Ferial Haffajee ‘We are not going to eradicate poverty in a decade,” says Minister of Welfare Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. It’s a very new song she is singing. Fraser-Moleketi is the young minister responsible for breathing life into what used to be a “by-the-way” ministry run by the National Party’s Abie Williams. “This is a powerful ministry. […]
Janet Smith A trample of running girls, sandals unbuttoned and skirts pleated around them, grin and point at the silver and blue machine. They’re caught in its shimmering breeze as they stop at the fence, put their hands to their brows and start chattering like birds. The firemen laugh lazily together at the corner of […]
Swapna Prabhakaran Race relations among advocates in KwaZulu-Natal have deteriorated to the brink of segregation, with disgruntled black members of the Society of Advocates of Natal forming an association to protect their interests. Thirty-two black advocates from Durban recently attended a blacks- only meeting and formed the new association, which aims to work within the […]
Caroline Sullivan Even after their four million-selling debut, Garbage’s second album was never going to rouse panting anticipation. The reason is neatly encapsulated in the understated title, Version 2.0. Derived from computer software, it mumbles “very dull”. In spite of the presence of Nirvana producer Butch Vig (drums, effects) and the pin-sharp Shirley Manson (vocals), […]
Ferial Haffajee In KwaZulu-Natal a community of women risk getting eaten by crocodiles and bitten by snakes. It’s the peril they face on their daily trek to collect water. Other women told the poverty hearings in other provinces that they are raped or harassed as they make their way to watering holes. Water provision is […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Police are three times more likely to commit crime than ordinary members of the public, and that’s official. In its forthcoming monthly report, the Human Rights Committee says statistics provided by Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi show the shocking extent of police involvement in criminal activities. Mufamadi told the National Assembly […]
The World Economic Forum’s Southern African economic summit in Windhoek this week provided an object lesson in what lies behind the woes of the continent. Like the arrival of Zambian President Frederick Chiluba – who has been appealing for debt relief from foreign donors – with retinue in a state-of-the-art Falcon 500 executive jet. Delegates […]
Angella Johnson The first thing Hazel Kidson did on entering the Johannesburg courtroom where she is standing trial for murdering her husband was reapply her lipstick. Then the bejewelled 52-year-old sat clutching her miniature Bible. “I always carry it with me,” she later explained. After more than a year in jail, she was dressed to […]
Noam Chomsky The current call for international debt cancellation is welcome, but debt does not just go away. Someone pays, and history confirms that risks tend to be socialised in the system mislabelled “free enterprise capitalism”. The old-fashioned idea is that responsibility falls upon the borrowers and lenders. Money was not borrowed by assembly plant […]
Wally Mbhele Mounting frustration over the continued incarceration of Robert McBride, who has been languishing in a Mozambican jail without trial for almost two-and-a-half months, has prompted calls for the South African government to become more active in securing the freedom of its foreign affairs official. After the Mozambican authorities failed this week either to […]
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg It is difficult to pin down exactly what it is that makes director Yael Farber’s production of Britpop theatre brat Mark Ravenhill’s 1996 debut, Shopping and Fucking, so powerful. Difficult because the production is consistently awesome. Difficult because, after seven years of being a theatre critic, I have all […]
Elvis Costello pays tribute to Frank Sinatra My mam tells me that one of my first words was “skin”. I was not an especially precocious child, I couldn’t say whole sentences, but I knew how to request that I’ve Got You under My Skin be played on the family record player. Then again, I might […]
Alex Brummer In an eloquent gesture, designed to underpin development in Uganda – the first of the poorest countries to receive some debt forgiveness – the World Bank advanced the government of President Yoweri Museveni a grant of $75-million this month to support universal primary education across the country. The move demonstrates just how far […]
Stefaans Brmmer Mathole Motshekga this week denied he was close to apartheid-era military intelligence frontman Abel Rudman – but the Mail & Guardian has documentary evidence of a meeting at the Gauteng premier’s house where shareholding in a resort development was discussed. The M&G published details a fortnight ago of Motshekga’s involvement in a series […]
Stewart Dalby They are not the most expensive items in their field, nor are they the best crafted, but Rolexes are the most famous watches. Virtually every month one of the four big auction houses, Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Phillips or Bonham’s, holds a watch sale and there are specialised dealers. But Rolex will have an auction […]
Shaun de Waal CD of the week The Bassline in Melville, Johannesburg, has proved itself to be one of the city’s most reliable jazz joints, perhaps even its best. Everyone who is anyone in South African jazz has played there, and this CD, Jazz at the Bassline (Sheer Sound), collects 12 works by this country’s […]
The conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda is often characterised as mindless ethnic bloodletting. Mahmood Mamdani provides a far more complex background to the conflict No two conflicting groups in the Great Lakes region have a longer and more comprehensive history of intermarriage than do the Hutu and the Tutsi. Intermarriage between the Hutu […]
David Pallister The British salesman sank with evident relief into his club-class seat as the plane prepared to take off from Murtala Muhammed airport. Doing business in humid, chaotic Lagos, even selling defence electronic equipment to the military junta, was never the easiest of jobs. In answer to the question, “So how much commission do […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week I didn’t have any hopes that Barry Levinson would ever make a good movie – or at least one I’d like. Everyone raved about Diner. I thought it was self-indulgent, adolescent crap. Rain Man won Oscars. I thought it sentimental, badly styled rubbish (why did everything, but everything, have […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Gangs have triumphed in Westbury – Johannesburg’s equivalent of the Cape Flats ganglands – after promises of big business and politicians have come to naught. In recent weeks four men have been slain in gun fights – an event familiar to this dirt-poor community which, for decades, has enjoyed the notoriety of having […]
David White The vacancy appears to be the job of your dreams, the pay is right, the prospects are good. But competition for the best posts is the fiercest. So which qualities do employers look for? What can you do to convince them that you, and not the 300 other applicants, are the right person […]
The two police chiefs who vindicated Vito Palazzolo last year are likely to come under investigation as part of a new police probe, reports Andy Duffy Police chief George Fivaz has called on the presidential investigation task unit to re- open a probe into an alleged crime ring involving police, state officials and convicted Mafia […]
Mark Heywood At the beginning of March 1998, the Minister of Health released the results of the 1997 survey of HIV infection among women attending ante-natal clinics in South Africa. The survey revealed that a staggering 16% of women are already infected with HIV. In KwaZulu-Natal, one in four ante-natal attendees are estimated to have […]
Mercedes Sayagues Controversial American entrepreneur James Blanchard has set his sights on including parts of the famed Inhaca island in his huge Mozambican theme park, despite the fact that he has yet to deliver on his grandiose scheme. Blanchard has asked the Maputo municipal council for a 276ha concession in Ponta Torres, the south-eastern peninsula […]
The demise of Louis Luyt as president of the South African Rugby Football Union is only the first step towards rugby’s rehabilitation as a national sport. There are many administrators and followers of the sport who, while accepting Luyt’s departure as a necessary expedient to removing an obstacle to the upcoming international tours, resent the […]
Melvyn Minnaar Potable pleasures Drinking and flying is not on. Even if you’re not piloting the long-haul Boeing, alcohol indulgence is bad for your body. The hours spent physically static and confined to a seat in a pressurised cabin, exposed to the ensuing dehydration, is not the recommended condition for a cocktail party, never mind […]
Anton Simanowitz Nyatela Baloyi, living in a village in Khomanani Tribal Authority in the former Venda, is typical of many of the poorest families in the Northern Province. She lives in two mud brick rondavels together with five children. She has no husband -he passed away some time ago, and supports her family with her […]
Larry Elliott It is just before dawn in Kinshasa on October 30 1974. In a boxing ring in the middle of a football stadium lies George Foreman, knocked out by Muhammad Ali in one of the biggest sporting upsets of the century. As lightning crackles overhead, 60 000 Zaireans cheer Ali, world champion again after […]
Greg Bowes CD of the week The titles of the three Ninja Cuts compilations from Britain’s inspired weird-beat label Ninja Tune, are always extraordinarily tongue-twisting. Funkjazztical Tricknology, Flexistentialism, and now Ninja Cuts III: Funkungfusion (Ninja Cuts), the latest round-up of revolutionary sounds from their roster. Headed up by sonic sorcerers Coldcut, who were once responsible […]
Maggie O’Kane in Niger They are sitting in a corner of the hospital, shaded by their compound wall. She is three years old, with dark, dusty ringlets and a buttercup yellow dress with faded pink tulips. They are on a wicker mat, apart from the others, him rubbing her shoulders and smoothing her hair. The […]
Tracy Murinik On show in Cape Town “Everything is art,” I am informed as I sit down for the interview. Well, that should leave impotent and irrelevant those irksome and defensive little retorts of “but is it art?” that often riddle commentary around work that cannot be mounted flush against a wall. “Even when you […]
Dan Ncayiyana Right to Reply I feel constrained to respond to the letter by my friend and colleague, Professor Cecil Abrahams (May 8 to 14), in which he purports to write “in my capacity as an acknowledged scholar of African studies”. Whatever that distinction may mean (I am not aware of an academic discipline called […]