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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Dan Glaister in London AS a form of revenge, it is both expansive and expensive. Sandra Three, by RB Kitaj, occupies an entire wall of the Royal Academy’s normally sedate Summer Show and carries a price tag of 1-million. The piece is the third instalment in Kitaj’s aim to exact revenge on the critics he […]
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 […]
Ferial Haffajee and Maria McCloy on Radio Metro NO announcements were made, but it’s not like people didn’t notice that one of Radio Metro’s stalwart DJs, and the presenter of Bush Telegraph, Lawrence Dube, wasn’t there anymore. Dube was hauled off air in May when the radio consortium of which he was a shareholder won […]
Bongani Ndodana BRIGHTLY COLOURED tights and tutus worn by children grinning like Cheshire cats seem almost surreal in the dusty streets and squalor of the Cape Flats, where the Cape Town City Ballet (CTCB) have established their Dance for All project. It’s at moments like these that one truly realises the original meaning of those […]
fund Mungo Soggot A TOP official in Gauteng’s Housing Department has confessed to stealing more than R8-million from the province’s low-cost housing kitty. Senior accountant Louis Botha handled the province’s disbursements from the National Housing Fund – the central reservoir of funds for the government’s low-cost housing drive. But lax controls within the provincial department […]
South African Aids patients who took part in drug trials have been dumped by the company that used them. Ruaridh Nicoll and Mungo Soggot report MORE than 150 Aids patients in South Africa were encouraged into a drug-testing programme run by the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Roche after Johannesburg Aids experts falsely claimed they would be […]
act Busi Moloele NEXT time you’re in Witbank, look carefully between the giant forms of the iron-smelting factory, the electricity power-stations and the gangling steel factory. There, huddled in a space named Kwaguqa, you are likely meet an intrepid band of environmentalists who are trying to make a difference. In 1994, a group of standard […]
ANDREW WORSDALE previews a moving new radio documentary commemorating Youth Day A MASTERFUL radio documentary, The Story of June 16th , begins with a police loudhailer: “This gathering under section 48 of the Internal Security Act is defined as a riotous gathering and you are all ordered to disperse.” With the sound of gunfire laid […]
THE Electronic Mail & Guardian’s daily online version of Madam & Eve allows you to win a Fiat Uno car in an online competition. Join the Madam & Eve “cyber club” to receive the Madam & Eve electronic newsletter; send free Madam & Eve “cybercards” to friends around the world; and browse through a collection […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM: APPEALS against their doping sentences by banned rugby players Johan Ackerman, of Northern Tranvaal, and Bennie Nortje and Stefan Bronkhorst of Gauteng, were rejected on Thursday by the South African Rugby Football Union. The players have been sentenced with a two-year banning after testing positive for illegal substances earlier this season. Sarfu CE […]
Matthew Krouse JUST THE TICKET! by Percy Tucker (Jonathan Ball, R94,95) IT has been a year of commemoration in theatre publishing, with retrospection and introspection from diverse quarters. Perhaps part of what triggered this small spate of nostalgia were the deaths of two industry giants – Barney Simon and Leonard Schach. Simon’s story, along with […]
The fountain of youth that doesn’t run dry with age In South Africa, the definition of youth could fall anywhere between birth and mid- 30s. Maria McCloy considers how the lines have been blurred in today’s society YOUTH, /ju:q/ n. (pl.youths/ju:qz/) 1. the state of being young; the period between childhood and adult age. 2. […]
FRIDAY, 11.30AM FIVE labour unions on Thursday declared a dispute with metal industry employers after the third round of industry negotiations deadlocked. The Steel and Engineering Industries Federation said its final offer of between 8% and 8,5% was rejected. The unions demanded between 13% and 23%.The National Union of Metalworkers of SA, the National Employees’ […]
FRIDAY, 11.000AM WITH domestic demand cooling as the economy slows, manufacturing is saving the day, with export production driving output to a record high in April, according to latest Central Statistical Service figures. Manufacturing output in SA increased 12% from March to April, campared to 7,6% over the same period last year, and comes after […]
Environmentalists describe seafood farming in Asia as a rape-and-run industry, writes Suzanne Goldenberg in Keyakhali, Bangladesh THEY saw the enforcers coming from a distance – 50 men cycling along the embankment, iron bars and home-made petrol bombs glinting under a bright afternoon sky. As the villagers cowered in their homes, the intruders hacked at the […]
THERE is a local link to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation – researcher Olga Visser, who recently announced she had a treatment for Aids, has received funding from the organisation for her work in the field of cryonics. Visser and other researchers based at the University of Pretoria last year demonstrated their research at Alcor, […]
Ruaridh Nicoll in Mutjiku, Western Caprivi, Namibia THE Kxoe, an 8 000-strong section of Southern Africa’s Bushman community, are being squeezed out of their lands in Namibia’s Caprivi Strip by the regal aspirations of a neighbouring tribal leader. Erwin Mbambo, chief of the Mbukushu people, has given land belonging to the Kxoe to the Namibian […]
Amid all Cosatu’s and business’s bluster lies a danger that the central tenet of Gear – job creation – will be ignored, writes Madeleine Wackernagel BUSINESS has until Monday to respond to the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which threatened continued mass action unless business accedes to its demands over the Basic Conditions […]
Dan Moyane is the biggest casualty of 702’s ‘repositioning strategy’, reports Hazel Friedman DAN MOYANE, the Radio 702 morning chat-show host who was suddenly taken off the air last week, did not jump. He was dumped. And in terms of a restraint agreement, he may be off the air for the next year. The agreement, […]
The South African Association of Youth Clubs is changing direction again – this time it aims to motivate young people to take charge of their lives. Busi Moloele reports ‘NO, I definitely don’t agree with the label ‘the lost generation’,” says Mokoka Seshabela. “Many young people are on the margins of society – they are […]
MADAM & EVE, South Africa’s most successful comic strip ever, celebrates its fifth anniversary this week. The strip was first published in The Weekly Mail. Madam (a Johannesburg northern-suburbanite) and Eve (her “domestic maintenance assistant”) have won the hearts of millions as they journey through the rocky landscape of the new South Africa while keeping […]
Madeleine Wackernagel The United Nations Human Development Report 1997, released this week, highlights the importance of integrating poverty reduction into economic policies. Only those countries that make “poverty eradication a central objective of their national development policies” will achieve steady and equitable growth in the next century. “The positive and negative experiences over the past […]
FRIDAY, 11.30AM MEDIA group Nasionale Pers on Thursday announced it had finalised a R110-million deal for the sale of its City Press Sunday newspaper to City Press Media, a newly formed company 40% owned by three black investment groups. Naspers chairman Ton Vosloo said City Press “has the potential to become the first newspaper in […]
Although the youths of today are receiving an education, they are now battling to find job opportunities. Stuart Hess reports MORE than 40% of young South Africans are neither employed nor in school, according to a study conducted by the National Youth Commission. This alarming figure, which applies to young people aged 14 to 35, […]