Staff Reporter

SOCCER:Andrew Muchineripi `I’M a Pirate, I was born a Pirate and I will die a Pirate.” Those were the words of an ardent soccer fan when I enquired about the outcome of Saturday’s Bob Save Superbowl semifinal clash between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chief at the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg. And most certainly, the way […]

SO when is it not wet and windy in Cape Town? I was about to abandon myself to the elements and head for the nearest Battery 9 gig when a pair of headlights split the night. I straighten out. My thumb, by now used to its role as travel agent, upright. The car slows down […]

LOCAL production company Penguin Films is going through the roof – what with its sit- com series Going Up beating Soul City to the top of the TV ratings with a combined adult and youth audience of 3,5-million, and a new character-based drama series Gaabo Motho, scripted by renowned author, anti-apartheid activist and medical doctor […]

FIGHTING spread in eastern Zaire this week with new raids on villages and refugee camps north of Goma, amid growing evidence of a co- ordinated strategy to drive Hutu extremists away from Rwanda’s border. Several dozen people were reported killed and tens of thousands more added to the wave of refugees. The latest attacks were […]

David Beresford NELSON MANDELA’S pledge to uncover the “truth” of the 1986 Samora Machel air crash highlights the unsatisfactory outcome of the Margo Commission of Inquiry which blamed the tragedy on pilot error. The inquiry was flawed by the refusal of the Mozambican and Russian governments to exercise their right of representation as well as […]

IT is time the African National Congress provided South Africa with a fresh dose of democracy. It is time to elect a president. Despite the country’s impressive start in the democratic tradition, the ideal has been flagging recently. The abrupt expulsion of Bantu Holomisa from Parliament has underscored the weakness of the party list as […]

The Beatles are back and by far the biggest buyers are teenagers, writes Lisa Buckingham in London THE Beatles are heading for the biggest record earnings in their history thanks to huge sales of the albums Anthology 1 and 2. Nearly 30 years after their peak and having seen off fashions like punk, rap, soul, […]

REM frontman Michael Stipe’s dislike of clarity seems to grow with age. NEILSPENCER looks at his career FOR a man who has just carved himself a substantial slice of the biggest business deal in pop history, Michael Stipe sounds mightily disgruntled on his newly released album, New Adventures In Hi-Fi, and the bile flows from […]

Alan Finlay TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS by Phil Crow (Wordsure, R20); THE END OF THE LINE by Craig Lock (Minerva, R49,99); AFTER THE ECLIPSE by Tom Rymour (Discobolus Readware, R70) SET in the English department of a certain Rondebosch University, Twilight of the Idols is an uneven text of sometimes accomplished ideas but, on the […]

Hazel Friedman AFTER five years of negotiating and 11 months after a deal was struck, actors are still stranded by the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) failure to sign a contract to protect their rights. And SABC officials don’t even know where the long-awaited Television Performers Contract is. Head of television Gill Chisholm told the […]

Sedentary occupations may still be classified as low risk, but the growing reality is that more and more people are cracking up, reports Anne Montague in London WORK is a dangerous business. Every year, millions of people suffer ill health that is directly caused by, or made worse by, their jobs. And although hazardous occupations […]

PAPA WEMBA & KOFI OLOMIDE: Wake Up! (Sonodisc) KOFI OLOMIDE is back, this time pairing his smooth baritone with Wemba’s soaring falsetto for an album released last month. It sits firmly in the soukous tradition: plenty of soloing guitars, layered percussion and infectious sebene breaks on almost every track (for much of which we can […]

Madeleine Wackernagel SUBSTANTIAL falls in formal sector employment levels are threatening to undermine the government’s Growth, Employment and Redistribution (Gear) strategy, which aims to create 400 000 jobs a year by the turn of the century, assuming economic growth of 6%. Two disturbing trends are coming to light – total employment, according to Central Statistical […]

Despite numerous setbacks, the TNDT is making steady headway, reports Madeleine Wackernagel WHEN Eric Molobi, chairman of the Kagiso Trust Investment Company, took on the task of running the Transitional National Development Trust (TNDT), even this veteran of the struggle was not prepared for the battle ahead. Delays in setting up the trust and frustrations […]

ONCE again the sight of Hutu refugees forlornly tramping from conflict in central Africa is tugging at the world’s heartstrings. It is a spectacle which has popped up on television screens periodically since the great exodus from Rwanda two-and-a- half years ago. And the United Nations is once again there to ensure that it can […]

As an innocent victim of the Francois Pienaar selection row, Natal and Springbok captain Gary Teichmann will have the full support of his players on Saturday, but Pienaar is definitely ahead in the sentiment stakes RUGBY:Jon Swift ONE OF the most interesting aspects of the whole Francois Pienaar episode is that it has done what […]

Hazel Friedman VIDEO might have killed the radio star, according to the Buggles – that irritating bubblegum group of the1980s. But at the opening of Scramble, an exhibition on the video as art medium, not even the most sophisticated of techno-conceptual strategies could match the power of live performance. This took the form of a […]

The latest economic indicators signal a worse than expected slowdown, writes Max Gebhardt A HIGHER than expected jump in the inflation rate for September and falling consumer spending have forced economists to downgrade growth forecasts severely for 1997. The consumer price index (CPI) climbed by a full percentage point to 8,4% in August and growth […]

This week’s Khotso House revelations catapault Archbishop Tutu’s Truth Commission Into confrontation with PW Botha. By Mail & Guardian reporters GOVERNMENT law advisers are searching for precedents to establish whether PW Botha could face a jail term if he defies a subpoena to testify before the truth commission. President Mandela’s office is already bracing itself […]

This week’s guest writer Mandla Langa gives a personal account of his time as chair of Comtask A POET friend and comrade of mine who spent nearly three decades of his exile in the United States, speaks of menacing racist graffito sprayed on Alabama walls at the beginning of the civil rights movement. One particularly […]

David Beresford WHATEVER the cause of the Samora Machel air crash, there is one scandal involving the actions of the South African authorities which has not been fully exposed – relating to Mozambique state documents on board the aircraft. A little more than a week after the crash a diplomatic row blew up with allegations […]

Famous scientists such as Richard Dawkins offer meaning for a post-religious age, writes Tim Radford RICHARD DAWKINS is nervous. This is very surprising. After all, he has done his homework: the topic for the evening is called “Arguments by Design”, a knowing play on the twist of natural philosophy that led indirectly to Charles Darwin’s […]

Lesley Cowling THE Institute of Wine Biotechnology grew out of a new initiative called the Technology and Human Resources for Industry Programme (Thrip), which is administered by the Foundation for Research Development (FRD). The programme brings together industry, academic research and government in projects designed to serve national interests. The way it works is this: […]

Accusations are flying over the actions of a minority shareholder in the Perskor arbitration, writes Max Gebhardt DEEP within the stack of legal documents presented to former judge Mervyn King, for arbitration in the multi-million rand acquisition of Kagiso Publishers by Perskor, are a number of affidavits outlining alleged attempts to “greenmail” Rand Merchant Bank […]

South Africa’s tourism industry has massive potential but a few greedy operators could kill the golden goose, David Shapshak and Rehana Rossouw report Cape Town is fast becoming one of the most expensive tourist destinations in the world with widespread profiteering in its hospitality industry. While South Africa’s tourism industry has the potential to generate […]

A SMALL shopping centre in suburban Pretoria seems an unlikely spot for a restaurant specialising in African South African cuisine. You’d expect an antique shop in such a centre, perhaps, a caf, a post office, a select bookshop. But Ntombi Msimang chose the site for Safika carefully. She opened two months ago in Maroelana, a […]

confessions Behind Johan van der Merwe’s brief confession at the truth commission this week lies a last-ditch effort by the amnesty applicants to escape prosecution, writes Eddie Koch SOME city hall staff had to drag in a metal table from the kitchen so that all the lawyers in the house could be properly accommodated. Long-awaited […]

They killed alongside adults; now the child fighters of Sierra Leone are experiencing childhood, writes Claudia McElroy THE classroom’s sea of faces wear expressions ranging from lively interest and bewilderment to boredom and incomprehension. Yet for most of these youngsters at a centre for ex- combatants, grappling with basic literacy is better than life at […]

Mungo Soggot went to Ogies to visit the man who looks after the world’s largest oil storage facility, apartheid’s oil stash IT is difficult to believe Frikkie Cloete when he points across a bleak mielie field in the middle of Mpumalanga and says “all this is oil – for 6km that way”. But Cloete, manager […]

Andy Duffy NEARLY 17 000 state school teachers have applied for voluntary retrenchment, most of them senior experienced staff disenchanted with government’s education shake-up. More than 13 000 of the voluntary severance applications come from teachers in Gauteng (severance requests from 9% of its teachers), the Western Cape (requests from 17% of its teachers) and […]

The three candidates for the vice- chancellorship made their presentations to capacity crowds. Andy Duffy reports WITS University stretched the principle of transparency to almost painful lengths this week. Searching for a successor to vice-chancellor Robert Charlton, the university put three candidates through public presentations and a grilling by students and a 28-strong selection committee. […]

BORIS YELTSIN has blundered into new danger by his inept resolution of the Kremlin power struggle. Security chief General Alexander Lebed may be shrouded in darkness, but so are those who are attacking him. Lebed has at least brought a sort of peace to Chechnya. His principal opponent, Interior Minister General Anatoly Kulikov, had brought […]