Peter Makurube When Allen Kwela lost his beloved Gibson, the whole nation was up in arms. The daily paper Sowetan ran an article appealing to the muggers to return that national treasure. The criminals returned the guitar to the paper’s offices – intact. Kwela had been out drinking and was staggering home when a gang […]
The Media Sector of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange has risen by 70% since the October 1997 crash, but growth has only begun. Last week’s announcement that the board of industrial giant Johnnies Industrial Corporation Limited (Johnnic) had voted to implement a strategic re-alignment of Omni Media Corporation Limited (Omnicor) sets the sector on a future […]
Krisjan Lemmer With less than a year to go before the centenary of the Anglo-Boer War, there has been muttering in the Dorsbult Bar about the belated discovery by the Brits that Lord Herbert Kitchener, the war hero, was a bit of a cad. The BBC’s Reputations series appears to have stumbled upon the fact […]
Alex Dodd Backing down whiskies in preparation for provocative choreographer Robyn Orlin’s Orpheus … I Mean Euridice … I Mean the Natural History of a Chorus Girl, I overhear embarrassed whispers: “What did Orpheus do again? My mythology’s so kak.” About one minute into the show I guess that a refined understanding of Greek mythology […]
The issue of child criminals has become a major source of embarrassment for the government, writes Andy Duffy The Western Cape is poised to scrap special schools for hundreds of child criminals, despite the growing number of children in jail. Provincial education department officials have told staff at several of the 15 reform schools and […]
FRIDAY 4.30PM: THE African National Congress has welcomed the conviction of former Civil Co-operation Bureau assassin Ferdi Barnard, but has called his comments likening his cause to that of President Mandela “presumptious”. After being sentenced to two life terms and 63 years for murder, attempted murder and fraud, Barnard said: “When President Mandela got sentenced […]
Christopher Reed in Los Angeles After an acrimonious debate, the San Francisco school board has become the first in the United States to require students to read books by “authors of colour”. The measure caused conflict when proposed by two black members, who initially insisted that seven of the 10 required books on high school […]
Robyn Alexander, who helped curate an exhibition on the reproductive body, explains the thinking behind the show The Bringing Up Baby exhibition is part of the main programme at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. It was first conceived (and, of course, that verb is used deliberately) by its curator Terry Kurgan, during […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga The African National Congress in the Northern Province this week met one of its allies, the Congress of South African Students (Cosas), in a bid to iron out differences between Cosas and MEC of Education Joe Phaahla. Relations between Phaahla and Cosas hit an all-time low last week when the provincial chair […]
Nedlac has come to the negotiation table with a proposal which could keep teachers in their classrooms, reports Sechaba ka’Nkosi A last-minute proposal tabled by the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) to the government and the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) could prevent the country’s biggest teacher strike next week. The strike […]
The annual Loerie Awards acknowledge excellence in 18 advertising and marketing categories. But, asks Brenda Atkinson, do the ads actually work? Show me someone who hasn’t been seduced by an advert in their lifetime, and I’ll show you a badly cut pair of Levis. Much as we might hate to admit it, we are critical […]
Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE `They’ll come at night – especially if you’ve got an electric lamp glowing somewhere, a dead giveaway,” warned one member of an online survivalist conference. I had intended to spend the week doing extensive research for a column about the millennium bug (Y2K) – the software and hardware glitch that will prevent […]
As Wall Street pats itself on the back, trouble lurks behind the boom, warn Joel Kotkin and David Friedman With the Asian dragons vanquished, Wall Street soaring to new heights and United States unemployment rates at modern lows, American elites are indulging in an orgy of self- congratulation unmatched since the Roaring Twenties. “France had […]
Mungo Soggot The state tea company has quietly axed its managing director after a disciplinary inquiry headed by a retired high court judge found him guilty of financial impropriety. Sapekoe suspended Mike Cherry three months ago and fired him last week. The low-profile company has clung to its apartheid-era penchant for secrecy and sought to […]
Neil Manthorp Cricket As far as records show, there were no Bears in the South African touring sides that sailed for England in 1924, 1929 or 1960, the only three occasions on which South Africa have played England at Edgbaston before. In 11 series against the colonisers, the colonised have won just three – and […]
Know your Mark Hughes from your Marcuse? With the World Cup less than a week away, even the intellectuals are muscling in on the beautiful game. Peter Lennon reports Predictably French philosophers, sociologists and literary critics are muscling in on the World Cup, peddling their cinq sous worth on the origins, motivation and significance of […]
in Swapo death camp Melissa Jones and Michael Gillard Recurring nightmares of torture have haunted Emma Kambangula for the past nine years. “In one, I am naked and being beaten with bundles of sticks by three men, while two others are restraining my daughter, Freda, who is crying, screaming and trying to run to me,” […]
David Beresford It was one of those definitive moments in South African history, a moment that Eugene de Kock had long been waiting for. His five heavily armed bodyguards had taken up nervous positions around the courtroom. PW Botha was sitting in a well-padded chair, placed next to the dock in vague acknowledgement that he […]
trial Dumisani Khumalo Top Zimbabwean politicians and officials are expected to testify in the sodomy trial of former president Canaan Banana, one of the most sensational cases in Zimbabwean criminal history which got under way this week. The witness list includes Vice- President Simon Muzanda; Minister ofEJustice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Emmerson Mnangagwa; two former […]
Despite economic crises, there’s money to be made on the stock exchange, writes Mark Allix Following the plunge of the Thai baht in July last year, the volatility on global stock exchanges is starting to take on biblical proportions – particularly the hellfire-and-brimstone warnings of the Old Testament variety. The 10th Commandment on covetousness and […]
THURSDAY, 6.00PM: POST, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Minister Jay Naidoo released his long-awaited White Paper on Broadcasting Policy on Thursday, outlining a vision to turn South Africa into a global multimedia hub. The 46-page White Paper proposes that the the country’s signal distribution network should be opened to competition by 2000. Concluding that the digital route […]
WEDNESDAY, 2.15PM: APARTHEID’s chief assassin Eugene de Kock, known by his colleagues as “Prime Evil”, claimed on Wednesday that former president PW Botha ordered the 1987 bomb attack on Cosatu House, headquarters of the country’s largest trade union federation. Testifying at Botha’s trial for ignoring a Truth and Reconciliation Commission subpoena, De Kock told the […]
WEDNESDAY 12.00NOON: THE former commander of the United Nations observer force in Angola says there is evidence in the country of a military build-up that “indicates preparations for a possible return to war”. Zimbabwean army Major-General Phillip Sibanda, who has just returned to Harare from a two-and-a-half-year command of the formerly 7000-strong UN military monitoring […]
WEDNESDAY, 6.00PM: ETHIOPIAN troops, tanks and heavy artillery crossed the border into Eritrea at dawn on Wednesday morning, the Eritrean foreign ministry said on Wednesday. The invasion, which has not been confirmed by independent sources, is an escalation of a tense border stand-off that has seen at least 100 people killed or wounded since Sunday. […]
TUESDAY 11.00AM: THERE are still a large number of troops belonging to the Angolan rebel movement Unita in several provinces, in spite of its claims to have demilitarised its forces, according to a United Nations official. Quoting a report by the commander of UN forces overseeing the peace process, UN representative for Angola Alouine Blondin […]
MONDAY, 4.00PM: IN an unexpected turn in the Lusaka High Court on Monday, the state dropped all charges against former Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda, after which Judge Japhta Banda declared Kaunda a free man. “It’s great, it’s great,” declared Zambia’s 74-year-old founding father as hundreds of his supporters broke through a police cordon to celebrate […]
MONDAY 6.00PM: FORMER Zimbabwean president Canaan Banana has denied allegations by three policemen, two air force officers, two secret service agents, a cook, a jobseeker and a hitchhiker that he either forced or attempted to force them to have sex with him. Banana, 62, a former Methodist minister, was appearing in the Harare High Court […]
Peter Mullan, winner of the best actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has a tale to tell those who wonder if it all might go to his head. It stems from his experience working on Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s Oscar-winner about the exploits of William Wallace. Mullan remembers watching the director of the second […]
Alice Walker is a feminist icon and also a defiant individualist. Libby Brooks meets a woman at ease with herself, if not the world Alice Walker pads around her hotel suite like a fabulous cat. Just in from California and weary, she is not particularly friendly, but I would still like to touch her. The […]
Uneven standards of community care mean the state’s new policy of releasing mental patients could be a bad plan, writes Andy Duffy The deaths of seven people at the hands of former state psychiatric patients in the Western Cape have exposed a raw nerve in state health circles. The Department of Health this week slammed […]
Mail & Guardian Reporter Radio’s Oscars, the annual Sony awards, shone on South Africa at this year’s glam function at Grosvenor House in London’s Park Lane. A documentary presented by Mail & Guardian correspondent Eddie Koch and produced by Johannesburg-based educational broadcasters Ulwazi won a bronze. The Last Voice – the compelling story of Kalahari […]
The male-to-male escort industry is booming, servicing clients who are typically middle- aged, affluent, white – and most often married. Charl Blignaut spends time at a whorehouse In the quiet street of a leafy suburb in the east of Johannesburg not even the next-door neighbours know that the house next door is a brothel. Why […]