Wally Mbhele A FORMER commander of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) recently granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission allegedly tried to derail the amnesty applications of Jerry Richardson and other jailed members of the Mandela United Football Club. Yet Richardson, who is seeking amnesty for the murder of teenage activist “Stompie” Seipei and three other […]
LOOSE CANNON: Robert Kirby BOTH of my liberal friends have again gone into moral shock. This recent disaffection is no result of conventional stimuli. It has a more specific aetiology than the vaguely defined silts of the apartheid system. These two people are disturbed for very compact reasons. They have been watching and listening to […]
JEFF BENZIEN’s torture of former Umkhonto weSizwe guerrilla Peter Jacobs was, he said, “robust and very long”. “The normal interview with you carried on for quite a while … It was obvious you were playing for time. It was then that I resorted to using the wet bag on you,” Benzien told his amnesty hearing. […]
FRIDAY, 11.20AM: SOUTH AFRICAN and US Open champion Ernie Els struggled in the back nine and finished at 4-over 75 in the first round of the British Open on Thursday. Els said it was the toughest round he had ever played. “I played pretty well on the front line but then my start to the […]
The sound of scandal from the controversial Aids musical continues to reverberate around its creator Mbongeni Ngema. SUZY BELL reports NEW evidence has emerged in a fraud investigation into controversial director and playwright Mbongeni Ngema. The investigation concerns allegations, made in February, that Ngema used R3-million advanced to him from the R14,2-million spent on Sarafina […]
Muting the instruments Previous Grahamstown jazz festivals have usually been followed by one South African musician or another sounding off to the press. In the past, artists have had gripes about pay, conditions and programming. This year, you heard none of that; we can guarantee it. But the post-festival silence doesn’t mean that everything in […]
The EU is happy to sell its highly subsidised products to Africa but is less happy if Africa asks for a similar free- trade deal. Lynda Loxton outlines Alec Erwin’s battle TRADE and Industry Minister Alec Erwin left for Europe this week determined to persuade the European Union (EU) that any trade deal with South […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM ABSA Bank, in its Quarterly Housing Review released on Thursday, says that house prices in SA declined by an average 3,7% in real terms during the first half of this year and, given high interest rates and high levels of household debt, the situation is not likely to improve. Another factor contributing to […]
Journalists in Somalia have to be wary … before publishing by photocopier. ALEX BELLOS reports from Mogadishu THE press in Britain is often referred to as the fourth estate. In Somalia – where uniquely there has been no government for six years – it is definitely the first. Mogadishu is an unlikely place to have […]
ATHLETICS:Julian Drew FOR Frits Potgieter it was never a matter of if but rather when he would break into the big time – and that moment arrived somewhat unceremoniously at a low key athletics meeting in Sheffield, England on Tuesday night. Potgieter added more than two metres to his previous personal best of 61.98m in […]
FIVE lucky readers of the M&G’s books pages are winners in our giveaway of Edmund White’s brand new novel, The Farewell Symphony, published by Chatto &Windus. They are:Rose Cohen, Killarney; YFrame, Riviera; RHLloyd, Botha’s Hill; Mahluli Mngadi, Seapoint; and Kopano Ratele, Rondebosch. Congratulations and happy reading -your books are on their way to you. Look […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM: SOME 800 000 Liberian voters head for the polls on Saturday to choose a parliament and a president to govern Africa’s oldest republic, ravaged by a bitter seven-year civil war that has killed more than 150 000 people. A huge West African peacekeeping force from 10 nations has been stationed in Liberia since […]
Harry Berkowitz in New York GIANNI VERSACE, an Italian dressmaker’s son, grew up to be founder and chief designer of a half-billion-dollar fashion empire with hundreds of outlets around the world, a line of fragrances and plans to sell part of the company to the public next year. But can that Milan-based company continue to […]
Ken Barris RUDE SHELTERS by Robert Kirby (Jonathan Ball, R79,95) RUDE SHELTERS is a collection of Robert Kirby’s columns and articles that, judging by the content, span a three-year period from 1994 to 1996. It includes selections of his work as a television critic for The Star Tonight, satirical columns in the Sunday Times and […]
The truth commission will examine whether judges `dished out death sentences’ to shore up apartheid, writes Swapna Prabhakaran SOME of South Africa’s judges, including one working for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, will be called before the commission to defend apartheid-era decisions to send hundreds of people to the gallows. The issue of the death […]
Now that the lights have been turned off and the circus has left town, it’s time to take a stone-cold sober look at the 1997 Standard Bank 1997 Standard Bank National Arts Festival. What went down in G’town … Gwen Ansell AFRICAN music started to look like hot property at the Grahamstown Festival – but […]
Three white men with a briefcase of insurance policies are the leaders of a union at war with the NUM, writes Ferial Haffajee THE new union whose running battle with the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM)has claimed eight lives may have been set up as an elaborate insurance scam. The organisation, called Workers Mouthpeace, is […]
SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi JUST one month after the leg-weary footballers of South Africa were given a long-overdue break, the call to action has been sounded for the annual Iwisa Charity Spectacular at FNB Stadium on Saturday. Title holders Kaizer Chiefs face Sundowns in the first semi-final at 10am, followed by Orlando Pirates and Moroka Swallows […]
FILMGOERS can sup at a feast of independent cinema playing for the next two weeks in Johannesburg, arriving in Durban on July 15 and in Cape Town on July 28. Here are some of the best: The Funeral (Abel Ferrara, 1996) This 1930s-set gangster pic finds fierce and furiously transgressive director Ferrara on strangely penitent […]
PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela chose to speak at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies during his brief visit last week to the United Kingdom in order to make good his debt to religious leaders who had contributed to the struggle against apartheid.
FRIDAY, 1.00PM: SOUTH AFRICAN and International Boxing Federation champion Mbulelo Botile defends his title against American Tim Austin on Saturday night at the Nashville Arena. A victory for Botile will earn him a fight with International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Organisation champion Naseem “Prince” Hamed of Britain. Botile is reported to be in good […]
FINE ART: Hazel Friedman ARTISTS Clifford Charles and Samson Mnisi could hardly be blamed for wanting to throw a brick through the window of their exhibition site. That’s how frustrated they must feel about the general response to their show. Their exhibition, B(l)ack in Town, is currently on display on the recently vacated 13th floor […]
FRIDAY, 3.30PM The editor of the Kinshasa daily newspaper La Reference Plus has been interrogated by authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the paper reported splits within the new regime. Andre Ipakala was released on Thursday, one day after being detained. He said he underwent a lengthy interrogation over the report on an […]
FRIDAY, 12.30PM FORMER British MP Emma Nicholson, who has been sheltering Katiza Cebekhulu, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s kidnapping co-accused who was abducted and carried to Zambia to prevent him testifying against Madikizela-Mandela, said this week in London that she is to travel to SA in September and offered an interview to the truth commission. Nicholson, who has […]
Five years on, New York State police have not found the killer of a South African university student, writes his brother, Phil Molefe THE world media descended on Cape Town like vultures last week to cover the amnesty hearing of slain American Fulbright scholar Amy Biehl. By contrast, nothing has ever been said in America […]
The intricate workings of the brain require a neurotransmitter called serotonin to function properly – too little leads to depression, too much causes unreal feelings of bliss Laura Grant DEPRESSION has been called the common cold of emotional life and Prozac, with worldwide sales of more than $2-billion and popped down the gullets of an […]
Hazel Friedman SO what’s a scumbag Eastender like yourself doing in a place like this? I don’t actually get around to asking this of world-famous photographer David Bailey. But on eyeing his jet-lagged lids I get the feeling that he’d much rather deal with inane queries than those of the gee, gosh, wow kind. But […]
A new generation of central bankers, unfamiliar with the perils of high inflation, could prompt a new rush for the security of gold if the present obsession with paper money turns sour, warns Dan Atkinson in London THE scramble out of gold by the world’s central banks is not novel. We have sat through this […]
FRIDAY, 10.30AM TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj and his Public Enterprises counterpart Stella Sigcau on Thuesday announced a shortlist of three for the position of adviser on the restructuring of parastatal Airports Company. The shortlisted candidates are: SBC Warburg in partnership with accounting and consulting firm Gobodo; Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank with Morgan Stanley and […]
Fencing may have originated with the European aristocracy, but now it is flourishing in Mamelodi township FENCING: Julian Drew NOT so many years ago no black man without the speed of Hezekiel Sepeng would have ventured on to the Pretoria University campus inquiring whether he could join in with the sporting activities. A slower individual […]
Political rivals could be discovering a way to peace through a growing sense of Zulu nationalism, writes Eddie Koch IT may just be that the troubled people of KwaZulu-Natal will find their peace not through delicate diplomacy or a tough approach to law and order, but because the ebb and flow of two less tangible […]
FROM today, you’ll find a slick new look to the Electronic Mail & Guardian’s arts section, with easier navigation, archives of popular features and reviews that haven’t yet appeared in print. Find it at: http://www.mg.co.za./mg/art/artmenu.htm * READ Arthur Goldstuck’s authoritative WebFeet guide to the Internet each week on PCReview Online. This week: what you can […]