The Durban Designer Emporium’s first exhibition installation was a facelift for fashion and performance art, writes Suzy Bell `Durban’s sub-culture needs to be tickled, then scratched,” hissed the chick with a live goldfish swishing about her liquid handbag. The blood still hasn’t quite drained from the flush of it all, but the gouges, at least, […]
WEDNESDAY, 12.30AM: FORMER Civil Co-operation Bureau operative Ferdi Barnard shrugged off any personal involvement in the 1989 murder of Wits academic David Webster in the Pretoria High Court on Tuesday, admitting, however, that the CCB could have been involved, and that some of his CCB colleagues may have taken part in the murder. A lucid […]
TUESDAY, 12.00NOON: ARCHBISHOP Trevor Huddleston, the Anglican priest who spoke up for the poor of Sophiatown in the 1940s and 1950s, then became leader of the international Anti-Apartheid Movement, has died in London, aged 84. Huddleston’s book Naught For Your Comfort played a key role in alerting the world to apartheid during the mid-1950s. Posted […]
TUESDAY, 5.00PM: NIGERIA, which has just replaced planned presidential elections with a referendum, has been criticised for the move by the United Kingdom and the United States. The elections for a civilian president were cancelled after all five authorised political parties nominated military ruler General Sani Abacha as their candidate. Now Nigerian will have two […]
TUESDAY, 8.30AM: TWO candidates face off for the vacant seat of Western Cape Premier Hernus Kriel, who resigned on Monday. Health MEC Peter Marais, an outspoken hardliner, is the leading coloured National Party leader and the likely choice to hold the vital coloured vote in the next election. Rival candidate Gerald Morkel is the Community […]
TUESDAY, 12.15PM: APARTHEID dirty tricks operative Ferdi Barnard on Monday denied in the Pretoria High Court that he killed anti-apartheid activist Dr David Webster in 1989. Barnard, who faces 34 charges, ranging from murder and attempted murder to intimidation and fraud, did however admit to monitoring former activist and present Justice Minister Dullah Omar for […]
TUESDAY, 10.30AM: A SOMALI faction leader negotiating the release of 10 kidnapped foreign aid workers, including South African pilot Robbie Burt, says the talks are “encouraging”. “We cannot promise their freedom, but the negotiations are encouraging. No more threats will be made to kill them and negotiations will be carried out in an orderly manner,” […]
Lucy Hannan in Garissa It has taken a Cabinet minister’s threat to resign to make the Kenyan government launch an inquiry into allegations ofEpolice torture and sexual humiliation during an operation against bandits in North-Eastern province. Maalim Mohammed, a staunch supporter of President Daniel arap Moi since 1983, produced video evidence of torture in his […]
Jeremy Cronin: CROSSFIRE General Georg Meiring’s blunder in passing on to President Nelson Mandela a cock-and-bull story about a “left-wing” plot has got me thinking about Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals. What is the connection, you wonder? There have been persistent rumours about Stals’s role in the apartheid-era State Security Council. Little light has been […]
Ferial Haffajee The cocktail of a showbiz doyenne, an African princess and a struggle lawyer can only yield interesting results. This combination has seen African Media Entertainment (AME) cause quite a stir on the stock exchange and in the entertainment and film industries. From their offices at the MTN Sundome outside Johannesburg, David Dison (AME’s […]
M&G reporter Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga this week strongly denied spying allegations, accusing the Mail & Guardian of a vendetta against him, the African National Congress and the government. Motshekga’s representative, Makhosini Nkosi, responded in writing. l On the investigation by the Negota inquiry, he said: “To the best of our knowledge, the said commission […]
What is the appeal of sitting in a kind of bar, staring into a computer screen?Swapna Prabhakaran investigated Internet cafs Looking for a lounge where they serve real coffee, where the music alternatively spins between kwaito and techno? Or would you rather sip sherry at a nice cosy cabaret? You can do all that and […]
Bill Buford: GRAFFITI The literary news in New York has been of acquisitions. The most noteworthy, of course, is the acquisition of Random House by Bertelman’s. The Pierpont Morgan library has just been given a gift of rare “American literary properties” collected by Carter Burden, a New York businessman with an interest in the media […]
Janine Stephen Is clearing alien vegetation pouring money into a bottomless pit? Not if it is done correctly. But if no follow-up work is done, you can be back at where you began within a year. South African National Parks (SANP) was given R5-million in January on behalf of Working for Water, to clear areas […]
Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON At our peril we are all ignoring another fine example Dr Nkosazana Zuma has given us of audacious democratic management skills. Especially when it comes to applying discipline to insolent apartheid-residual control bodies, Nkosazana leads the way. As they say in the good book: if thine hand offends thee, cut it […]
Richard Williams: Movie of the week It has all the virtues of a classic British costume drama. A dead-on sense of period. Clothes so exquisite they make you want to go shopping. What a surprise, then, that we emerge from The Wings of the Dove thinking mostly about sex. Sex and Henry James? Hardly the […]
Andy Duffy The group behind the controversial Aids drug, Virodene PO58, has so far spent around R1- million on the drug, including paying its manager roughly R150 000 for three months’ part- time work. Cryopreservation Technologies (CPT) refuses to divulge its funding sources, beyond its 10 feuding shareholders. But the extent of the expenditure, which […]
What do you think? We invite our readers to respond to John Pilger’s analysis of South Africa. The best replies will each receive a free copy of his latest book, Hidden Agendas, published by Vintage. Fax your responses to (011) 403-1025 or e-mail [email protected]
Shot dead at a taxi rank this week, James Zulu is more likely to be remembered as an Inkatha warlord than the great leader he could have been, writes Jesper Strudsholm The South Coast Herald once branded James Zulu “a warlord”. Zulu threatened to take the editor to court for defamation, but the paper was […]
A paediatrician’s love of orchids led to the discovery that big doses of garlic could triumph over infection, writes Michael Nurok The Roman statesman Cicero advised that one should eat to live, not live to eat. Little did he know that more than 2 000 years later, gravely ill patients at Cape Town hospitals might […]
Despite facing stringent budget cuts, the military has paid out hefty merit bonuses – mainly to white officers, writes Mungo Soggot The Ministry of Defence is probing the armed forces’ decision to pay officers R77-million in performance bonuses, nearly all of which went to white officers of the former South African Defence Force (SADF). Amid […]
Malcolm Hacksley SOLSTICE by Don Maclennan (Snailpress/Scottish Cultural Press, R49) Don Maclennan is intensely respectful towards words, his own and those of others, and uses them remarkably sparingly. The subjects and ideas in these poems call forth a spontaneous response, but the Maclennan response is rigorous in its self-control. Perhaps it is true that “songs […]
Mathole Motshekga’s past has come under new scrutiny from the ANC, writes Stefaans Brummer The African National Congress is investigating claims that Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga spied for the apartheid government. An ANC commission of inquiry – appointed in February to investigate a string of allegations against Motshekga, primarily of financial irregularities – has now […]
Andy Capostagno Cricket People tell me I have a nice job. Go to as many rugby and cricket matches as you like, don’t pay to get in, write a few lines about the match and spend the rest of the day relaxing in the pool on one of those inflatable chairs with a hole in […]
As the dust of an almost bewildering media storm finally begins to settle around Breyten Breytenbach’s Boklied, Charl Blignaut asks what the reaction to the play means One should have smelled it from a mile off, really, the faint whiff of scandal rising from the Boklied posters mingling with the cloying fragrance of potpourri and […]
Jarvis Cocker is a latter-day folk hero in Britain. He talks to Caroline Sullivan about his and Pulp’s new album Jarvis Cocker is one of rock’s great kitchen-sink lyricists, so it was fitting that our first meeting took place in a kitchen. It was late 1992, at a party in a south London council flat. […]
Who is . . . Vuka Tshabalala? Swapna Prabhakaran and Mungo Soggot Judges rarely open their mouths outside court. When they do, it is never about their cases. And it is almost never about themselves. It was therefore a surprising decision on the part of Judge Vuka Tshabalala to abandon the rule of silence outside […]
Dear Phillipe:…It certainly has not taken you long to become a household name in South Africa. One week to be precise. Snubbing the media, intimidating and humiliating players. What a start! I know you were critical of the South Africa media long before you set foot on our soil because I read your interview with […]
Unesco has declared 23 April -William Shakespeare’s birthday -the annual World Day of the Book. The idea has spread rapidly and successfully over much of the world. In Catalonia, Spain, for instance, there is a festival of bookselling, and buyers are given a rose. In Holland a well-known author writes a small book and this […]
There are an estimated 7,5-million illiterate adults in South Africa, but the number of adults who are poorly educated and ill-equipped to participate in our economy is much higher. But even for those who can, there is little to read. The recent Department of Education policy document and the multi-year plans released by the department’s […]
THURSDAY, 5.15PM: FORMER state president PW Botha was itching for his trial to continue on Thursday afternoon, but it has been postponed to June 1 to allow his lawyers time to examine additional documents presented by the prosecution. Botha said: “This case was set for four days. Come let’s go on.” He told advocate Piet […]
Last week, Matthew van der Want argued that we should be ashamed of the success of `clichd’ band Just Jinger. Diane Coetzer disagrees At least Matthew van der Want has the one characteristic always admired in the surfers who took to Umhlanga’s most lethal waves: pluck. But, in this case, the word applies less to […]