Staff Reporter

Vanessa Cooke, director of the newly relocated Market Theatre Laboratory in Johannesburg, talks to GLYNIS O’HARA Over 150 000 primary school children nationwide have seen Broken Dreams, a play workshopped and written by Zakes Mda to help them ward off and deal with child abuse and prevent the spread of TB and AIDS. The play […]

highest court The Bill allowing abortion was tabled in Parliament this week. But Catholic bishops have instructed their lawyers to oppose it in the Constitutional Court. Gaye Davis reports SOUTH Africa’s Catholic bishops intend challenging the liberalisation of the country’s abortion laws in the Consitutional Court. The Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) has instructed […]

RUGBY: Jon Swift IT is, given the length and public ugliness of the rugby season, gratifying that some semblance of order is about to come back into our sporting lives with the first hints of the budding cricket season ahead. This weekend there comes the chance to shake off some of the rust of inactivity […]

Sasco’s influence has been waning since the political order changed, reports Joshua Amupadhi South Africa’s biggest student body, the South African Students’ Congress (Sasco) is sliding in popularity just as it celebrates its fifth anniversary. Recent campus polls show Sasco is losing its grip on students’ representative councils (SRCs) — turf it had secured over […]

Eddie Koch EVIDENCE in Colonel Eugene de Kock’s mitigation hearing suggests clandestine support from the police for Inkatha paramilitary units to attack ANC supporters in the early 1990s — long after the movement was unbanned — was not a maverick operation by members of the Vlakplaas unit for personal gain. De Kock told the court […]

Ian Traynor in Berlin Germany and France this week signalled their determination to merge their currencies in January 1999 as part of an overall European Monetary Union. Despite misgivings from Britain about a single currency, key finance and banking officials from the two countries moved to dovetail their fiscal policies before this weekend’s meeting of […]

After being overlooked for a long time Fani Madida is back in the South African squad for the Four Nations tournament, and after their first two matches the team tops the log SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi RUNNING onto the field against Kenya last weekend in the first game of the Simba Four Nations Cup was a […]

Richard Thomas in London The World Bank is privately warning that Haitian peasants could be forced to emigrate in order to find jobs, in stark contrast to the bank’s public endorsement of a “people first” development strategy. Ahead of the bank’s annual meeting in Washington in a fortnight’s time, aid agencies said the disclosure would […]

Kevin Mitchell blames the folly of weak and stupid men for a criminal act waiting to happen as they gamble all in Las Vegas THE brave gentlemen of the Nevada State Athletic Commission, who issued Evander Holyfield with a medical certificate last week clearing him to challenge Mike Tyson for a version of the world […]

Questions are being asked about Thabo Mbeki’s deal with the police commissioners over the truth commission, reports Stefaans BrUmmer Truth commission investigators have been left frustrated by an “intervention” of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi which they say gave former police generals a strategic breather before they face tough […]

Playwright and poet, Maishe Maponya, is Johannesburg’s latest high power cultural appointment. He shares his ideas with HAZEL FRIEDMAN ‘I WAS called an angry young man, you know,” Maishe Maponya laughs gently at the recollection. With bene-volent smile and trademark scull cap framing his face like a tight-fitting halo, he looks positively papal in disposition […]

An American who sued Noseweek and the Cape Argus bit off more than he could chew, reports Rehana Rossouw WEALTHY American dentist Robert Hall clearly didn’t know what he was getting into when he took on the formidable, and famously eccentric, investigative journalist Martin Welz. Hall sued Welz for R550 000 and the Cape Argus […]

Australia’s grand old matriarch of contemporary painting Emily Kame Kngwarreye was kept working until she dropped, reports Anthea Gerrie THE extraordinary army of spongers who lived off the talents of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Australia’s foremost contemporary painter, are looking for a new meal ticket after her. Emily’s talent was milked by her extended family for […]

While central government and labour squabble over restructuring state assets and privatisation, local authorities are leading the way in contracting out municipal services to the private sector. As early as 1991, the Benoni Town Council started contracting out its fire and ambulance services to Fire and Emergency Service Holdings, while many townships are also privatising […]

Jonathan Romney I Shot Andy Warhol was the opening film in the Un Certain Regard section. This makes perfect sense as its subject, Valerie Solanas, had a certain way of seeing the world, to say the very least, and the same is true of debut director Mary Harron. Solanas was the radical lesbian writer who […]

With the dissolution of Sadwu, domestic staff now have even fewer provisions available to protect their interests and working conditions, writes Fay Davids THE domestic worker affiliate union of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has been dissolved, leaving question marks over the effectiveness of world-class legislation about to be passed to protect […]

Julius Zava in Harare Zimbabweans are concerned that the ruling Zanu-PF party is amending the constitution willy-nilly, and is trampling on human rights and eroding judicial independence in the process. Since independence in 1980, Zanu-PF, which has 147 MPs out of a total 150, has amended the constitution 13 times. The 14th amendment has just […]

Make way, lads — the lasses want more of the game. Anne Coddington reports on the quiet revolution in the coverage of sport that’s raising the profile of women IT IS 4.46pm on Saturday and the first results come tripping out of the teleprinter. Des, Trev, Gary and Stubbsy are familiar faces as the post-match […]

South Africa has reached the last lap of its Constitution-making process, but the court’s judgment of the text means setbacks for the ANC and frustration for Inkatha. Marion Edmunds The rejection of the Constitution’s chapter on local government by the Constitutional Court has provoked consternation among African National Congress negotiators — because it interferes with […]

most controversial man in Zimbabwe, won’t give interviews. But a phone call to his office is revealing enough Roger Boka is a mysterious Zimbabwean businessman who has taken out full-page advertisements in the state-controlled newspapers calling for the “indigenisation” of the country’s agricultural and industrial sectors. The origin of his wealth is not generally known […]

Bronwen Jones BANKERS and broadcasters were this week introduced to a little Xhosa mythology by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, at the multiple launch in Johannesburg of 40 new books. He was not reading from one of the stories just published, but was using the example of the terrible Impundulo bird to explain the destructiveness of […]

Ian Traynor in Bonn The epidemic of tax evasion scandals plaguing Germany’s banks and industrialists spread this week to the upper reaches of Commerzbank, following the disclosure that its chairman and three other senior figures are being investigated for alleged financial misdemeanours. This follows on the heels of the biggest tax fraud inquiry so far, […]

The traditional lifestyle of a small fishing community in the Cape is being destroyed by developers, reports Rehana Rossouw FISHERFOLK living for generations on the beachfront in Paternoster are being forced out of their homes to make way for tourists and have now discovered they were probably robbed of their right to the riches of […]

Marion Edmunds Fears that the country will lose the essential skills of its scientists, engineers and technicians is driving a government investigation into the brain-drain from the public sector. And while the science and technology division of the Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Department has already launched a formal investigation into its skills losses, other […]

Loud music eased the tension for Jean-Jacques Terblanche before his big race in Atlanta, and it inspired him to win gold, writes Julian Drew PARALYMPIC champion Jean-Jacques Terblanche is not an athlete who succumbs to big match nerves. As he sat in the call-up room waiting for his 200m individual medley final at the Georgia […]

Larry Elliott reports on the economic effect of shackling British trade unions THOSE of us who dislike Manchester United winning everything in football all the time should take some lessons from the way the British government has handled the unions these past 18 years. The first thing to do is insist that United are not […]

With the International Film Festival opening this Friday, ANDREW WORSDALE takes a look at the past, present and future of SA film festivals THE International Film Festival which opens this week is the baby of Len Davis, the man who started the Johannesburg Film Festival back in 1977. It played at the beautiful Monte Carlo […]

Jane Cortez and her band blend music and words. GWEN ANSELL interviewed them at the Arts Alive festival So what’s a “jazz poet”? Some bearded dude in shades spewing Kerouac sentiments in a cellar while a cool vibraphone tinkles? Some other bearded, shaded-and- dashiki-wearing dude declaiming angrily in a loft while a hot saxophone wails? […]

THE enduring memory I have from addressing a group of pro-government students at the University of Cape Town recently is the expression “you must not say …”. They objected to hearing opinions and points of view different from their own. These students had probably not interacted with a senior representative of the Azanian People’s Organisation […]

Last week’s Body Politic conference in Johannesburg radically altered the image of the crusty old academy, writes JAMES SEY THE Department of Psychology at Wits University and Unisa recently co-hosted an intriguing two day event at the atmospheric old Wits Medical School building in Hillbrow, Johannesburg. Dubbed The Body Politic, it is the second annual […]

Alex Brummer in London The decision by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) the Basle-based central bankers’ club, to widen its membership to include nine emerging market countries, represents a critical milestone for the global economic order. It has been evident since the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) 50th anniversary meetings in Madrid in 1994 that […]

Marion Edmunds The Constitutional Court wants to make it more difficult for the Constitution to be changed by a strong ruling party. Parliament’s power to write and re-write the Constitution has been a controversial point in negotiations between political parties since Codesa, when talks broke down over the dispute between the African National Congress and […]