first place? The new SABC’s first mistake may have been to hire Jill Chisholm, argues a former colleague of hers, Vivien Morgan DID she jump or was she made to walk the plank? According to SABC television chief executive Jill Chisholm it was a mutually agreed parting of the ways. Her exit brings forth a […]
GLYNIS O’HARA on some serious problems facing the umbrella body of the South African music industry THE umbrella body of the music industry, which pursues matters of mutual interest like piracy and payola as well as running the annual South African Music Awards, is in “a state of shambles” according to a highly placed industry […]
CINEMA: Charl Blignaut MOST people are going to hate the new David Lynch movie. And I’m not just talking about Mr and Mrs Greater Suburbia either – they realised this sicko soap opera was going nowhere and gave up on Lynch somewhere in the middle of the second series of Twin Peaks. Point is, even […]
brigade A tactical error in taking on Thabo Mbeki lies behind the Gauteng premier’s decision to quit politics, write Mail & Guardian Reporters TOKYO SEXWALE decided to quit politics when avenues to advancement within the ruling African National Congress had been blocked after he was on the losing end of a power contest with Deputy […]
Chris McGreal in Kinshasa, Congo A GROWING tide of resentment against the conspicuous presence of Rwandans in President Laurent Kabila’s victorious army this week transformed a political protest into a demonstration against foreign intervention. Alliance of Democratic Forces troops broke up the protest – called against Kabila’s failure to include a leading anti-Mobutu politician in […]
FRIDAY, 12.00NOON PRIVATISATION and restructuring of the state-owned Northern Cape Diamond mine Alexkor has been suspended by the mine’s restructuring committee after it declared a dispute with government and Alexkor’s board. The committee, made up or representatives of Alexkor management, labour, community and provincial government, said the dispute arose after Public Enterprises Minister Stella Sigcau […]
A prominent member of the National Parks Board has been implicated in `canned’ lion hunting, reports Ellen Bartlett THE game reserves named in the controversial television documentary on “canned” lion hunting in South Africa are not the only places where professional hunters are willing to bend the rules to help an inexperienced – or inept […]
The balaclava-clad squad that swept through Pollsmoor is also being investigated for actions at Helderstroom jail, reports Tangeni Amupadhi MEMBERS of the prison crack squad accused of attacking and robbing 200 convicts in Cape Town’s Pollsmoor prison last week are already being investigated for assaults during a similar raid three months ago. Though the Department […]
Jim Day THE Eastern Cape provincial government may often take flak for slow delivery, but the zeal of its clinic-builders has now produced another headache: in deep rural areas of the former Ciskei and Transkei, 20 brand-new and fully equipped clinics stand empty as the province frantically searches for nurses to operate them. A shortage […]
FRIDAY, 12.30PM: The candidates for the position of Transvaal Cricket Board chief executive officer have not been made public, but an annoucement was made by the board that this will not be an affirmative action appointment. TCB president Gerald Ritchie said on Thursday: “If the person we select happens to be from one of the […]
FRIDAY, 8.30AM LATEST Central Statistics Service figures from the first quarter of 1997 show that a 34,1% slump in agriculture was the main cause of a drop in gross domestic product by an annualised 0,8% from the previous quarter The weaker than expected result has caused economists to predict that a Reserve Bank cut in […]
conditions THE Human Rights Commission plans to hold public hearings into conditions in South African prisons and will decide next week when the hearings are to begin. A commission representative, John Mojapelo, said this week that hundreds of complaints have been received from prisoners. The commission has selected more than 40 prisons in all nine […]
Hazel Friedman A RECORD price has been paid for a Pierneef painting overseas, suggesting that boom times are ahead for South African art. Entitled Transvaal Landscape (1929) the painting was sold last week by Christies in London for the whopping sum of 58 000 (R430 000). The price more than doubles the previous amount of […]
FRIDAY, 4.00PM FOUR people were arrested on Friday after police and Mpumalanga Parks Board investigators raided two Johannesburg houses and seized 45 endangered cycads stolen from nature reserves near the Swazi border. Seven of the stolen lebomboensis cycads were implanted with microchips, allowing investigators to track their movement from the Mananga cycad reserve to Johannesburg. […]
Marion Edmunds THE government is to be urged to set up a special inquiry into district surgeons and health professionals who betrayed their ethical codes in complicity with apartheid authorities. The call will be made at health hearings at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission next month and will come from among the 30 organisations making […]
The IBA’s intentions are noble, argues GOVIN REDDY, but the body has not stopped to think of the disastrous impact its actions could have on the public broadcaster MUCH of recent media coverage of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) has focused on its financial mismanagement, but there has been little reflection on its actual regulatory […]
`ZAMBUK. My grandmother used to put that on everything,” a friend said to me when I told her about a new TV campaign for the balm. Let’s face it, most adverts for an affordable green medicated ointment show a mother tending to her kid – not black and white images of some sexy naked woman […]
Andrew Worsdale AT the age of 73 and with 54 years in the industry, Italo Bernicchi is a veteran of South African cinema. He started in movies as a cinematographer, shooting second unit on the original version of Cry, the Beloved Country, made by Zoltan Korda. After that he put down the camera and took […]
THE freedom of the press depends on the number of newspaper titles available to the public rather than nonsensical claims to objectivity by a few newspaper groups trading in monopolistic conditions. We are therefore extremely concerned by the manner in which the closure of the New Nation has been passed off with little comment and […]
rapist appears Stuart Hess TWO thousand Katlehong people marched on the Germiston Magistrate’s Court this week when the man accused of raping a seven- year-old girl made his appearnance. Dan Mabote is charged with raping Mamokgethi Malebana and two other children, all from the Mosiliki section in Katlehong. Mamokgethi, a sub-B pupil, disappeared on March […]
IF you include his comedy In the Bleak Midwinter and his appearance as Iago to Laurence Fishburne’s Othello, Hamlet is Kenneth Branagh’s fifth screen engagement with Shakespeare, and it is by some way the best film he has directed. Conceived on an epic scale, it is shot in 70mm, uses the full four-hour text and […]
Ferial Haffajee THE SABC’s head of radio, Govin Reddy, is set to be appointed as deputy chief executive of the corporation, making him second only to the chief executive, Zwelakhe Sisulu. The move is part of a wide-ranging management shake-up at the SABC which burst into the open this week with a spate of senior […]
Physicists claim to have invented a meltdown-free nuclear reactor that burns radioactive waste, writes Robin McKie in Geneva SCIENTISTS have designed a nuclear reactor that they say can “burn” atomic waste. The breakthrough could solve the world’s nuclear waste crisis and save the beleaguered atomic energy industry. Experiments carried out for two years at Cern, […]
ANDY WARHOL once advised that you should always carry two drinks with you at cocktail parties. That way, if you run into someone icky, you can excuse yourself by saying you have to take a drink to your friend. The snack affair after the Edgars Club/Boss Models Fashion Model of the Year Award last Friday […]
Dan Wylie TESTING THE EDGE by Mark Swift (Snailpress, R35) MANY of the poems in Mark Swift’s muscular fourth collection “home in on exile”. Divided between the landscapes of the Eastern Cape and the British Isles, Swift struggles to find a “home where the heart is”, within himself, within the process of travelling itself: “We […]
Journalists once learnt the trade on the job without the dubious assistance of technology or journalism schools, writes Gabriel Garca Mrquez SOME 50 years ago, there were no schools of journalism. One learnt the trade in the newsroom, in the print shops, in the local caf and in Friday-night hangouts. The entire newspaper was a […]
David Sharrock A CAPE game reserve will play host this weekend to Northern Ireland’s main politicians in a peace conference just days before talks on the province’s future resume in Belfast. David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness, and Peter Robinson, deputy leader of the Democratic Unionists, are all understood to […]
Madeleine Wackernagel highlights some of the issues raised at the World Economic Forum AT the February meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, President Nelson Mandela made an impassioned plea for a renewed fight against Aids. His address made world headlines, but back home the “new struggle” has been sidelined by the Sarafina […]
FRIDAY, 5.30PM THE Congress of SA Trade Unions announced on Friday it is to stage a 24-hour national strike on Monday in protest at the lack of progress in negotiations on sections of the new Basic Conditions of Employment Act in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac). Cosatu representative Nowethu Mpati on Friday […]
ZAKES MDA has won this year’s R50 000 M-Net Book Prize in the English category for his novel Ways of Dying (Oxford University Press). Karel Schoeman won in the Afrikaans category for his novel Verkenning (Human &Rousseau), and Ncedile Saule took the laurels in the Nguni category for Ukhozi Olumaphiko (Via Afrika), while Ruth Phasha […]
Hazel Friedman MUSIC might be the food of love, but it can also provide essential nutrients for economic growth. This is the message from the general manager of Ausmusic, Sue Gillard, a speaker at an international conference on the economic benefits of arts and culture in South Africa, to be held in Grahamstown, from June […]
Stewart Nkosi THE only reason I sat through Jump the Gun is because I had invited a companion along and it really would have been rude of me to yank her off the seat and walk out. I did ask her whether she would mind leaving, but she wanted to see all of it. So […]