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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
David Shapshak Satire – apart, of course, from chicken – is Nando’s speciality. Its advertising has always piggy-backed on current issues and ridiculed or satirised them. Humour, you see, is their secret ingredient. It has arguably sold them more chickens than their famous Portuguese sauces. Remember the just-recognisable grey- haired global leader with a predilection […]
cube farms `So the other day this 404 and his lilo walked head on into the new chainsaw consultant right in front of the cube farm on the second floor. You should’ve seen the idea hamsters prairie dog.” Confused? To translate, consult our lingo dictionary below, and keep up to date with office gossip. n […]
Andy Duffy The Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), which represents the majority of Muslims in the Western Cape, has called on the People Against Gangterism and Drugs (Pagad) to suspend all activities. The council, previously slated for not taking a firm and public lead against Pagad’s vigilante tactics, says the group’s militant approach has spun out […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga A University of Zululand employee is facing 82 internal fraud charges ranging over two years. The university “charge sheet” alleges that Anna Platt, an assistant buyer in the stores department, defrauded the university of R1,5-million between February 1995 and June 1997. Platt allegedly made out false orders for curtains and mattress covers […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Nine-year-old Mita Molete came home from school crying a few weeks ago. She pleaded with her mother not to let her go on a school tour to Durban. Molete, whose scalp was hacked with a panga during the 1992 Boipatong massacre on the Vaal Triangle, has developed a fear of Zulus. “She does […]
Iden Wetherell When the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Laurent Kabila paid a flying visit to Harare last week, he told reporters he was there for routine consultations with President Robert Mugabe. But the presence of Zimbabwe’s defence chiefs suggested a more pressing purpose. Mugabe is chair of the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) organ […]
crackers Nic Turner The word hacker is enough to strike fear into anyone’s heart, but the South African Tiger Team Initiative (Satti) is trying to change that. They are at pains to make a distinction between enthusiast programmers – hackers – and their criminal counterparts – crackers. To help spread the word, Satti organised Zacon, […]
Andy Duffy A senior commander in the government’s fight against HIV and Aids is to step down. Rose Smart, the former nurse who revived the HIV/Aids and STD (sexually transmitted diseases) Directorate following the Sarafina II scandal, wants to leave in November when her contract expires. “It is a 12-hour day, seven-days-a-week job. I don’t […]
Stuart Hess Jackson se pad (Jackson’s road) is not known to many South Africans. But for one of the oldest peoples of Southern Africa, the San bushmen, it is the scene of one of the darkest moments in their history. Jackson se pad is the name given to a road in southern Angola on which […]
Tangeni Amupadhi reports on the Groot Marico farmwatch system Oom Leon du Plessis stops mending a fence on his Nooitgedacht farm in the Groot Marico to tell about the night he was robbed and almost killed. It is almost noon and time to stop work, have a sip of mampoer and take a rest after […]
John Fordham Panthalassa was the name given to the ocean surrounding the primordial, unbroken continent. If Bill Laswell, the gifted producer and sometime free- jazz bass player, hears Miles Davis’s 1970s music as an “ocean of sound”, he’s gone to considerable lengths to reinforce the point on the remarkable Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis […]
Douglas Rushkoff Online When I started writing columns about the Internet I thought of myself as something of a midwife. We were birthing a new culture, and had experienced some complications in our labour. My purpose was to hold on to our collective hand, help us remember to breathe, and tell us how precious the […]
Peter Makurube Pretoria’s anomaly has always been that it is the headquarters of apartheid and jazz. On one side of the city they chilled out to Bles Bridges and other nostalgic musicians. On the other side the spirit of Malombo won the hearts and minds of the people. Gradually,after all these years, Pretoria is learning […]
Anthony Egan SOWETO: A HISTORY by Philip Bonner and Lauren Segal (Maskew Miller Longman) THE SOWETO UPRISINGS: COUNTER-MEMORIES OF JUNE 1976 by Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu (Ravan) The city to the south-west of Johannesburg , Soweto, has had a short but significant history. It started largely as a settlement for migrant workers to the Witwatersrand, a […]
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 […]
Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD Can you imagine having to strip off to interview someone in the buff? That was the prospect awaiting me when I decided to check out the German population’s proclivity for taking their clothes off in public. “You do realise that you will have to participate?” declared my interpreter Felix, […]
Belinda Beresford South African businesses are following international trends of using business coaches and mentors to develop their employees, recognising that individual tutors have advantages over group training in improving skills. An added dimension in South Africa is the drive for affirmative action programmes to develop black employees. Globalisation and greater competition, which have led […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
designer Sir Norman Foster is the architect who’s come closest to establishing a universal style for the age. His latest project, Hong Kong airport, opened last week. Liz Jobey reports Sir Norman Foster rang back. “Sorry, we got cut off as I walked into the Savoy,” he said. “I was on my way to a […]
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 […]
James Ambrose Brown Just when we thought we could safely forget the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)and the perpetrators could merge into their murky backgrounds … Just when we thought that words must fail to keep it all before our consciences, comes a fresh insight. You might say that it needed an […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]