Staff Reporter

Gustav Thiel FOLLOWING bomb blasts at two homes of people linked to People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) in Cape Town this week, observers warned the organisation was creating an environment in which gangs could flourish. Pagad could end up promoting what it is trying to destroy, warned Don Pinnock, a former University of Cape […]

James Lamont tells Jacquie Golding-Duffy that fellow editors cannot afford not to take him seriously, despite his age He is young and overly cautious, say some. Others argue that his track record is unimpressive and does not qualify him to sit at the helm of Business Report. But 28- year-old James Lamont, the newly appointed […]

The truth commission has released details of the Steyn Report, concealed since 1992 – and it contains startling disclosures. Stefaans BrUmmer reports FORMER state president FW de Klerk entrusted action on the elusive Steyn Report, which linked the apartheid military to “third force” activities, to three top military officials who were themselves implicated – including […]

Charl Blignaut The longest-running theatre project in South Africa, the Market Theatre Laboratory’s Theatresports, staged weekly in Johannesburg, is being videotaped live and will be broadcast as a 13-part series on SABC3 from mid-1997. Following a growing world trend since the late 1970s, the Market introduced the comedy concept in 1991 and it has continued […]

A clash between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates is always full of drama SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi IN Glasgow it’s Rangers and Celtic, in Liverpool Everton and Liverpool, in London Arsenal and Tottenham, in Milan AC and Inter, in Cairo Zamalek and Al-Ahly, and in South Africa Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates. There is nothing to […]

Zimbabwe Iden Wetherell in Harare MIRED in intrigue, corruption and controversy, the University of Zimbabwe is rudderless as the hunt for a new vice- chancellor yields few candidates of note willing to take up what has become a troubled command. The last incumbent, Professor Gordon Chavunduka, quit in April 1996 after the problems at the […]

When playwright Ronnie Govender – a former beer salesman and this week’s guest writer – attended a beer sellers’ reunion, he couldn’t help noticing what had – and hadn’t – changed THE giant fig tree behind the Umbilo Hotel stood reluctant sentinel to the beer garden which had seen better times. Layers of soot and […]

Amid new allegations from air force officers, the defence force responds to reports on racism, writes Rehana Rossouw SOUTH Africa’s black top guns have blasted their commanders, claiming the air force is as racist as the army. Last week, a report in the Mail & Guardian highlighted problems in the integration of the South African […]

Charl Blignaut SOUTH AFRICAN music videos have once again emerged in competition as the cream of the crop in Africa. Six of the nine videos nominated for the R57 000 Best Music Video/Clip from Africa prize (Francophone countries excluded as they have their own award) at the highly influential annual Cannes Midem awards, hail from […]

What do falling sperm counts mean for human survival? Robin McKie and Euan Ferguson report from London IF there’s a subject guaranteed to raise a puerile snicker, then sperm – and its fate – have been sure-fire winners down the years. Yet sperm is the stuff upon which our survival depends. Recent confirmation that supplies […]

bloom Brett Fromson YOU’VE heard of the Nasdaq Stock Market, but how about the Rasdaq? The Rasdaq is Romania’s new stock market; it is one of dozens of financial bazaars to spring up worldwide in the thaw following the end of the Cold War. As communist and socialist governments have fallen, the new regimes have […]

Mark Philippoussis Australia Age: 20 World ranking: 29 The right-hander from Melbourne is rated by Boris Becker as the most likely big star of the future – “because he has a few assets the other up-and-coming youngsters do not have. I’m talking about his first serve and his pure strength.” Beat Pete Sampras 6-4, 7-6, […]

Mungo Soggot DR MAKI Mandela, the state president’s daughter who led the affirmative action drive at the University of the Witwatersrand, has quietly quit the university for a top human resources post at parastatal Transnet. Wits and Transnet confirmed this week that Mandela had secured a post at Spoornet, the parastatal’s railway division. Transnet human […]

Evangelos Calamitsis, director of the African Department, replies to last week’s criticism of the IMF’s policies in Mozambique MOZAMBIQUE deserves better treatment from those who, like Joseph Hanlon, would claim to be its friends. His portrayal of a country whose desperate economic condition threatens to reawaken unrest (IMF pulls plug on Mozambique, Mail & Guardian, […]

Stephen Moss THE line between pop and classical music was redrawn last week with the unveiling of the first Classical Crossover Chart. Compilations dominate the new chart. Number one is Best Opera Album in the World … Ever, followed by The Greatest Classical Movie Album, and The Number One Classical Album. The listing was introduced […]

Marion Edmunds President Nelson Mandela last year considered sending Dr Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri to Burundi as a special envoy, to dispense advice and represent South Africa in the Great Lakes crisis. Instead, he sent her to a trouble-spot nearer home – to the Free State as premier, to pour oil on the troubled waters there. Matsepe-Casaburri […]

Paul Brown in London SHELL, which has been wrestling with a multi-million pound problem of what to do with its giant Brent Spar oil storage platform since Greenpeace stopped it being dumped in the sea in 1995, this week awarded six companies contracts worth more than $1,5-million to develop proposals for its disposal. Two groups […]

the past? Brandon Hamber The kitchen of a small house in downtown So Paulo, Brazil, is the meeting place of the Comisso de Familiares de Mortos e Desaparecidos Politicas (Commission of the Families of Political Murder Victims and the Disappeared), an organisation of family members whose loved ones were killed during the military dictatorship in […]

Nozala head and new Johnnic board member Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane talks to Madeleine Wackernagel about putting management skills into practice Adding value is a favourite expression of Salukazi Dakile-Hlongwane’s and one that she intends to put into practice as a member of the new Johnnic board. “It is not enough to be part of management – […]

Amid the changes in the judiciary, an old- style attitude still exists among some judges. Three months as an acting judge was a learning experience for academic and commentator Dennis Davis THE demand for the transformation of the South African judiciary has become almost as plastic a concept as that of the rainbow nation. That […]

Maya Jaggi Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah (Hamish Hamilton, R109,95) Following the strange enchantments of his Booker-shortlisted Paradise – set in an East Africa on the brink of World War I – Abdulrazak Gurnah’s new novel grapples with an African-English present. In crisis, an unnamed schoolteacher in south London takes stock of his life. With […]

Joshua Amupadhi Professor Sam Nolutshungu’s decision not to lead Wits into the next century caps a trying 14 months at one of South Africa’s pre-eminent seats of learning. October 1995: The Makgoba Affair. A group of senior academics accuses deputy vice- chancellor William Makgoba of mismanagement and of embellishing his curriculum vitae, sparking a row […]

The making of Evita turned a country upside down. Is it any wonder Madonna and Alan Parker tried to stop CLAUDIA NYE exposing their shenanigans? HOME sweet home. I was back in Argentina to make a documentary about Alan Parker’s Evita. It was a dream come true. Eva Peron was the most important woman in […]

It’s no use just shouting from the sidelines about the threat to the National Symphony Orchestra, argues Bongani Ndodana ONE of the sad legacies of apartheid cultural policy was the false sense of security it brought to the arts. Provincial performing arts councils were formed and theatres, opera houses and concert halls erected as if […]

Marion Edmunds and Rehana Rossouw CABINET ministers are likely to come under fire from the African National Congress’s senior cadres this weekend over government failings in meeting its most ambitious election promise – a better life for all. It is difficult to divine how bitter the discussions at the lekgotla, which began on Thursday, will […]

Confusion surrounds the sale of Transcell after Stella Sigcau stepped in to prevent the deal taking place, reports Max Gebhardt Privatisation has been dealt yet another blow following the intervention by the Minister of Public Enterprises, Stella Sigcau, in the proposed sale of Transnet’s loss-making cellular phone division to MTN. A ministry representative issued a […]

If you want to stick your fingers up the nose of the biggest guy on the block, you must at least have a good reason for risking a bruising. Pious declarations about the sovereign right to sell weapons of destruction to whomsoever we choose, or solidarity with that noted democrat Hafez al-Assad, do not justify […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on a stormy debate raging in Grahamstown around the appointment of a foreigner as the new head of Rhodes University’s fine arts department ‘The Department of Foreign Relations.” That’s what angry staff and students have dubbed the Fine Arts Department at Rhodes University. They are reacting to the controversial appointment of British […]

Apple is arming itself to fight future commercial wars. Jack Schofield reports from London IN 1991, Macintosh evangelist Guy Kawasaki wrote in his Macworld column: “Our greatest technical challenge is creating a computer that leapfrogs Macintosh just as Macintosh leapfrogged the IBM PC … In the next five to seven years Macintosh technology will be […]

Rebecca Smithers and Owen Bowcott THE ambitions of Princess Diana to become an ambassador for Britain suffered a severe setback during her visit to Angola this week after she was accused of straying into the political arena by failing to back the British government’s policy in her call for a worldwide ban on anti-personnel landmines. […]

GENERAL Jac Buchner, former police commissioner in the old KwaZulu homeland, has been implicated in running large supplies of war matriel to Inkatha paramilitaries in the early 1990s by former members of the police special forces unit that operated out of the Vlakplaas base near Pretoria. The evidence has been presented by former Vlakplaas agents […]

If you take your fashion lead from Britain, this is what the stylish will be wearing in 1997, according to SUSANNAH FRANKEL THIS year will go down in history as the year British fashion came into its own. John Galliano unveils his first couture collection for Christian Dior later this month; 27-year-old Alexander McQueen will […]