Stephen Bierley questions the sincerity of two potential tennis champions May in Paris and the great names are lined up for the French Open: Chiroubles, Fleurie, Morgon, Moulin-a- Vent. And then there are the tennis players. The intense heat of Melbourne, the mayhem of Flushing Meadow and the unremitting pressure of Wimbledon seem a world […]
Lesotho’s elections have been declared fair, but a host of inconsistencies points towards vote rigging, writes William Boot in Maseru The day before Lesotho’s general elections last Saturday, Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) leader Pakaditha Mosisili stuck his neck out to predict: “We will win by a landslide.” He said this at a time when […]
Changes in the unit trust industry could work to your advantage, writes Charlene Smith There is no doubt that the unit trust industry is profitable, for investors and trust-fund managers, but what new developments should the investor be sensitive too? Overall, unit trusts are performing better than the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s (JSE) all share index, […]
Ann Eveleth The development hopes of a poor rural community bordering the lucrative Sabi Sands game reserve have been delayed by bickering between conservationists vying for a slice of the community’s untapped treasure. The tiny community of Huntington in the fractious Bushbuckridge region in Mpumalanga plans to meet this weekend in an ongoing bid to […]
Nick Cumming-Bruce President Bacharuddin Jusuf Habibie’s enthusiasm is infectious, but his head- spinning monologues have the power to wear anyone down – as Margaret Thatcher discovered while drumming up business in Indonesia. Purposeful as ever on a mid-1980s visit, she strode around the Bandung aviation plant with Habibie trotting beside her, talking furiously. Visibly flagging, […]
After nearly a decade of remaining in the doldrums, the motor sector of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange has doubled in less than two years, with some listed companies still showing upward growth potential. However, the ride to its present level of over 9 000 has been volatile. Before the 1994 election the index remained mostly […]
Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week I don’t have any friends I still know from my schooldays. It’s probably just as well. Most of them weren’t really friends because I was such a wise-ass. But two films opening this week give unique insight into the world of children and growing up. Both are rites- of-passage […]
Multinationals are moving into hitherto untouched areas, with catastrophic results, writes John Vidal Amungme tribal leader Yosepha Alomang, a mother of 10, should be in Britain. But as she boarded the plane this month in Irian Jaya, Indonesia, to head for London and the Rio Tinto annual meeting, she was stopped by the military. Had […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon `One day you boys will find Latin phrases like these come in very useful,” alpaca-coated Brother H used to murmur as he savagely whipped our upturned hands with a thick leather whalebone-spined strap. Six hits. Three for the left, three for the right. A rider discipline to the hand- thrashings: learn […]
Charlene Smith On March 16 1984, former president PW Botha met his Mozambican counterpart, Samora Machel, at the Nkomati River to sign an accord that effectively blackmailed Mozambique. Next month, on June 6, President Nelson Mandela and Machel’s succesor, President Jaoquim Chissano, will open the Maputo development corridor, strengthening relations between the two countries and […]
Greg Bowes Johannesburg nightlife Suddenly on Saturday nights in Johannesburg there’s a welcome and regular alternative to the usual mundane mega- raves – and one that’s showcasing local talent on the fringes of live music. And I’ll be damned, people are still dancing! The Stylus Lounge takes place every weekend at the stunning but seldom […]
Chris Gordon Luanda’s frantic daytime commercial activity belies tension in the peace process, but at night the city falls quiet, reflecting the fears that the low-level war will increase when the United Nations completes its pull- out at the end of June. The new impasse comes as Unita refused to hand over their political and […]
Tim Radford United States space scientists believe they will be able to conjure up refrigerator and furnace insulation tiles out of thin air. They are experimenting with a composite material called aerogel, the lightest solid known. A lump of this “frozen smoke” the size of a man would weigh less than 0,45kg, but could bear […]
Craig Bishop The launch of the National Environment Management Bill this week is expected to give communities a “lot more political muscle in dealing with companies”, says Chris Albertyn, national co-ordinator of the Environmental Justice Networking Forum. “The new Bill recognises that the government has very little capacity to deal with companies breaking environmental laws. […]
Mail & Guardian reporter South Africa’s financial markets took a drubbing this week as the rand fell to an all-time low and the Reserve Bank raised its key lending rate by more than two percentage points to 18%. The rand dropped to R5,16 against the dollar on Monday after rumours in London and New York […]
Arvind Ganesan In their search for finite resources, oil companies must partner governments who may have dismal human rights records – witness Total’s involvement with the Burmese junta in constructing the Yadana natural-gas pipeline. In Colombia the drive to develop oil fields has landed companies in the middle of a war zone. To ensure oil […]
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 […]
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 […]
Andrew Clements CDs of the week Naxos deserves an award. Using archive material supplied by the Canadian-based Immortal Performances of Recorded Music Society, they’ve secured the commercial release of operatic radio broadcasts, taken from live performances from 1937 to 1943, some of them hitherto only available as expensive bootlegs. Not everyone will like these: recording […]
Mzilikazi wa Afrika Police are investigating allegations that taxi bosses in Mpumalanga employed 40 Mozambicans as hired assassins. Investigators say taxi bosses hired the Mozambicans as the foreigners would be harder to track down than local hired assassins. “Our intelligence unit has found out that the Mozambican hit men are armed with powerful automatic rifles,” […]
Janet Smith Young and single was getting seriously boring till Ally McBeal made her case on television in the United States last year. Critics were yawning over the trendy narrative of ensemble casts in emotional crises after yet another season of superstar sitcom Friends, which earned that show’s cast a few million more. Come now. […]
Alex Duval Smith in Zambezi, western Zambia In the darkness of the mud-brick hut, the glint in the man’s eye was as piercing as the flashes of light from the half-dozen diamonds in his palm. “They will cost you 1,6-million kwatcha [R4 800]. At the moment, I can also sell you emeralds, gold dust and […]
Simon Caulkin Stock options have become the Nineties way of rewarding top managers. But as the number of options being granted has exploded, so the boom in share prices has inflated the value of those options. The sheer volume of stock options has achieved such scale that it threatens to undermine the validity of company […]
The way to a woman’s heart is through his stomach, writes Andrew Anthony A small request to male readers: before you settle down to this article, place a hand on your stomach. Move it around, trace the girth, then clasp whatever flesh is sticking out above your belt (female readers may care to perform the […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby By 6.15 on Saturday morning (South African time) the Super 12 will be over. By the time the first weekend of June rolls around we could all be suffering from withdrawal symptoms. Certainly M-Net will find its weekends considerably more difficult to fill because, although the first international team of the winter […]
Stefaans Brmmer: A SECOND LOOK Nicholas Biwott is Kenya’s political bogeyman. The minister of state in the office of President Daniel Arap Moi has a reputation that embraces ruthless murder, kleptomaniacal patronage and cynical manipulation. Any edition of one of Kenya’s more adventurous journals is as likely as not to make reference to what they […]
Stefaans Brmmer As South Africa’s lilliputian opposition parties scramble to block the African National Congress juggernaut, one of the country’s most influential think-tanks believes the ANC may still secure a two- thirds majority in next year’s election. The Centre for Policy Studies has challenged predictions that the ruling party will get below 50% of the […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga Vista University was plunged into crisis this week as students continued a boycott of their mid-year examinations while management reacted by shutting several of the campuses. Two weeks ago students demanded that the examinations scheduled to have begun last Monday be delayed by a week, saying they were unprepared and the timetable […]
sabotaged,’ says JSE Mungo Soggot The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has scotched claims by the directors of Amalia Gold Mining that the company, which is being liquidated after its spectacular collapse, was sabotaged in a hostile take- over bid. The JSE suspended Amalia Gold Mining on March 5 after the share lost 95% of its […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga Two University of Venda buildings were burnt down this week, causing more than R500 000 worth of damage. The student affairs block was torched during the early hours of Monday morning, while the office of the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco) was destroyed the next day. A group of Azanian Students’ Congress […]
Charl Blignaut Shopping and Fucking, a controversial new theatre production, has, against all odds, ushered in a new era for Johannesburg’s Market Theatre – in the process taking its young cast into uncharted territory. The play, which contains some of the most explicit scenes ever seen on a local stage, was always going to be […]
ready for the spectacle of the World Cup Bongani Siqoko Soccer World Cup The whole universe will come to a standstill when reigning world champions Brazil take on Scotland in the opening game of the World Cup 98 in France at Saint Denis on June 10. Unlike the 1994 World Cup, which was a two-nation […]