhi doesn’t try […]

Jane Rosenthal MOTHER TO MOTHER by Sindiwe Magona (David Phillip); UNBROKEN WING by Bridget Pitt (Kwela ) In the 1980s a cartoon figure of a stout and immovable Black Sash lady with fist held aloft, subtitled “Womandla!” was created by poet and cartoonist, Gus Ferguson. It was an inspired conjunction of black and white resistance […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kimberly | Friday, 8.00pm. GRIQUAS showed a sensational first-half score run in which they scored six tries, and then went on to notch up a definite 64-7 win over Mpumalanga Pumas in their Bankfin Currie Cup rugby match at the Absa Park stadium on Friday. Griquas led 36-0 at halftime. It was man […]

Ever been allowed into a movie for free and been allowed to drink beer and talk when you want to? Jean Barker visited Cape Town’s BioCafe Beers are R3, entrance is free, and everyone is at the BioCafe on Wednesday evenings long before the short film screening starts, chatting and drinking. The chatting and drinking […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube The Emmy Awards – the Hollywood TV industry’s mutual back-scratching night out – took three-and- a-half hours to screen, and this was the edited version. In that amount of time, I imagine, the Almighty created a sizeable chunk of the earth and the creatures thereon. Having been caught before, I […]

A school that fought apartheid is threatened with closure. John Pilger believes it should be saved Those of us banned from South Africa during the apartheid years have returning snapshots that swell the heart, offering a glimpse of what the future might be. One of mine is from a recent visit to Woodmead High School, […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Student political organisations at Technikon Witwatersrand have collapsed because they have failed to find roles in the new South Africa. “The leadership here has been weakening because students are not united in dealing with issues which affect them,” said student affairs official Andy Dass. “Student political organisations before the 1994 elections […]

Andy Capostagno Rugby Everybody said it wouldn’t work and they were right, but it is still sad to see Dawie Snyman being shown the door for not taking the Golden Lions to the semi-finals of the Currie Cup. When Snyman was appointed last June it was widely believed that he had been brought up from […]

Ferial Haffajee TopSport chief executive officer Edward Griffiths has landed a cushy agreement with the SABC which would see him working in South Africa for one week a month. The SABC has met negotiators who want to buy TopSport – its basket of television sports programmes – which is about to make a profit for […]

Mungo Soggot The Office of the Auditor General has appointed an oil trading expert from London to probe the government’s sale of about R2- billion worth of oil earlier this year. The government quietly sold off 25-million barrels – the bulk of South Africa’s strategic oil stock – in March and transferred R800-million of the […]

As mutinous Lesotho troops take to the hills in preparation for a drawn-out struggle, we re-examine the report that caused all the trouble William Boot The Southern African Development Community’s mishandling of the Langa commission of inquiry and its inability to publicly admit that the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD)had fraudulently stolen the May 23 […]

Barbara Ludman POINT OF ORIGIN by Patricia Cornwell (Little, Brown) Patricia Cornwell’s life generally spills over into her books. In this one, it threatens to take the book over. She’s made a background theme of the FBI’s prurient interest in its agents’ affairs ever since she was named as co-respondent in a divorce suit lodged […]

Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD There I was, happily driving my white BMW 323i series along a stretch of winding Midrand road on a balmy Tuesday afternoon. The window was down and a cool breeze blew gently on my face as, oblivious to my surroundings, I slowed at a quiet stop street. Suddenly, out […]

Gail Smith She’s here. Me’shell Ndegeocello, a woman with a bass guitar who knows what to do with it. A singer, song-writer and multi- instrumentalist who describes jazz as her “first love”, she plays guitar, keyboards and bass (her primary instrument). When asked if this is not “an unusual instrument for a woman” she smiles […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon This past week, I wandered down to the bottom of my garden to see how the fairies were getting along. What with the lack this year of anything you might have called a rainy season, I had left them to their own devices. In the “new” South Africa, fairies, like everyone […]

Howard Barrell A group of leading South African scientists is putting together a R50- million project to develop a vaccine to fight what Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and others have called the country’s gravest threat, the HIV/Aids epidemic. The scientists believe South Africa has a window of opportunity in which to develop a vaccine which […]

y So Craig Williamson wishes he was James Bond and a generation of aspirant psychos model themselves on Hannibal Lecter. Maggie Davey listened to American theorist Mark Seltzer on the concept of a `wound culture’ Did Craig Williamson really have to reassure us that spying for the apartheid government was no James Bond fantasy? You […]

Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week `A chinese box doesn’t really exist,” said director Wayne Wang in an interview with Hollywood Online. “I tried to find one … I looked everywhere, but it doesn’t exist. It’s a metaphor for a box which, when you open it, leads to another box, then you open that box […]

Mike Finch Commonwealth Games South Africa’s track and field athletes returned home from the Commonwealth Games on Tuesday clutching 11 medals – their biggest haul at a major event since returning to the international scene in 1993. Unfortunately, only one of the medallists was black. Olympic 800m runner Hezekiel Sepeng, almost a veteran member of […]