FRIDAY, 6.00PM ZAIRE’S president Mobutu Sese Seko fled from Kinshasa today (Friday). The Zairean government announced that “the president has decided to stand aside in order not to appear as an obstacle to a negotiated settlement and to constitutional order.” “Marshal Mobutu has left it to his government to carry on running the political life […]
FRIDAY, 1.00PM BUS drivers across the country went on strike today, blockading bus depots and leaving thousands of commuters stranded. Some drivers carried out their morning routes, then “downed tools” at mid-morning. The areas most affected are Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. In Port Elizabeth, some 40 buses blockaded the depot, while 150 drivers […]
FRIDAY, 9.30AM: SOUTH African Football Association CE Danny Jordaan insisted on Thursday that players from top Premier Soccer League teams will have to play in the Bafana Bafana side in the match against England at Old Trafford on May 24. Jordaan dismissed the claims of log leaders Manning Rangers and contenders Kaizer Chiefs to keep […]
On Saturday Ruud Gullit (right) leads Chelsea out to face Middelsborough in the FA Cup final. But as manager he has another goal: to prove a point to those in his homeland who dismissed him as an ego in boots SOCCER: Jim White JUST before a recent match at Stamford Bridge, London home of Chelsea […]
Scotland’s former F1 champion Jackie Stewart was thrilled with second place in Monte Carlo MOTOR RACING:Alan Henry RUBENS BARRICHELLO revived the love affair between his team owner Jackie Stewart and the Monaco Grand Prix with his flawless drive to second place in last weekend’s rain-soaked race. It is 33 years since Stewart, now 57, first […]
Shirley Kossick THE PENGUIN BOOK OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S STORIES edited by Kate Figes (Viking, R108,95) THIS is an excellent collection of 33 short stories drawn from various parts of the world and covering a wide diversity of subjects. There is no obvious theme or thread unifying the collection, and in her rather perfunctory introduction Kate […]
Letters warning of two years’ medical `vocational training’ have gone out, report Jim Day and Mungo Soggott HEALTH authorities have told medical interns to expect call-up papers, riding roughshod over the parliamentary health committee’s rejection of the scheme. This week students across the country received letters from the South African Medical and Dental Council telling […]
BRENDA ATKINSON reports on an art exhibition causing an ethical stir IN 1994, Marylin Zimmerman, a photography professor at an American state university, threw away a roll of film containing nude photographs she had taken of her three- year-old daughter in the bath. A cleaner discovered the film, turned it over to the university’s Department […]
A Queenstown family accuses Clarence Makwetu of using his influence to deprive them of their land. Marion Edmunds reports THE former Pan Africanist Congress president, Clarence Makwetu, used his contacts in the Cabinet to block a land claim from white farmers for a 761ha property which he says is his own. According to Neville Fletcher, […]
THE accelerated movement of hundreds of thousands of people into the cities from the rural areas, from other provinces and from the rest of Africa, is transforming South Africa. Poverty-stricken squatter camps have long been a feature of our cities, but the urban sprawl of Gauteng, which has become one of the fastest-growing emerging cities […]
Depending who you listen to, Internet commerce has either flopped or is booming. Either way, there are South Africans who are making a lot of money from it, reports Arthur Goldstuck IT is the numbers, in the end, that impress, and there are enough of those to show that the Internet has become big business […]
Maria McCloy POP star Brenda Fassie says she will sue the music magazine e’Vibe for printing an interview with her that never took place. “I hate it, I’m pissed off with it, and my lawyers are going to be dealing with this and I’m going to be suing them for half-a- million rand,” said the […]
SUTTNER IN SWEDEN RAYMOND SUTTNER, chairman of parliament’s foriegn affairs committee and a vociferious proponent of an “ethical” foreign policy, has been appointed ambassador to Sweden. Sheila Sisulu, director of World Wide Africa Investment Holdings, has been appointed consul general to New York. MEYER MISSES MEETING MEYER-WATCHERS concerned with which way the National Party’s former […]
CYCLING:Gustav Thiel SOUTH AFRICA’S cycling fraternity will receive what some term a belated wake-up call when the African continent hosts the first-ever World Cup event in this sport in Stellenbosch this weekend. The first leg of the prestigious Grundig UCI World Cup for mountain bikes in South Africa heralds the genesis, if event organiser Carinus […]
NICHOLAS WROE meets a wary member of `this Scottish literary renaissance thing’ ALAN WARNER was a driver for British Rail in Edinburgh when his first novel, Morvern Callar, was accepted for publication. “They’d just phoned me at 1am asking me to work at eight the same morning,” he says. “So I went in, told the […]
A special investigative unit arrived in Mpumalanga this week and is uncovering politicians’ dicey deals, reports Justin Arenstein THE National Parks Board chairman and respected former homeland leader, Dr Enos Mabuza, is being probed by the most powerful government investigative unit in South Africa for a state farm he bought for R6 000 in 1991 […]
THE response to the publication of Washington Post correspondent Keith Richburg’s book Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa, which provides a dramatic depiction of the suffering and brutality of our continent, has been heated and acrimonious. Though this extract first appeared in the Post two years ago, the fury of the debate has […]
The women played some strokes of genius but there were not many spectactors to witness them GOLF:Mark Lamport-Stokes LAST week’s South African women’s amateur golf championships at Killarney Golf Club highlighted two factors: this country possesses women golfers of a high quality but the sport still struggles to attract the galleries. Immaculate Killarney in Johannesburg […]
If computers can beat humans at chess, does that make them smarter than us? Julia Grey reports MACHINE has finally conquered man: Garry Kasparov, world champion chess player, succumbed this week to IBM’s supercomputer, Deep Blue, in their six-game rematch. The outlandish vision of the science fiction world, seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where […]
THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW MEET Gilbert Magabotse, a South African sporting hero. His face may not be as familiar to you as that of Olympic marathon gold medallist Josiah Thugwane, and he has not been invited to tea with Nelson Mandela, but here is the country’s latest world champion. The reason you might not have […]
The hard men chosen for the Lions squad arrive on Sunday, and the Springboks are looking particularly vulnerable at the moment RUGBY:Steve Morris THERE must surely be the realisation that, as was the case when this country was first re-admitted to the international arena five years ago, our rugby has again suffered the type of […]
Anticipating International Museums Day on Sunday May 18, STEPHEN GRAY visits the African Window THE new African Window – part of a developing belt or mall of museums in downtown Pretoria – is the first suitable home there has ever been for that city’s vast Museum of Culture. Six exhibit spaces are already up, in […]
Rebel leader Laurent Kabila is making economic decisions that could impoverish Zaire further. Stefaans Brmmer reports from Lubumbashi LAURENT KABILA’S alliance has shown itself adept at waging war, but signs are it has a lot to learn about managing the peace. Erratic decisions by the rebel leader’s young “government” have eroded outsider confidence. His actions […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM MORE than half the sample in an informal email survey of South African emigrants to the United States said their quality of life and prospects had improved in the US. The survey, using a random sample of subscribers to Juluka, a newsletter for expatriates, found 80% had reported incomes above the median for […]
Researchers can’t agree on whether we are sleep-deprived, writes Jay Rayner from London, but the evidence suggests that few of us get enough IN their recent paper We are chronically sleep deprived, doctors Michael Bonnet and Donna Arand from Dayton, Ohio, produced facts and figures to support their title. They found that 50% of college […]
Africa is not a romantic motherland for black Americans, but a cruel despotic continent, writes Keith Richburg I WATCHED the dead float down a river in Tanzania. It’s one of those apocryphal stories you always hear coming out of Africa, meant to demonstrate the savagery of “the natives”. Babies being pulled off their mothers’ backs […]
IF the writing was not on the wall for the Mobutu Sese Seko regime before, it was there last week in a cable sent to Washington by the United States embassy in Kinshasa. It reported that the newly appointed prime minister of Zaire, General Likulia Bolongo was preparing for “a speedy departure from Kinshasa with […]
A CROWD of 200 quietly formed in a semi- circle around the main shack. They remained silent for about 45 minutes, apart from one woman’s exuberant cries of yebo when she heard something she really liked. They were listening to the interview with Agrinette Madwayi (40) and two other senior members of the residents’ committee. […]
Gavin Lewis IT’S easy to be cynical about the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). The programme has not been helped by the rhetorical overload that accompanied its launch, unrealistic targets accompanied by impossible deadlines and the spectacle of many “opinion-makers”, particularly in business and the media (with some honourable exceptions), jumping on and off the […]
Millions of people camped in informal settlements are transforming the country’s industrial heartland. Mungo Soggot and Tangeni Amupadhi report on the urban time bomb THEY often strike in the early hours of a cold winter’s morning. Groups of men armed with bags of chalk and a flag assemble on empty land. They mark out plots […]
Another year, another Bandslam, another phase in the South African rock revival, another review from MALU VAN LEEUWEN … ANOTHER Bandslam. Another five bands, another 1300 people, another six hours of exchanging sweat, smoke and beery conversation. Having your feet crunched by Arno Carstens as he pogos on your boots. Having to shout your bar […]
herStoriA deputy editor DELIA ROTHNIE-JONES explores the rewards of literary prizes THE recent death of the CNA Literary Award means that another window of opportunity for writers has been boarded up. Soon we shall be left only with peep-holes into our country’s soul. Faced with this withering of literary activity, we are forced to ask […]