Staff Reporter

Aerial advertising has put a new thrill into the industry and is cost effective, reports Gillian Farquhar ALTERNATIVE advertising has been around in South Africa in varying states of ebb and flow since the Eighties; but this small and avant-garde form of marketing is slowly becoming more of an attraction, spawning spectacular vehicles to get […]

Confidential papers point to a top-level plot to oust Transnet executive Sipho Nyawo, reports Andy Duffy SACKED Transnet executive Sipho Nyawo was the victim of a “witch-hunt” by white management fearful of government plans to transform the parastatal, acting Portnet chief executive Ivor Funnell says. In his submission to an inquiry which ended this month […]

Marion Edmunds THE R18-million Presidential Review Commission (PRC) – tasked to investigate the public service – is heading for a crash, and may well be deproclaimed by Cabinet, a year before concluding its business. Sources say that Public Service Minister Zola Skweyiya has instructed his staff to prepare a Cabinet memorandum suggesting the PRC be […]

BAFANA KHUMALO talks to two young DJs who are making waves on community radio HIS name first cropped up at one of those PR junkets where rich companies spend an enormous amount of money to win over newspaper hacks with an appetite for expensive food. He is Zakile Dakile – shortened to Zak because, he […]

David Philip Publishers are celebrating their 25th anniversary, writes RACHELLE GREEFF IF Paarl Mountain has a Taal Monument, the Werdmuller Centre next to Claremont station should consider a monument to David Philip Publishers – it can only beautify the amazingly unsightly building. DPP survived the old South Africa with its draconian censorship laws, book raids […]

Mungo Soggot COMPANIEA VALE DO RIO DOCE (CVRD), Brazil’s most prized state asset, went on sale this week, signalling the start of a major privatisation in which Anglo American has expressed interest. The sale of the CVRD mining group is seen by Brazilian businessmen and academics as a crucial signal that President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, […]

SOCCER:Andrew Muchineripi HAVING already won the African Champions Cup and Super Cup within a few months, defending African champions Orlando Pirates will now focus their sights on the African Cup Winners Cup, which is known as the Nelson Mandela Cup. But first, they will have to sweep aside the challenge of Jomo Cosmos when the […]

Glynis O’Hara `TOURISTS these days are less interested in theme parks and special events than in experiencing other ways of life.” So says Carol Steinberg, Director of Arts and Culture. Commenting on last week’s National Conference on Cultural Tourism in Cape Town, hosted by the Department of Arts and Culture, she says one of the […]

Lyndall Campher NIGEL BRUCE’S departure from Financial Mail for Finance Week has shaken up the financial newspaper industry and not a moment too soon. Businessmen are now confronted with an interesting and diverse array of choice, unlike the business environment when Financial Mail and Business Day were initially launched. This array of choice extends beyond […]

Angella Johnson POLICE dented the operation of a truck hijacking syndicate this week when they raided a warehouse in one of Johannesburg’s industrial sectors and confiscated R200 000 worth of goods which had been stolen from a lorry hijacked in Gauteng. In one of their quickest hits this year, officers from the anti-hijacking unit, acting […]

THEATRE: Glynis O’Hara THE first 15 minutes or so of Two Straight Queers seemed to confirm my worst fears, with in-jokes that couldn’t leap the ghetto’s perimeter fence. But all of a sudden it took off and I found myself laughing – really hard. A gay man, Bernie, is left R2-million by his uncle, on […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman CARL GIETL’S exhibition 1996 is and is not what it seems. The paradoxical seductiveness of his work is that while it has been conceptualised with such obvious – almost simplistic – clarity of purpose, in the eyes of the beholder it takes on a metaphoric life (or in this case, death) […]

Stephen Gray SOL PLAATJE: SELECTED WRITINGS edited by Brian Willan (WUP, R120) THE British scholar Brian Willan’s selection of the journalism of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje was first announced all of 20 years ago, when the centenary of his subject’s birth was being celebrated as visibly as possible by the few literary fundis then in the […]

Andrew Worsdale The First International Southern African Film Market has drawn to a close in Cape Town. Our reporters were there THE scale and organisational success of last week’s Film and TV Market in Cape Town was amazing – especially considering the organisers didn’t know if all their finance was in place until four weeks […]

Mail & Guardian Reporter TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj kicked off a two-day conference with lawyers and interest groups on the future of state accident insurance designed to fuel debate on the issue by laying down the law and singling out lawyers who had attacked his proposals. In a manner described by attending lawyers as “pretty […]

poachers Eddie Koch IT was the week in which conservationists launched a series of missions to save not the white rhino or an endangered species of whale but thousands of poisonous scorpions, hairy baboon spiders and swimming crabs that were plundered from Mozambique in an effort to smuggle them out of the country through South […]

The French Barbarian team is packed with talent, but the Springbok `dirt-trackers’ team has been playing well enough to show that they can meet the challenge RUGBY:Andy Capostagno T HE trouble with touring is that just when you’ve gotten to like a place, you have to move on. Those of us lucky enough to spend […]

The Financial Mail editorship is up for grabs, but no formal offers have yet been made, reports Mungo Soggot BUSINESS REPORT editor Peter Bruce has emerged as a contender for the editorship of the Financial Mail (FM), which lost Nigel Bruce in the the dramatic takeover of Finance Week by former FM editor at large, […]

Marion Edmunds THEY are called the “Gestapo”. These are not the security police but the men from the Medicines Control Council (MCC) inspectorate who stand accused of raiding and harassing homeopaths and dispensers of natural medicines. And while some homeopaths have sunk into silence for fear of having their businesses closed down, others have started […]

THE United States’s case against Boutros Boutros-Ghali has never been entirely clear. He is said not to have been sufficiently vigorous during his secretary generalship in reforming the United Nations. He is said to have been ineffective in marshalling the world to deal with the succession of particularly searing tragedies that arose during his time […]

CINEMA: Derek Malcolm `THE story that follows is about Minnesota. It evokes the abstract landscape of our childhood – a bleak, windswept tundra, resembling Siberia except for its Ford dealerships and Hardee’s restaurants. It aims to be both homey and exotic, and pretends to be true.” So says Ethan Coen, producer and co-writer of Fargo, […]

A short cut for the rough may have made the course easier, but this won’t detract from the victory of whoever ends up first in a quality-packed Million Dollar field GOLF: Jon Swift THERE has always been something very special about the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge. There is the attraction of watching a select field […]

KEN OWEN accused Cathy O’ Dowd of publishing “unverified rubbish” about the Everest expedition, and concluded “I do hope this is not the journalism taught at Rhodes” (“`Mortal peril’ on Everest,” November 15 to 21). It’s poor journalism to make this comment without giving readers the background that Cathy has been a master’s student and […]

Gwen Ansell TANANAS WIDE ENSEMBLE: Unamunacua (Gallo/GMP) FOR this, their fifth album, Tananas’s core of guitarist Steve Newman and drummer Ian Herman expands to include more than a dozen jazz and folk colleagues. The difference is dramatic. The spacey, wistful guitar tunes are still there (with reprises of a few old favourites) but the limited […]

A survey has found that diplomats at 51 out of 71 missions are overpaid – so they’re taking heavy salary cuts, writes Mungo Soggot THE Department of Foreign Affairs has slashed the salaries of South African diplomats – some by as much as 50% – after exploring what it really costs them to live abroad. […]

To win the Test series in India South Africa don’t just need `good’ cricketers, they need match winners – and Paul Adams fits that description CRICKET:V Roger Prabasarkar A FANTASTIC gamble – or a simple case of common sense. Paul Adams, on one hand, was asked to join the South African squad in India on […]

Gwen Ansell CLUB-OWNERS and artists aren’t always bosom buddies. And when jazz clubs close, the musicians are often ambivalent mourners, finding it hard to regret the passing of managements that paid them poorly or not at all. But this week it’s the musicians who’ve come together to try to save Melville’s Bass Line, which, with […]

Media editor Jacquie Golding-Duffy takes exception to being excluded from this week’s tte–tte THE meeting this week between President Nelson Mandela and 22 black journalists, among them prominent and respected black editors, has been labelled “fruitful” by presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana. It was, he says, a “no-holds-barred” discussion and “at the end of the day […]

For Rwandan Tutsis, the return of Hutu refugees from Zaire is terrifying, reports Dele Olojede in Gisenyi, Rwanda AS he watched thousands of Hutu refugees pour across the border from Zaire, on their way back from self-exile, Jean-Marie Musaidizi seethed with quiet anger. Musaidizi, a survivor of the 1994 genocide, was angry that the people […]

Speculation is growing about a government review of the Independent Development Trust’s status, reports Joshua Amupadhi SOUTH AFRICA’S biggest and richest non- governmental organisation (NGO) has called off a mega relaunch at which President Nelson Mandela was to officiate, adding to speculation that the government is to review its status. The Independent Development Trust (IDT) […]

Rehana Rossouw FAITHFUL members of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) continued to flock to the organisation’s activities this week, despite an initiative by religious leaders to caution against its militancy. On Wednesday night, more than 1 000 Pagad members marched to a house in Lansdowne, Cape Town, which they claimed was owned by an […]

An increase in poorer students and a decrease in government funding has left universities battling to resolve a cash crisis, writes Andy Duffy THOUSANDS of students could be refused entry to universities next year amid an escalating funding crisis which is forcing institutions to axe staff and courses. Wits, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Pretoria, Fort Hare […]