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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
FRIDAY, 11.30AM JOHANNESBURG Consolidated Investments, SA’s first black-owned mining company, is to be split into thrre smaller companies: a parent holding company, a gold company, and a non-gold commodities firm, according to a letter to staff from chairman Mzi Khumalo. In the letter, Khumalo said the purpose is to create management structures to ensure a […]
Soccer: A draw against Congo, and one point, is all South Africa need to book their place at the World Cup finals, writes Andrew Muchineripi There is no higher peak in African football than qualifying for the World Cup finals and South Africa can realise that dream this Saturday provided they avoid defeat against Congo […]
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 […]
The spirit of Shaka Zulu is back, this time featuring a gaggle of international stars, reports Charl Blignaut Ask any common or garden foreigner about their impressions of South African history and you can safely bet that the words “Shaka Zulu” will come your way. That’s got a lot to do with SABC-TV’s 1986 series […]
Dror Eyal: The festival circuit It would be easy to dismiss Oppikoppi as the valley of drunken louts; to concentrate on an estranged man committing suicide; on the drunkenness, debauchery and the sexual harassment. But in any society of 15 000 odd people, including those whosnuck in under duvets in the boot, there will be […]
Arthur Goldstuck Music tunes in to the Web Last weekend saw the climax of 1997’s biggest, noisiest and most fascinating South African music event, the third Oppikoppi Festival of Rock held in the bushveld beyond Sun City. What started as a University of Pretoria Graphic Design school project is now the keynote event in the […]
The good ship SS Graigaur slipped its moorings and set sail from the State Theatre last week, carrying on board a youthful, starry-eyed writer called Athol fugard, en route to a date with artistic destiny. Also on board, Jennifer Steyn, as his young mother-cum-muse, and Owen Sejake as the burly Kenyan donkeyman. The autobiographical voyage […]
FRIDAY, 12.30PM: THE South African cricket academy lost to New Zealand by six wickets in a limited overs match at Hoy Park in Durban on Thursday. South Africa lost the toss to the Kiwis and scored 254/8. Morne Strydom hit 103 in 96 balls for South Africa. New Zealand lost their first wicket to the […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga The University of Zululand has failed to send audited statements for millions of rands given to it by the Kagiso Trust for student loans and bursaries. Last week, the Mail & Guardian published a statement by the university’s rector, Charles Dlamini, saying Kagiso’s claim that it had not received statements was “false […]
FRIDAY, 4.00PM The investigation into the “canned” lion hunting industry has led to probes being instituted into 130 cases. The police Endangered Species Protection Unit and Northern Province special investigators have opened 39 dockets as a result of their investigations, and are probing another 90 cases. And, as investigations continue, evidence is being unearthed of […]
Athol Fugard’s latest play, The Captain’s Tiger, is currently on at the Pretoria State Theatre – to mixed reviews. Playwright Charles Fourie speaks to him, and Andrew Wilson gives his views on the play The first time I encountered Athol Fugard was in print. As a first-year student I was given a copy of a […]
As the deadline nears, the government and labour are urgently seeking a compromise on variations, reports Sechaba ka’Nkosi Last-minute attempts to ensure that the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill is passed in this parliamentary session are at a crucial stage. Sources close to the process say government and labour are exchanging new positions behind the […]
All the elements of theatre, comic and tragic, attended this week’s Hani amnesty hearing, writes Swapna Prabhakaran Clive Derby-Lewis does not look like a man who has been in prison for four years. At his amnesty application in Pretoria this week, he looked like a man who has been sleeping comfortably and he spoke like […]
jailed Gaye Davis and Gustav Thiel Three-year old Patronda Kelebogile Morwe was found dead in a zinc bath in her home in Ramatlabama Village near Mafikeng in the North West Province this month. She had been raped and strangled. A boy aged 13 has been arrested. A fortnight ago on the Cape Flats in Cape […]
Government has reduced tariffs over a wide range of goods without considering the broader consequences for industry, writes Charles Millward In January 1943, a commentator in The Times of London noted: “Next to war, unemployment has been the most widespread, the most insidious, and the most corroding malady of our generation: it is the specific […]
Ellen Bartlett More than 100 000 years ago, probably on a rainy day, a human walked in wet sand near what is now Langebaan Lagoon. The footprints he, or more likely she, left behind were covered in more sand, in succeeding layers blown in on the sea winds, and then preserved as the dunes slowly […]
Nick Cumming-Bruce in Bangkok The skyscrapers on Bangkok’s skyline, once a sign of Thailand’s place at the centre of Asia’s boom, are now conspicuous symbols of a shocking and, for investors, unnerving bust. Typical is the prestige office block overlooking the manicured surroundings of the Bangkok sports club but abandoned, half-built, by a now penniless […]