Banks don’t like risks, but this year’s FNB-Vita Art Prize winner is the exception, writes Brenda Atkinson If controversy increases exponentially with an event’s public success, then the recently re-launched FNB-Vita Art Prize is on the right track to the artworld jugular. Last week’s announcement of perverse performance artist Steven Cohen as the competition’s winner […]
Alex Duval Smith Some things change – Zaire is now the Democratic Republic of Congo – but despots just change their spots. President Laurent-Dsir Kabila, hailed as heading a new breed of African leaders, increasingly looks like Mobutu Sese Seko, minus the leopard-skin hat. On May 17 1997, thousands of people welcomed Kabila’s victorious rebel […]
Ken Barris THE IBIS TAPESTRY by Mike Nicol (Knopf) The cover blurb describes The Ibis Tapestry as “a thriller with all the searing immediacy of today’s headlines”. An understandable bit of commercial fantasy perhaps, but wildly inaccurate, and unjust to a book that should be taken seriously on its own terms: as a referential maze […]
Kader Asmal A Second Look In 1995, an article I co-wrote on liberalism noted that it “has sadly become South Africa’s last credible instrument of privilege”, offering an oxygen tent for apartheid. We wondered whether “discerning liberals” might reverse this. Today, the answer is clear. The Democratic Party is unabashedly the new voice of white […]
Hazel Friedman Where there’s smoke there isn’t always fire. But there could possibly be a free air ticket. This is what panic-stricken passengers discovered this week after their flight was twice aborted as a result of a fire alert on board. Passengers at Johannesburg International airport had boarded their Virgin Atlantic aircraft en route to […]
Bridget Hilton-Barber looks at South Africa’s achievements in women empowerment Have women in Parliament done more than add a dose of colour and culture change to the staid Parliament of old? Has life changed for the average South African woman? If laws and government policies were the sole barometer of improvements, yes. Equality is guaranteed […]
Ferial Haffajee The wife of the SABC editor who commissioned the soapie Avenues stars in the programme and had a leading role in its casting and scripting. Penny Rodel also rents office space from A&P Productions, which makes the weekly soap. She used the name Penny Smith for this programme alone. Pieter de Vos, the […]
Can the Dalai Lama enlighten Western science, asks Michael Brooks As the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama is accustomed to seeking enlightenment over deep philosophical issues. Recently, however, he had a new experience to contemplate as he watched a demonstration of the bizarre world of quantum physics. Anton Zeilinger, professor of experimental […]
Robert McBride has been nominated to stand in next year’s elections, reports Wally Mbhele Detained foreign affairs official Robert McBride has emerged as one of the frontrunners in the race for African National Congress parliamentary seats in next year’s general election. For a candidate to qualify for election, the nominee must win the support of […]
Howard Barrell The South African Communist Party leadership has called for a special meeting next week with Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and other top African National Congress officials to try to resolve the crisis in relations between the two organisations. The SACP wants the talks to take place before an ANC national executive committee meeting […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon I must confess to feeling a bit ambivalent about Dr Nkosazana Zuma’s latest anti- smoking crusade. As a three-years-on ex-puffer, my wife assures me I have all but emptied my well of self- righteous reformist zeal. I now tend to let people get on with their tobacco undisturbed by pious sermonettes […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Test cricket umpire Mervyn Kitchen is not the only official removing dollops of egg from his face. Premier Soccer League referee Achmat Salie cautioned Orlando Pirates midfielder Naughty Mokoena twice on Sunday without sending him off. Mokoena received a yellow card soon after half-time at Vaal Professionals in the opening round of […]
Just pop down to the hardware Stuart Hess The world was shocked by the Oklahoma bombing in the United States in 1995, and the FBI was severely rattled by an explosion at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. In both instances, pipe bombs were the weapons of choice. More than 80 pipe bombs have exploded in […]
Justin Arenstein The Mpumalanga government has ordered a new investigation into the Motheo housing scandal after it expressed concern at the lack of financial controls in the national Department of Housing. Mpumalanga public accounts chair Hein Mentz said this week Parliament has been requested to address a perceived absence of checks and balances. Confirming that […]
Lesley Cowling When I spotted the neat little Honda Ballade, all sparkling in mint white, parked alongside Jan Smuts Avenue at the plush premises of Car Gallery, I didn’t think of all those snide jokes about used-car salesmen. The car was exactly like the much- loved Honda stolen from me two months before, so I […]
Zwelithini-ka Mvelase Frankly, if South Africans respected and preserved what’s theirs, with as much jealousy as Americans do, there would be enough greats to fill volumes. Whether those names were crooks or saints, wouldn’t matter a dime. This flits past my mind as I sit sipping gin with die ouens and – boom! – we […]
Alex Dodd This country has seen so many hundreds, so many thousands of bloody, gruesome, sicko murders one wonders what makes certain cases linger, like Lady Macbeth’s inescapably bloody hands, haunting the psyche of a nation. In the case of Charmaine Phillips and Peter Grundlingh, the couple tried for murdering four people between Durban and […]
James Sey The last week in July saw a flourish of high-profile events to launch the new University of the Witwatersrand Graduate School for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Conceived of as a productive and market-related new way of approaching humanities and social science tertiary education, the graduate school is seen as the flagship of […]
Howard Barrell Over a Barrel If the Almighty and I were acquainted – which, sadly, we are not – I would, I am sure, reserve most of my prayers for the inadequacies of my own life. But I know, after just three weeks based in Parliament, that I would regularly be moved to seek heavenly […]
at bay Ferial Haffajee It is a peaceful Saturday afternoon at a women’s shelter in the inner city in Johannesburg. Two women sit in the lounge and chat to a friend who is ironing. There is a calm about the place – it is here that battered women find refuge from abusive relationships and forge […]
Howard W French Rebel forces in the Democractic Republic of Congo consolidated their hold on Wednesday on much of the eastern regions of the country, and the names of civilian leaders who might replace the embattled President Laurent-Dsir Kabila if the uprising succeeds began to circulate for the first time. In the clearest indication so […]
TRISH MURPHY, Johannesburg | Wednesday 9.00PM. A TEAM of United States military personnel is in Rwanda, according to a report confirmed by the Pentagon. The 12 soldiers, part of an “assessment team”, were seen in the vicinity of the Gisenyi border post, which is close to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Goma was […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Thursday 9.00pm. ZAMBIAN President Frederick Chiluba has accused Unita rebels in Angola of defying the 1994 peace accords signed in Lusaka in an attempt to end 16 years of civil war. Chiluba appealed to Unita on Wednesday night to support current United Nations mediation to restore peace in the Southern African […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Thursday 10.00pm. AFRICAN National Congress protesters in KwaZulu Natal are planning to march on the offices of KZN attorney-general Tim McNally and provincial police commissioner Chris Serfontein to demand their resignations. The marches will be part of a programme of mass action by the ANC in KZN to protest against the […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 10.30AM. WESTERN Province will field a full-strength squad, including Springboks Bobby Skinstad, Andrew Aitken, Selborne Boome and Chester Williams, when they face Eastern Province in a Currie Cup match in Cape Town on Saturday. Coach Alan Solomons also makes his return to Newlands after assisting Nick Mallett with the Springboks […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 12.15pm. OFFICIALS in the department of mineral and energy affairs on Thursday said they will urge Minerals and Energy Minister Penuell Maduna to ask government to intervene in the four-day-old chemical industry strike. Department Director General Gordon Sibya said: “We believe government has a duty to consider acting as a […]
CHRISTIAN FIGENSCHOU, Johannesburg | Thursday 4.00pm. IT emerged in the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday that more than 1000 policemen have been murdered in South Africa since 1994. Meanwhile, the South African Agricultural Union published statistics that show there were more than 2000 attacks on farmers, in which more than 500 farmers were murdered over […]
SARAH BULLEN in Johannesburg | Wednesday 4.00pm. BUSINESS confidence dropped by 1,9 index points to 90,3 in July from 92,2 in June, largely as a result of the country’s increasing net open forward position and the vulnerability of the balance of payments, the latest South African Chamber of Business Confidence Index released on Wednesday indicates. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 11.00PM. ONE woman has died and another is seriously injured after a bomb exploded at the Salus building in Belleville, near Cape Town on Thursday. The building houses the police special task unit investigating violence associated with the vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs. A Pagad member arrested […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Wednesday 11.00AM. THE boys from Highland High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, provided one of the biggest surprises in the finals of the World Schools Rugby championships played in Harare on Tuesday. The American boys, playing for third and fourth spot against Tonga’s Tupou College, beat the boys from the […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg| Wednesday 4.30pm. THE South African Broadcasting Corporation is expected next week to announce a surplus of over R100-million in its end-of-year financial results, outgoing chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu said at a function in Johannesburg on Wednesday. “We no longer have an identification crisis … The SABC is poised to enter the next […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 9.40PM. SOUTH Africa’s seamers did the trick on the first day of the series-deciding fifth cricket Test at Headingley, dismissing the home side for 230 runs. English opener Mark Butcher was, in fact, the only English bat who really worried the South Africans, as he played a stirling career-best innings […]