Staff Reporter

1 All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930). Archaic acting, yet still the mother of all battle films. Episodic, random; candid about mud, rats and lice … 2 La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937). The father of all anti-war films. Prison camp escape drama, acute about the behavioural artifices necessary to war. 3 […]

SCIENCE WATCH: Lesley Cowling IF you haven’t mastered the technology of your video machine yet, now is the time to learn how to set record. December features a slew of science and technology documentaries on SABC3, as the channel needs to screen material it acquired as NNTV before the licences to broadcast them run out. […]

Andy Duffy TRANSNET sacked an official after accepting unchallenged disciplinary charges brought against him by chair Louise Tager and denying him legal representation. The hearing refused to let Terrance Naidoo’s lawyers speak, and denied him time for a supreme court review of its decision. Naidoo, the government’s representative on Transnet’s transformation programme, was dismissed last […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE impression created of South Africa in foreign countries is not as flattering as it should be because missions based abroad are being “seriously hampered” in their attempts to promote the country, said a Task Group on Government Communications (Comtask) report handed this week to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. South Africa needs to […]

CINEMA: Derek Malcolm THE IDEA that the left’s fight against Franco in Spain was defeated, not by fascist powers but by Stalin’s betrayal of true socialism, is not one held by all those who took part in what was as much a civil war as a left-right struggle. But it is one espoused by George […]

ATHLETICS: Julian Drew AFTER two years in regression, Sunday’s Soweto Marathon aims to recapture some of the lustre that led many to believe it would become the “Comrades” or “Two Oceans” of the standard marathon distance when it was launched in a blaze of hype in 1993. Towards this end Sunday’s race boasts the added […]

Chris McGreal in Rubava DJUMA LIBURAKARYO is proud of his eight doors. It is the first thing he points out about his mud-and-stone house halfway up a hill in a banana grove. But he cannot pass through them. Strangers slam the front door in his face and so Liburakaryo is confined to an old scout […]

ROGER TREDRE discusses an explosive new biography of Yves Saint Laurent YVES SAINT LAURENT, acknowledged as the greatest fashion designer of the century, was almost destroyed by the pressures of his job, according to a biography just published. Design writer and journalist Alice Rawsthorn outlines Saint Laurent’s life as a round of drug and alcohol […]

Lesley Cowling THE Department of Education is testing new ways of implementing science and technology education at schools, an area that recent research has revealed is seriously inadequate. South African standard five and six pupils came bottom of the class in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study -published last week – which tested students […]

The union between black and Afrikaans chambers of business is a natural step towards economic integration, reports Max Gebhardt IT could be the most unlikely of marriages, both in terms of historical differences and future ambitions. Yet the Afrikaanse Handelsinstituut (AHI) and the National Federated Chamber of Commerce (Nafcoc) have agreed to begin working towards […]

South Africa’s labour market is labelled `inflexible’. The facts refute this, says the ILO’s Guy Standing IN the1990s, most governments are almost prisoners of international opinion, even in medium-sized countries such as South Africa. Economic policy is determined not only by realities, but by impressions that filter through a small community of commentators. Those in […]

This week’s British Budget is one of the most cautious in electioneering history as the Tories bank on strong economic growth to keep them in power, writes Alex Brummer THE central assertion of Kenneth Clarke’s Budget strategy – that his tight fiscal stand removes the need for higher interest rates – does not stand up […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy TELEVISION news has an average of six Audience Ratings (ARs) and just manages to slip into the All Media and Product Survey (AMPS) figures of the top 10 television programmes on the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) channels. But six ARs, according to media directors from local advertising agencies, is “just not good […]

Today’s scientist can no longer afford to be an egghead. Simon Kent reports from London IN the movies, scientists are usually portrayed as humourless boffins: all brains and no personality. Take Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day, whose ability to defeat an alien ship, armed only with a laptop, was the result not only of years […]

Lynda Loxton THE Western Cape is relying on several “mega-projects” to help it cope with the expected national economic downturn and still maintain its growth edge over other provinces. Minister of Economic Affairs Chris Nissen told a conference on regional economic prospects this week it was “rather pleasant” to be in a province with above-average […]

Ann Eveleth A SNAP Mail & Guardian survey of 40 Durban households this week turned up a 10% household error in last month’s national census, and revealed wide schisms between black and white views on the project. White Durban residents polled were only half as likely as blacks to say they understood the reason for […]

FINE ART: Suzy Bell A NIGHTMARISH sexual experience for young Durban artist Brandon McLeod (23) made him seek therapy in art instead of on the couch. He brazenly explores “the spread of erotics” by juxtaposing images of eroticism and emptiness, fear and fetishism, sexual desire and death. “My work is no poetry,” is the alarmingly […]

The container-shipping industry has taken matters into its own hands to counter lack of police success in halting crime syndicates. Angella Johnson reports THE head of a police truck-theft unit has been transferred from his post following allegations that his section either colluded with crime syndicates or was incompetent in dealing with the scourge of […]

Glenn Frankel reports on how leading UScigarette companies used trade laws to prise open a lucrative new market ON THE STREETS of Manila, “jump boys” as young as 10 hop in and out of traffic selling Marlboros and Lucky Strikes to passing motorists. In the coffee shops of Seoul, young Koreans light up foreign brands […]

South African companies are tightening security measures as the incidence of white- collar crime increases, reports Madeleine Wackernagel SOUTH AFRICAN businesses have the highest expectation of fraud in the world, according to a new survey by the international consultancy, KPMG. In the second survey of its kind to be conducted in this country, KPMG found […]

What do all the slogans mean to volunteers dealing with Aids and their families, asks Dolar Vasani THE theme of World Aids Day on December 1 – One World, One Hope – ties in with the spirit of volunteerism that is observed on December 5, International Volunteer Day. One focuses on a current epidemic, the […]

The new editor of Finance Week points a finger at weak TML management, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy NIGEL BRUCE has been editor of Finance Week for 10 days now after jumping ship from rival publication Financial Mail. Bruce does not feel he has to excuse his abrupt move uptown to the ailing Finance Week: “I had […]

ANDREWWORSDALE discusses the season’s children’s films, and some of his own all- time favourites PROBABLY the greatest kid’s movie of all time is The Wizard of Oz because it appeals to adults and their progeny, maybe because the wicked witch is a bit terrifying for toddlers. My favourite kids’ movies of the past year, Babe […]

THEATRE:Adam Haupt STELLENBOSCH’S HB Thom Theatre seems like the very last place you would expect to find the Russian Consulate’s Sasha Mukhin. In fact, he was the guest of honour at the opening night of Anton Chekhov’s Die Seemeeu (The Seagull) and took on a performance of his own by addressing his audience in Russian. […]

The refugees may be going, but the suffering continues. Chris McGreal reports from Mugunga IT might be that in the distant future someone will stumble upon Mugunga and wonder if they aren’t standing in the midst of some lost civilisation. Only a maze of walls laboriously cleaved from the harsh carpet of volcanic rock will […]

Rehana Rossouw A MAJOR breakthrough was made by the truth commission at its Cape Town hearing this week when policemen began confessing their involvement in the killing of the “Guguletu Seven”. Superintendent William Liebenberg, former head of Cape Town’s terrorism detection unit, admitted Vlakplaas operatives had been central in a security police operation in 1986 […]

A witness’s life was endangered when Attorney General Tim McNally released her from the state protection programme, writes Ann Eveleth THE family of a South Coast witness to violence this week accused KwaZulu-Natal Attorney General Tim McNally of endangering her life. The witness – a former Inkatha Freedom Party member who turned state’s evidence early […]

More international music stars are heading our way. Our reporters preview the Def Leppard and Tevin Campbell tours MUSIC: Hazel Friedman and David Goldberg. THE trouble with interviewing rock stars who have lived the success-excess myth in extremis is that you tend to want to accompany them all the way down the same drain, time […]

Protesters gathered in the Free State this week to call for the reinstatement of Terror Lekota as premier of the province. One of them spoke to Rehana Rossouw DESPITE the rain and the chilly weather on Wednesday, four busloads of elderly Free State residents stood outside the provincial government offices to protest the African National […]

Jonathan Watts in Tokyo `AT first I wasn’t sure if I ought to. After all, everything was so valuable. But once I got started … well, I just let rip and it felt fantastic.” When Mr Watanabe, who describes himself as an ordinary Japanese businessman, and three of his female colleagues entered the stress- relief […]

apartheid The truth commission has been asked to investigate the role English-language papers played in apartheid, reports Rehana Rossouw ENGLISH-language newspapers might have been regarded as liberal during the apartheid era, but some of their editors had “bent over backwards” to accommodate police in suppressing the truth about human rights abuses, journalists claimed this week. […]

The contest for a new Free State premier has begun, but is bedevilled by anger and befuddlement, reports Rehana Rossouw NOMINATIONS from branches of the African National Congress for a premier in the Free State close today, but there is still little clarity about who is eligible to stand. Some branches are nominating deposed Premier […]