The biggest art shows in the world get under way this month. BRENDA ATKINSON on William Kentridge, South Africa’s most notable player THERE are few South African artists who can claim as expansive a career curve as William Kentridge, nor as consistently impressive a body of work. It seems that 1997 will consolidate his international […]
An insurance company is criticised for using a lie-detector test before paying claims, reports Faizel Cook `IS today Monday?” “Yes” “Are you planning to lie to me during this test?””No” “Did you submit a fraudulent claim to your insurance company?” “No!” And if you’re telling the truth, that should be the end of what is […]
It was from within the ANC itself that the opposition to child grant cuts came, forcing the minister of welfare to reassess her proposed scheme, writes Marion Edmunds PRACTICAL problems and criticism from within the African National Congress have driven Minister of Welfare Geraldine Fraser- Moleketi to back away from key parts of her controversial […]
Robin McKie in London SCIENTISTS are developing the ultimate in designer genes: genetically engineered plants that produce naturally blue cotton. The aim is to make denims that can be manufactured without dyeing. The blue-gene project, created by United States chemical giant Monsanto, reveals the flourishing power of crop geneticists. Last year, this resulted in a […]
hot air Will the airship called Nelson ever get off the ground? It’ll be surprising if it does, writes Dawn Blalock JONATHAN HAMILTON has a dream: to transport people in gas-filled airships. Others suggest he is full of hot air. The 31-year-old Sandton entrepreneur is the founder of The Hamilton Airship Company, a business he […]
In the fight between belief and science, an open mind should be the winner, writes Steve Jones LAST week, an Australian judge intervened in a matter of belief. In the creation versus evolution debate, he took the side of the angels. Ian Plimer, a Melbourne geologist, faces huge costs for taking creationism to court – […]
Sarah Boseley in London PRE-MENSTRUAL syndrome (PMS), often blamed for turning women into murderers and arsonists, is all in the mind, according to new research from Australia. Psychologists monitored women who said they had PMS, together with two control groups – women who did not claim to suffer and men. They found all three groups […]
FINE ART: Dennis Mair AT an event that took place a few weeks ago, at the Obz(scene) Cafe in Observatory, Andrew Putter set up for a work-in- progress. It was a performance piece where he invited family, friends and people off the street to pass around and fit on a set of false teeth, while […]
Marion Edmunds ROELF MEYER is to test support for his new movement in the Western Cape next week, hoping to win over the hotly contested coloured community. Meyer’s Athlone-based organiser, former Labour Party member Ken Lategan, said this week: “There has been unprecedented interest in the last two weeks. People are looking for something new, […]
Angella Johnson BRITISH AIRWAYS (BA) took what it described as a major step in consolidating its position as a “global airline” when it became the first national carrier to dump its country’s flag from the corporate logo to broaden the company’s appeal. Instead of a single identity, BA’s planes will sport 50 different images created […]
bloods Rehana Rossouw AGE has made way for youth in the Nasionale Pers (Naspers) media stable. Their executive chairman Ton Vosloo and Rapport editor Izak de Villiers will retire in October. De Villiers said this week there was no coup: Naspers’s retirement age for editors was 61 and he reaches that age in July; Vosloo […]
New charges of conflict of interest point to further irregularities in the province’s Housing Department, increasing the pressure for a full-scale commission of inquiry, write Justin Arenstein and Mungo Soggot FRESH revelations surrounding the Mpumalanga housing scandal emerged this week, increasing the likelihood that the government’s current probe will be widened into a full-blown commission […]
Shaun de Waal BORN IN THE RSA: FOUR WORKSHOPPED PLAYS by Barney Simon (Witwatersrand University Press, R39,95) LIKE Joan Littlewood, with whom he worked, and Athol Fugard, to whom he was close, Barney Simon made theatre out of a process of bringing real life as directly as possible to the stage. Simon’s actor-collaborators would be […]
FRIDAY, 3.30PM THE Forum of Black Journalists on Friday accused the English and Afrikaans press and the SA Broadcasting Corporation of knowingly colluding with successive apartheid governments. The accusation formed part of a submission handed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Johannesburg offices. In a statement outlining its submission, the FBJ said it will seek […]
JULIE BARKER enjoyed the vibrance and variety of the performers at the FNB Vita Community Theatre Festival THIS year saw the seventh FNB Vita Market Theatre Lab Community Theatre Festival bursting at the seams. At the opening ceremony, the FNB general manager of group communications said that the pursuit and promotion of excellence within the […]
FRIDAY, 12.00AM: SPORTS Minister Steve Tswete will launch a Sports Against Crime initiative on June 26. The R8-million project will be a joint effort by the National Sports Council, the National Olympic Committee of South Africa and the Department of Sports. As part of the launch, a march against crime will proceed through Johannesburg, and […]
An American institute is offering to raise us from the dead – at a price, writes Sue Nelson ACCORDING to legend, every 500 years the phoenix, a mythical Arabian bird, would fling itself on to a funeral pyre. But instead of dying, it would rise from the ashes with renewed vigour. It’s an appealing tale. […]
ONE of the telling ironies of the KWV champagne swindle was the whereabouts of the managing director of the co-operative’s international division when the scandal broke. J “Kobus” van Niekerk, identified in KWV documents as having given the go-ahead for the manufacture of fake champagne for export, was himself abroad last week – leading a […]
Foreign runners are flocking to the Comrades Marathon but the locals are still very much in the rush for gold ROAD RUNNING:Julian Drew LAST year it was won by a Russian. This year it takes place on June 16, a day remembered for the Soweto uprising of 1976 and now known as Youth Day. Comrades, […]
FRIDAY, 3.00PM FORMER Zimbabwean president Canaan Banana is to be charged with at least nine counts of homosexual rape, the daily Herald newspaper reported on Friday. The newspaper was quoting acting police chief Philip Mhike, who said the charges arose out of information volunteered by complainants during police investigations into allegations by Banana’s former aide-de-camp […]
Malcolm Bradbury THE FAREWELL SYMPHONY by Edmund White (Chatto & Windus, R110) UNDER one possible gaze, we can consider Haydn’s extraordinary Farewell Symphony as a musical tragedy. Performances flower but then fade; in the last movement, the musicians leave the stage one by one, extinguishing their candles, till only a single violin is left. Under […]
There’s more to Jean Paul Gaultier than funny bras and Eurotrash. He talks to SUSANNAH FRANKEL about styling The Fifth Element JEAN PAUL GAULTIER’s peroxide blond crop is resting on a sea of puffed up, chintz- covered pillows in his decidedly genteel hotel suite. Clad in the requisite matelot T-shirt, stove-pipe trousers and ugly shoes […]
adventure-seekers Stefaans Brmmer investigates one of the most successful and audacious projects in Umkhonto weSizwe’s armed fight against apartheid “UNDERSEAT storage for food supplies, camping equipment, tools, spares, etc,” was how a brochure touted the ample luggage capacity of the safari truck. What the brochure did not mention were the extra compartments – so secret […]
FINE ART: Brenda Atkinson DURING World War II, a man called Hugh Mcfarlane was commissioned to take “scientific” photographs of South African soldiers stationed in Namibia. He photographed over 1 000 men, each one naked against a tiled white wall, standing on a small, numbered podium. The strangled subtexts of discipline and desire in the […]
Gang warfare in KwaMashu township has grown out of old anti-apartheid alliances, writes Enoch Mthembu AT least eight people were killed in Durban’s KwaMashu township this week after a feud between rival African National Congress factions broke out into open warfare. Former Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) exiles and members of the township’s self-defence unit began fighting […]
Armed gangs of ‘Zulus’ and ‘Khoikhois’ roam the streets fighting for the control of Brazzaville, reports Dalal Magan GANGS of armed youths roam the rutted streets. Some as young as 12, who can barely handle their automatic rifles, engage in sporadic fighting for the control of Brazzaville. As the battle rages, travellers who have managed […]
Mungo Soggot MINERAL and Energy Affairs Minister Penuell Maduna still has to inform the auditor general why he publicly ousted his top oil official. His reticence is fuelling fears that an expensive four-month probe has found no evidence against the official, Kobus van Zyl. The auditor general’s office said this week that Maduna’s investigating team […]
The Springboks are adapting to a new coach and being without some ditched World Cup stars, while the Lions are coming to terms with a new style of play RUGBY:Steve Morris WHAT we have right now in the build-up towards next Saturday’s first Test between the Springboks and the Lions at Newlands, is two potentially […]
Coach Clive Barker and Bafana Bafana have come through a torrid time triumphantly, but there is still much work to be done SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi WHEN the Egyptian referee blew his whistle to end the South Africa-Zambia World Cup encounter, national coach Clive Barker must have longed for the solitude of his farm outside Durban. […]
FRIDAY, 1.00PM: THE South African PGA Tour has been given a R100-million boost for the next five years, by newest sponsors Vodacom. This will result in an increase of 33% in prize money in the winter season of the tour. Tour commissioner Arnold Mentz said: “I want to get away from this idea of development […]
Marion Edmunds A MURDER docket has been opened by the police after a Burundian refugee died on the floor of a Home Affairs Department office in Cape Town half-an-hour after two policemen dumped him there. According to witnesses, Jean-Pierre Kanyangwa was brought in early Monday afternoon, June 2, by policemen who had picked him up […]
Appealing to JCI’s Mzi Khumalo has not helped the NUM in negotiating retrenchments with the mining house, writes Ferial Haffajee `WE expected more heart from someone like Mzi; it was a heartless decision,” says the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) deputy general secretary Gwede Mantashe of Mzi Khumalo, JCI’s new chair. JCI has decided it […]