controversy Twenty-four years have passed and Cyprus appears to be no closer to finding a solution to its problem. Tracy Spencer reports Annita Georgiou can remember the fragrance from the lemon trees which used to drift through her home town, Famagusta, when she was a child of seven. Today Georgiou is 31 and the lemon […]
Orange Farm – to build houses Evidence wa ka Ngobeni A four-roomed house was once an impossible dream for an unemployed single mother living in an Orange Farm shack. But this week Sinaila Shabani and her four children moved into their dream house – built by 22 volunteer Irish students and residents of the sprawling […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby It is something which the Americans realised early. If you’re going to play games regarded as little more than school-yard pastimes in other countries, best you instil a sense of tradition sooner rather than later. The Superbowl is all of 30 years old, yet it is spoken of with awe, to quote […]
millennial deal Alan Henry Grand Prix Michael Schumacher will become the richest Formula One driver of all time after signing a new contract which could net him almost 150-million by keeping him at Ferrari until the end of 2002. The 29-year-old German, who won the 1994 and 1995 world championships in a Benetton, earns about […]
THURSDAY, 10.00PM: BONGANI MAGUBANE, a 36-year-old deputy school principal from Sahlumbe, KwaZulu-Natal, has died after allegedly being assaulted with a wheel spanner during an argument with police task force members near the Mooi River toll plaza on Monday afternoon. According to his brother, Themba Magubane, Bongani was travelling from Durban to Ladysmith when there was […]
THURSDAY, 11.00AM: THE wildcat strike by Johannesburg International Airport baggage handlers has been called off after worker representatives, Apron Services and The Airports Company of South Africa agreed on Wednesday night that tenders will be invited for the airport’s ramp-handling operations. The strike, which disrupted many flights, started early on Wednesday morning when baggage handlers […]
WEDNESDAY, 9.30AM: FORMER Bophuthatswana president Lucas Mangope was on Tuesday found guilty on some 90 charges of fraud and theft totalling R2,8-million, most of which was stolen from his own Bahurutshe-Bo-Manyane tribe. Judge Tom Mullins will deliver judgment on the remaining 89 fraud and theft charges, totalling about R18-million, on Wednesday. Mangope has been found […]
TUESDAY, 9.00AM: FORMER Bophuthatswana president Lucas Mangope, on trial on multiple counts of fraud and theft totalling over R18-million, was told in the Mmabatho High Court on Monday that he has been an unsatisfactory witness who gave “irrelevant, repetitive and extremely evasive evidence”, and who at times told outright lies that did his credibility no […]
MONDAY, 9.00PM: THE official record of Parliament will in future be published in four languages, rather than just in English, it has been proposed. Hansard will be published in English and Afrikaans with immediate effect. From the beginning of next year’s session, it will also be produced in one Nguni language, and one Sotho language, […]
MONDAY, 2.00PM: THE future of Correctional Services Minister Sipo Mzimela is currently under discussion in a meeting between President Nelson Mandela, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Home Affairs Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana said: “The three [Mandela, Mbeki and Buthelezi] are eager that any change in government should happen in the least disruptive […]
MONDAY 10.00AM: NOW that the euphoria around President Nelson Mandela’s secret wedding to Graa Machel has died down, questions are being asked as to the wisdom of the official denials that preceded the Saturday ceremony at Mandela’s Houghton, Johannesburg home. The Mail & Guardian two weeks ago reported that the president was to marry on […]
Stephen Gray recently attended a conference in Botswana in honour of South African writer Bessie Head, who settled there Gaborone, June 17-18 Few remember the first round of this event. In April 1976, when she was still alive and with only half her work done, Bessie Head was invited here to the University of Botswana. […]
She’s a South African New Yorker whose first novel is set in the Oudtshoorn of caves and ostrich farms. Shaun de Waal meets Anne Landsman In Anne Landsman’s debut novel, The Devil’s Chimney (Jonathan Ball), the Cango Caves form the central, or perhaps one should say underlying, metaphor. Their chambers and lakes, stalactites and stalagmites […]
Swapna Prabhakaran Like most of Richmond’s remaining residents, Mabel Nxumalo is a portrait of strength. She has a solid, hard- worn look about her and though there is a deep grief in her eyes, there are no tears. A week ago her sister, two of her sons and her daughter-in-law were shot dead. They were […]
Tamar Kahn As the rand lurches into the land of Monopoly money, lawyers are among the few people still smiling. Not because they had the foresight to invest in foreign currency, but because they see the bony fingers of bankruptcy collecting record numbers of clients. Bankruptcy has an ominous ring, bringing to mind Dickensian scenes […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon With what in the way of a gaudy extravaganza is South Africa planning to celebrate the arrival of the new millennium? There are only about 530 days left before the delight of living in the 20th century will become a thing of the past. As one of those who feels he […]
Nicholas Glass made it his mission to find out more about Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick’s top-secret new film- in-progress A Lear jet left Luton for Los Angeles on June 3, carrying the Cruise family back to Los Angeles. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman like England, where photographers mostly leave them alone. But they must […]
Karl Vick in Lagos Behind all the talk of returning democracy to Nigeria looms the burned wreckage of the Paki Trading and Transport company. As word spread last week that Moshood Abiola, the man Nigerians five years ago thought they had elected president, had died just as he was to be released from prison, the […]
William Fotheringham Tour de France When Jan Ullrich effectively won the Tour de France in the second week of racing last year, his performance was so dominating that there were those, notably the five-times winner Bernard Hinault, who hailed the 23-year-old German as the man who would win the Tour into the millennium and beyond. […]
Wonder Hlongwa Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi’s new initiative for Richmond, announced on Tuesday, has already been tried and failed. Mufamadi’s two-pronged approach to halt the murders in the town includes sending an additional 240 policemen there and transferring four policemen. But the four were served with notices three months ago – in […]
Phillip Kakaza Live music Someone has passed a buck to me – it seemed like it when I was assigned to cover the American blues muso, Ronnie Peterson show at the Blues Room. The message came like a razor-sharp command. As if a twentysomething lad knew much about blues music. The little bit of knowledge […]
Stuart Hess Police investigating a complaint against artist Mark Hipper dropped the probe this week when the country’s chief censor read them the film and publications Act. Police telephoned Dr Nana Makaula, CEO of the Film and Publications Board, to arrange to take a statement following a complaint lodged by the National Council of Child […]
David Shapshak The real economic damage caused by computer crime is committed by insiders who already have access to networks, not hackers trying to prove their technical prowess, computer experts warn. Most computer crime is practised by organised crime syndicates, disgruntled employees, embezzlers and, rarely, hackers. The South African Police Service says it investigated an […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby We live in strange times. Through the years of South Africa’s sporting isolation the apex of ambition in this country was to play against the British. The All Blacks provided the sternest rugby challenge, the Australians the same in cricket, but the cradle of both games was Britain and tours to and […]
Luke Harding Cg’ose Ntcox’o, an illiterate Botswanan artist, was delighted when British Airways (BA)bought one of her works. She promptly splashed out on seven cows, built herself a shack on the edge of the Kalahari desert, and gave the rest of the money to her many nomadic relatives. Last week, however, Ntcox’o was deeply unhappy […]
rots Wally Mbhele An accomplished military intelligence (MI) agent, Nigel Barnett – who infiltrated Mozambique in 1984 and operated there until his dramatic arrest last year – was granted bail despite documentary proof that he was a spy for apartheid South Africa. Barnett’s release by Mozambican prosecuting authorities has raised more questions about why Robert […]
Rehana Rossouw Personal History The banging on the door came at 4.30am, as usual. As armed policemen surrounded the house, an officious security policeman marched in waving a detention order in terms of emergency legislation. It was July 8 1988 and security policemen were hunting down organisers of a campaign to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s 70th […]
Irwin Manoim A printer is a machine which artfully lines up a bunch of microscopic dots on paper to produce elegant love letters, invoices, poems, bar charts and school projects. Most of these sheets of paper go straight from the print tray to the waste bin, while the author experiments with changing the margins or […]
From a mud hut in Transkei to the Union Buildings in Pretoria is not that far, but it’s been a long road for President Mandela, writes David Beresford Below the village of Mvezo, on the side of a hill overlooking a bend of the Mbashe River in the former Transkei, three circular mounds of earth […]
Durban Nick Paul Surfing Just when you think you’re sick of big emotional sporting events, when you’ve had the Comrades, and the July, and the men’s and women’s Wimbledon finals and this year the World Cup and the opening sallies of the Tri-Nations, in great big chunks, along comes the Gunston. If you’re a Durbanite, […]
Howard Barrell and Mungo Soggot The relatively unknown African National Congress politician appointed as South Africa’s top prosecutor has shrugged off fears that he will follow the dictates of his political masters when he takes up his new job in two weeks’ time. Cape Town lawyer Bulelani Ngcuka, deputy chair of the National Council of […]
Neil Manthorp in Durham Cricket `Allow me to introduce myself – I’m your wife, Betty.” It was a cartoon on the front page of the Daily Telegraph and, as always, it touched a nerve with an abnormally high percentage of readers – most of whom were of the “class” to imagine it would be more […]