Staff Reporter

ARMED AND DANGEROUS: FROM UNDERCOVER STRUGGLE TO FREEDOM by Ronnie Kasrils (Mayibuye/Jonathan Ball ) When this autobiography of Deputy Defence Minister Ronnie Kasrils first appeared in 1993, it was a bestseller. Five years on, with a new section detailing the author’s experiences in government, the question is: will it repeat its resounding success? Kasrils’s life […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube Money, the SABC is always telling us, is the problem which prevents us from watching top-quality television – a fact which we silly viewers just can’t get into our heads. There’s not enough money from the government; there’s not enough money from advertisers and there’s not enough money from us […]

Emma Durden Dance in Durban The Kwa-Suka Theatre, usually home to Durban’s experimental drama offerings, is currently awash with rich swirls of tangerine, pimento olive and deep wine. Camino Flamenco is an exuberant hour and a half of traditional Spanish dance put together by Linda Vargas of the Spanish Dance Company and her husband, the […]

Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD `I’m ready for my close-up, Mr DeMille.” These immortal words delivered by Gloria Swanson in the film classic, Sunset Boulevard, came flashing to my mind as I stood before a solitary camera in a poky but brightly lit back room of a Johannesburg theatre. The lights created a sweltering […]

Simon Segal and Andy Brown The chips are down for leading black empowerment companies in the wake of the stock market crash. There are fears that many will not be able to repay their loans because their stock prices have declined and they are being crippled by high interest rates. Rate hikes could also cripple […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi The council of the Vaal Triangle Technikon was scrambling this week to stave off threats by Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu to suspend its state grants and disband the council. Bengu sent a memo to the technikon last Friday, advising the council of his readiness to take such action if it does not […]

Donna Block Share World The wicked witch of the East is once again spoiling things in the land of Oz. The troubles plaguing Australia’s Asian neighbours has left the country’s stocks sagging and commodity prices hitting new lows. Australia and New Zealand are vulnerable to an economic downturn. Their stock markets are suffering not only […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer First-round action in the multimillion-rand Rothmans Cup continues this weekend with many of the eight second-leg matches delicately poised. While realising that there is no such thing as a certainty in cup football, the Muchineripi clan will publicly eat this page of your favourite newspaper should Kaizer Chiefs, Manning Rangers and Orlando […]

Andrew Worsdale `If I have to be really truthful, I can’t say a director can really know why he makes his pictures … On set, I prefer to go on like a blind man, following with the imagination of the picture to delude myself I am going in the right direction.” So said Italian film […]

A Sussex link to a `routine’ US child abuse inquiry has led to the exposure of a global ring using KGB codes to hide in cyberspace. Stuart Millar reports Even by the increasingly sophisticated standards of Internet child pornographers, the Wonderland club operated on a technological and organisational level which shocked investigating authorities around the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Addis Ababa | Friday 6.30pm. A RIFT has developed in the Addis Ababa talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both Uganda and Rwanda, accused by DRC President Laurent Kabila of invading the DRC, have demanded that the rebel leaders be invited to the talks. The DRC delegation […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 4.00PM. ZIMBABWEAN and Angolan troops are accused of killing dozens of unarmed civilians in the Democratic republic of Congo with “indiscriminate shelling of Kinshasa suburbs” in an Amnesty International open letter to Presidents Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela. Pierre San, the secretary general of Amnesty International, has written an open […]

MICHAEL METELITS, Johannesburg | Thursday 6.30pm. A plummeting Dow, and little help from overseas investors rocked the share and bond markets on Thursday. Traders suggested that bonds will only pick up if the rand breaks out of the R6,23 to the dollar range. The bright spot was the rising price of gold, which pushed gold […]

Forget Viagra. There’s a natural alternative that’s bound to keep you up all night, writes Mercedes Sayagues If you live in Zimbabwe, you have probably heard the stories: of dusk-to- dawn erections that exhaust women; of non-stop sex and multiple ejaculations all night long; of formidable hard-ons that land men in hospital, even kill them. […]

Chris McGreal Jean Kambanda was bathing when soldiers burst through his front door four years ago. Rwanda’s genocide was starting and he was sure death was knocking. The soldiers nabbed him and offered him not a bullet in the head, but an invitation to lead the government – which came to oversee the slaughter of […]

Who are . . . the Congolese Rebels? Ann Eveleth When Congolese rebel commander Jean- Pierre Ondekane vowed this week to “intensify” the rebellion against embattled Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila, he spoke with a confidence his opponent has never enjoyed. Unlike Kabila, whose 1997 Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of […]

Donna Block If miners and a few metals analysts are to be believed, gold is golden once more. They say the precious metal, up from 19-year lows, is poised for a major comeback. But the glitter might not be as bright as those who dig it out of the ground are hoping. Metal markets are […]

performance David Beresford `Castro is a lion,” sang the South African Communist Party choir enthusiastically. At 71, Fidel Castro cut a somewhat aged king of the jungle. Nevertheless, the comparison seemed a fair one as the Cuban leader, with grizzled mane and beard, clambered out of his Mercedes Benz in Soweto on Saturday and made […]

Peter Makurube Kora awards The All Africa Kora Music Awards have come and gone with as much fanfare as a meeting of tannies sharing koeksisters and a bit of gesels en skinner. Hell, this is supposed to be the best thing on the continent. Expectations are high among the citizens of Africa and each time […]

unionists Union investment has achieved success beyond Cosatu’s expectations, writes Ferial Haffajee Faced with the growth of a generation of trade union millionaires, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has moved to rein in its investment companies. Last week Cosatu called the heads of investment companies and union leaders to its Johannesburg head […]

The streets of Pretoria are becoming increasingly dangerous for sex workers, reports Tangeni Amupadhi Prostitutes walking the dark streets of Pretoria know that danger lurks around any corner. But they were particularly anxious this week, following the murder of a co-worker. The body of an as yet unidentified prostitute was found lying face-up in a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Welkom | Friday 11.00PM. GRIQUAS continued their run of success in the Bankfin Currie Cup rugby competition when they beat Northern Free State 52-19 in Welkom’s North West Stadium on Friday night. Griquas did everything at a cracking pace and ran in five tries during the first 35 minutes to chalk up a […]

Robert Kirby: Loose cannon It seems we are doomed to yet another month or so of the dreary adventures of President Bill Clinton’s prick. And what a joyless escapade it has been. There is always available groupie- tail, like the banal Monica Lewinsky, hanging around senior politicians and public figures. Everyone knows that. When one […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maseru | Friday 11.30PM. THE commander of the Lesotho Defence Force, Lieutenant-General Makhula Mosakheng, announced his resignation with immediate effect on Friday night. Mosakheng said on Radio Lesotho that Brigadier-Commander Thibeli had taken over the running of the army. Mosakheng also announced that 26 senior officers had been dismissed “in the public interest”. […]

John Crace First Person Madonna, Michael Jackson and Lenny Henry did it last month. Caroline Quentin, Jennifer Saunders, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sean Bean, Gary Oldman, Sharon Stone and Rik Mayall did it earlier in the year. And come November, Jamie Lee Curtis will be doing it, too. Not so long ago, 40 was old. It was […]

Ferial Haffajee speaks to visiting Asian-American author Ruth Ozeki Ruth Ozeki is so like her lead character, Jane Takagi-Little, that I call her “Jane” several times in the course of our interview. She doesn’t mind the gaffe, adding that her best friend refers to the character as “Ruth”. Takagi-Little, the narrator of the novel My […]

She’s the queen of country music, a Dollywood legend, America’s Princess Di. People warm to her sentimental ballads and silicon looks, but something is missing … William Leith reports To me, an Englishman, Dolly Parton was always a small, mysterious figure on the edge of my consciousness. She was a wig, a quavering voice with […]

Nineties? Douglas Rushkoff Online Maybe the news that the Internet makes people depressed shouldn’t have taken us by surprise. It’s what concerned cyber- reactionaries have been telling us since the beginning: the Internet renders us incapable of forming real relationships, isolates us in an empty electronic simulation and destroys family bonds. Now, the well-meaning killjoys […]

The faces of apartheid’s feared security police were on display at the truth commission this week, writes David Beresford They are unlikely combatants, but long-time adversaries; the almost theatrical figure of the lawyer George Bizos and the stocky, hawk-faced former police commander, General Johan Coetzee. They have faced each other on previous occasions across the […]

Marina Benjamin A Second Look When the expectation of crisis at the last century’s end failed to give Oscar Wilde a sufficiently satisfying frisson, he famously complained: “It’s the fin de sicle. I wish it were fin du monde.” Would that he were here to conjure a suitable epigram today. For as this century draws […]

Ivor Powell predicts that sparks will fly at the SADC summit when member states discuss the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security All has not been well for some time now in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But things could get a lot worse at the regional conference’s annual summit in Mauritius this weekend. […]

taking our jobs Chiara Carter and Ferial Haffajee South Africa has become a world in one country in more ways than tourism pundits could ever have predicted. The boundaries of state are becoming less important as waves of migrants seek a better life. Complex trade networks, energetic enterprise and entrepreneurial dreams are the stock-in-trade for […]