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/ 15 August 1997

Payback time for the kings of swing

In the early days of South African music, many stars sold their rights to record companies for a flat fee. Today they say they were exploited and are looking for compensation. Glynis O’Hara investigates A recent visit to South Africa by The Manhattan Brothers’ Joe Mogotsi has brought an old music industry issue to the […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Fruits of your labours

Madeleine Roux: Moveable Feast In our part of the Klein Karoo, called the Koo Valley (yes, like the tin of jam), fruit is often so plentiful you can’t give it away. Comes the apricot season, new residents to the town delight in paying a rand or two for a bagful. Two weeks later crates of […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Sound in 3D

No, they have not arrived. This is an integrated class A 40 watt per channel stereo amplifier, and it comes, not from Mars, but from Panfield’s Andrew Meintjies. Meintjies, a photographer, camera-builder, and “Renaissance techno-geek”, makes the amps by hand. Their form-follows-function design is unique: the aluminium casing – available in 10 different colours – […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Too little too late for veterans

Francis Murape Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s recent land offer to ex-combatants may be a little too late. The liberation war veterans’ protests have assumed, not only anti- corruption, but anti-government overtones as well. About 500 of the former fighters, demanding payments from the corruption-riddled War Victims Compensation Fund, on Monday drowned Mugabe’s speech at the […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Can Meyer and Holomisa keep the party

clean? Charlene Smith Rallies and meetings held by Roelf Meyer’s New Movement Process (NMP) and Bantu Holomisa’s National Consultative Forum (NCF) are enthusiastically attended, whether in Karoo villages, urban centres or townships. And National Party members are continuing to drift to Meyer. But how clean are the alliances Meyer and Holomisa have been prepared to […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Gauteng labour is `too expensive’

Charlene Smith South African unskilled labour is pricing itself out of the market, and while professional and technical staff in Gauteng earn less than the global norm, industries that could create jobs will simply not come to the region because of high wages. “Labour is simply too expensive,” conceded Jabu Moleketi, Gauteng Minister of Economic […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Diamond dealer turns peacemaker

A US businessman is trying to broker a deal in Angola in a bid for profit and peace, reports Chris Gordon Maurice Tempelsman has the ear of presidents, American and Angolan, as well as the Unita leader. Now the president of Lazare Kaplan International (LKI), who was Jackie Onassis’s partner for the last 15 years […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Du Plessis keeps Bok coaching job

FRIDAY, 12.30PM: SPRINGBOK rugby coach Carel du Plessis is likely to retain his job until the end of the year. No decision was taken on his future in the coaches meeting called by SA Rugby Football Union president Louis Luyt at Ellis Park on Thursday, but the plans set in motion reinforced his position. The […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Trial forces a re-think on rape laws

Gaye Davis Rape may be re-defined to include forced anal intercourse involving both male and female victims if a call this week by the Western Cape Attorney General, Frank Kahn, for new legislation is heeded. As a common-law offence, the definition of rape centres on the penetration, against her will, of a woman’s vagina by […]

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/ 15 August 1997

SA is no `El Dorado’ for Africa

Foreign traders flocked to South Africa in the hope of making their fortunes, but have found crime instead, reports Anna Georgiou From Timbuktu to Tripoli, traders from across Africa have flocked to South Africa to strike gold and have been met with hostility by locals. Saturday business at the Market Theatre flea market in Johannesburg […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Stars for World Student Games

FRIDAY, 12.30PM: OLYMPICS and World Championships athletes Penny Heyns, Llewellyn Herbert and Marius Corbert will lead the 144-strong South African Students Sports Union (Sassu) team to compete in the World Student Games in Sicily, Italy starting on Tuesday. The team has nine teams including footballers, swimmers and athletes. Meanwhile, Olympic silver medallist Hezekiel Sepeng might […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Top newsmen `swop’ jobs

Janet Smith SABC radio and broadcasting and entertainment industry leader, Primedia, have done a fair swop of Jeremy Thorpe and Chris Gibbons, two of South Africa’s strongest newsmen. Thorpe, a former TV news chief executive producer who left the SABC this year after an internal battle over the decision to end the wire services of […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Skills crisis knocks public service

Marion Edmunds The director general of the public service department, Paseko Ncholo, believes South Africa’s R74-billion public sector wage bill is a political ” hot potato” that Cabinet needs to address through “political decisions”. Speaking at a briefing in Parliament, Ncholo denied knowing anything about government plans to prune the country’s empire of 1,2-million public […]

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/ 15 August 1997

New Mombasa attack leaves one dead

PHOENIX SUSPECT ARRESTED POLICE have arrested a suspect beleived to be the Phoenix Starangler, who has raped and murdered at least 19 women in Phoenix near Durban. The suspect was arrested during a raid on a shack in the Besters shantytown near Phoenix. The suspect, a Zulu-speaking man between the ages of 30 and 40 […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Rwanda wants mass murderer back

Tanya Nel A formal request to extradite Dr Andre Rwamakuba, former minister of education in Rwanda and currently employed by the Namibian Ministry of Health and Social Services, was made to the Namibian government last week. The Rwandan government asked for his extradition on the grounds that it has documented proof of his involvement in […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Arms for the man in the street

Swapna Prabhakaran Psst … wanna buy a Mirage aircraft or a navy tugboat? Vast quantities of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) ammunition, vehicles, aircraft and other matriel are to be disposed of – most by public auction and tender. A SANDF representative said the equipment was no longer needed as it was outdated, beyond […]

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/ 15 August 1997

The voice of the ANC in exile

Gaye Davis Tom Sebina, who has died aged 60, was for years the public voice of the African National Congress and one of the last of the organisation’s cadres to return from exile. His office, little more than an agglomeration of desks and chairs crowded into a tiny room at the ANC’s rudimentary headquarters off […]

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/ 15 August 1997

The art show of the year

Brenda Atkinson: Johannesburg Biennale update Okwui Enwezor, artistic director of this year’s Johannesburg Biennale, has spoken out against media coverage of the arts in South Africa, as well as corporate “stinginess” regarding local arts funding. Despite the fact that resistance to apartheid produced a flourishing creative community, and some extraordinary work across the artistic field, […]

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/ 15 August 1997

The `painless’ winning throw

Julian Drew: Athletics Like a javelin out of nowhere is how Marius Corbett arrived on top of the victory rostrum at the World Athletics Championships in Athens last week. The forgotten man of South African athletics, who improved considerably earlier this year to rank 14th in the world going into the championships, he added nearly […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Move over Williams, this is F1’s finest

team To win in Formula One takes more than a pair of hot-shoe drivers. Without the right team manager, the best designer and the slickest pit crew, you will never make the podium. Which is why drivers are not the only ones commanding multi-million pound salaries these days. Alan Henry casts his eye around the […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Safa to report Congo to Fifa

FRIDAY, 12.30PM: SOUTH African Football Association (Safa) CEO Danny Jordaan on Thursday said Congo’s refusal to accept local hospitality is unacceptable and he will report their attitude and conduct to soccer’s controling body, the International Football Association (Fifa). Congo on Wednesday refused to board a bus provided by Safa; instead they hired six private cars […]

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/ 15 August 1997

New plan to electrify South Africa

Lynda Loxton While local authorities take desperate measures to get consumers to pay their bills, the final touches are being put to an ambitious plan to get South Africa’s electrification programme back on track. Minerals and energy department deputy- director Wolsey Barnard told the parliamentary minerals and energy committee this week the plan involved dividing […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Don’t cry for Carel, weep for his successor

Steve Morris: Rugby The public ourpourings of support from the rugby tsars, besieged as they currently are in a winter palace of growing national discontent, for Springbok coach Carel du Plessis, have the distinctly hollow ring of those who protest too much. Du Plessis is under fire for a string of dubious decisions about the […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Thousands flee new Brazzaville fighting

FRIDAY, 4.30PM: THOUSANDS of terrified civilians are fleeing across the Congo river to Kinshasa following renewed heavy fighting around the Congolese capital of Brazzaville between forces loyal to President Pascal Lissouba and the militia of former dictator Denis Sassou Nguesso. Most of those fleeing the recent surge in fighting are women and children from Brazzaville […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Legal Aid drops Boesak

Mungo Soggot The Legal Aid Board has revoked its controversial funding of Allan Boesak’s defence after it emerged that he has other financial backing, drummed up by South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Franklin Sonn. The decision to withdraw Boesak’s funding was taken at a board meeting on Monday on the grounds that the […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Faldo faces a major Ryder Cup test

David Davies in New York: Golf Nick Faldo has thought the unthinkable. After a season in which he has been consistently inconsistent, he knows there is a real danger that he might not be in the Ryder Cup team that plays the Americans at Valderrama at the end of next month. He admitted to the […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Felgate was ANC agent

Mail & Guardian Reporters The Inkatha Freedom Party hardliner Walter Felgate, who defected to the African National Congress this week, had been a trusted member of the ANC’s underground who worked alongside Oliver Tambo and CF Beyers Naude for several years. Felgate, who was probably Inkatha’s most vocal and energetic negotiator, and a stumbling block […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Namibia’s impossible dream of easy freedom

Kevin Toolis went to Namibia in 1987, an idealistic rookie journalist eager to join the struggle against apartheid. He was deported. Ten years later he returned We were driving south along the thin, two- lane road that runs through Ovamboland, the former war zone in northern Namibia, when we saw something ahead shimmering like a […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Death-row prisoners still wait in limbo

Gaye Davis The fate of 453 former death-row prisoners remains unclear as politicians and legal experts wrestle with the dilemma of how best to deal with them. When the Constitutional Court abolished the death penalty two years ago, it ordered that prisoners sentenced to death remain in custody until their sentences were either set aside […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Markets wait for Stals

THURSDAY, 11.00AM THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange repeated its Wednesday performance on Thursday as it continued following international trends. Only gold shares benefited from the uncertainty on equity markets. In a flat day’s trade, one of the only notable features was the rand’s loss of more than 2,5c to the dollar, ending the day at R4,6855 […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Children of settlers and locals need to

play together The four Lemmer children, from toddler to pre-teen, are delightful: bright, affectionate, well- mannered. We go for a walk to see the canal close to the farm in Matama. I ask them what they miss most from South Africa. They say their friends.”There are plenty of children here. Haven’t you made new friends […]

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/ 15 August 1997

Bonobos show us the nature of ourapeman

ancestry Pygmy chimps show that peace and love may come naturally to their human cousins, writes Robin McKie Peering into the eyes of a pygmy chimpanzee may reveal a strange secret: a glimpse of our ancient apeman ancestors. Scientists now believe these graceful cousins of the common chimpanzee share many features with australopithecines, a four-million-year-old […]