Alexander Sudheim EVEN though the city council won’t let them put their posters on the walls anymore and the record companies don’t sign them, Durban bands continue to thrive in numbers and in quality. For a city with pitifully few live music venues and audiences that would fill a small rowing boat, the alternative music […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
`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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
As the Mpumalanga housing scandal escalated this week a picture emerged of a profitable schemefor its developers. Justin Arenstein, Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot report MPUMALANGA’s controversial rural housing scheme hands the developer a profit mark-up that exceeds the gains typical of low-cost housing deals. A consultant to Motheo Construction – the company set up […]
IN one sense the collapse of New Age Beverages (NAB) is an everyday tale from the world of business – a story of straightforward mismanagement. The company expanded too fast, too soon, making fundamental strategic mistakes along the way, the biggest in distribution. Losses mounted, market share shrank and the shareholders baulked at throwing good […]
results A new trend of investment is bringing good returns which could eventually assist with the delivery of housing, electricity and jobs, reports Ferial Haffajee INVESTORS with a conscience go for a slightly different bottom line than one that measures profit alone – which means being able to use your money to pack a social […]
FINE ART: Brenda Atkinson WALKING into Roger Palmer’s exhibition Buttock and Tongue, some visitors might find themselves wondering where the art is. The strategic invisibility of Palmer’s work is a necessary part of its eloquence. Part photography, part drawing, part text, the work is not only discovered, piece by piece, but also sneaks up and […]
GOOD NEWS FUEL prices will drop in South Africa on midnight on June 4; petrol will drop five cents inland and six cents at the coast, diesel will rise one cent in Gauteng, and paraffin will fall almost three cents. FREE STATE PROBES THE Free State provincial government appointed two commissions of inquiry on Friday, […]
Nigel Crawhall EDDIE KOCH’S article last week on the demise of South African San languages (“Last voice of an ancient tongue”) has broken the silence on a national disgrace. With financial assistance from Denmark, the Southern African San Institute (Sasi) is supporting Khoi and San communities to develop strategies for language survival. The road to […]
ANDREW WORSDALE speaks to the makers of Jump the Gun – and weighs up the reactions to the film LOCALLY produced movie Jump the Gun, a gritty look at life in the underbelly of Johannesburg through the eyes of five different characters ranging from a “sparkie” to a township gangster, has been stirring up a […]
Not only the national housing director should be changed, but also the national housing and urban policy, argues Mzwanele Mayekiso MAIL & GUARDIAN reporters recently spotted a tidal wave of urbanisation (“A human flood is drowning Gauteng”, May 16 to 22) and asked whether millions of shack settlement residents will ever “become taxpaying citizens who […]
Slower economic growth and a shift in consumer borrowing patterns point the way to a cut in interest rates in the second half of the year, reports Madeleine Wackernagel FIRST-QUARTER gross domestic product (GDP) figures, released this week, confirmed the anecdotal evidence provided by retail sales: growth is slowing down. This should soon feed through […]