Staff Reporter

Marion Edmunds SOUTH AFRICAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION journalists, along with about 250 of their colleagues from around the world, were holed up in a compound in Libya this week, unsure when they would be allowed to leave the country to return to their homes. According to Current Affairs Executive Producer Freek Robinson, a producer, Kotie van […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN reviews the extremely lovely exhibition Artists’ Books at the Johannesburg Art Gallery IN the beginning there was the word. Then the word became print, opening up a seemingly magical world in which information could be reproduced and circulated for mass consumption. Then came the book, containing the continuum of experience and the moving […]

The new head of the secret service, and his deputy, will be looking out for the dangers and opportunities facing the country, reports Gaye Davis THEY’VE been described as student radicals, and they’ve certainly got the T-shirts earned during careers which took them from student activism to jail, exile and working underground for the African […]

Jan Bergman believes he is the best boxer in South Africa. This weekend he has a chance to prove his boast correct BOXING: Gavin Evans THERE’S a kind of prickly arrogance about Jan Bergman which comes across as alternatively endearing or plain irritating, depending on your vantage point. He’s a man who “knows” he’s the […]

THEATRE: Alexander Sudheim reviews Durban Poison – WHEN, in the 1950s, Lenny Bruce walked up to the microphone in an LA club and asked, ever so innocently: “Are there any niggers here tonight?” the concept of stand-up comedy was revolutionised. At first there was a deafening silence from the audience. Then Sammy Davis Junior, sitting […]

Even the police in Mpumalanga are afraid to testify against local gangs, report Sharon Hammond and Justin Arenstein STATE-SPONSORED gangs, who used government patronage to build criminal business empires, featured prominently during Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) sittings in Mpumalanga this week. Although state support for the thugs officially ended with the dissolution of the […]

Yunus Momoniat CITIZEN AND SUBJECT: CONTEMPORARY AFRICA AND THE LEGACY OF LATE COLONIALISM by Mahmood Mamdani (James Currey/Fountain/David Philip, R79,95) – UGANDAN academic Mahmood Mamdani, who worked in South Africa for a time, has written a wide-ranging and highly theoretical book which attempts to discern a pattern in the process of colonialism in Africa. He […]

Marion Edmunds A NUMBER of African National Congress ministers are trying to breathe new life into the Masakhane Campaign by making Deputy President Thabo Mbeki its new figurehead. Mbeki will promote payment of rates and taxes, as part of the drive to create a “new patriotism”. A representative from the Constitutional Development Ministry, Mpho Msmane, […]

Gaye Davis AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS chairman Jacob Zuma is emerging as a strong contender for the position of deputy president of the organisation. President Nelson Mandela’s announcement that he would step down as ANC president at the organisation’s conference in December 1997, and as the country’s president in 1999, has paved the way for Deputy […]

The widespread strike in Zimbabwe may be over, but the country’s troubles aren’t, reports Julius Zava ALTHOUGH Zimbabwe’s strike by civil servants has been suspended, the threat of renewed labour unrest continues. The strikers have given the government until September 27 to address problems Plain English which lead to their strike which lasted nearly four […]

Hazel Friedman A ROW has erupted in the Greater Johannesburg Transitional Metropolitan Council (TMC) following furious demands by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union (Samwu) that a moratorium be placed on all new appointments to local government. The TMC refuses to abide by the moratorium. This comes in the wake of the appointment of the […]

Andrew Worsdale THIS Friday sees the South African release of Crash, a movie so controversial it has not yet been News, features, released in the United States or the other services United Kingdom. Local distributors Nu-Metro are leading the international market with computing their bid to release the film completely uncut, but with a “no-under […]

Information is power and the Central Statistical Service is determined to put it to better use than the old government, reports Aspasia Karras IN a paper presented in August for the Institute for Advanced Social Research at the University of the Witwatersand, Deborah Possel focused on the relationship between counting and controlling. She argued that […]

South Africa faces the prospect of segregated urban slums, where people are separated not by race but by the way the sewerage flows in post-apartheid cities, with social and environmental conditions worse than those created by the old government’s housing policies. This hard-hitting argument is contained in a critique by the National Institute for Economic […]

The last of SABC-TV’s big budget drama series comes to our screens this week. ANDREW WORSDALE reports – HOMELAND, the new 13-part-series on SABC3, is quite possibly the most engrossing drama series yet produced for local television. Full of well-judged performances and cinematic flair, it contains all the qualities that, up until now, one believed […]

Delays in implementing Angola’s peace accords were highlighted at Unita’s third congress in Bailundo last month, reports John Liebenberg THE town of Bailundo, set in the , farmlands of central Huambo, has always played a significant role in Angolan history. Once home to the Ovimbundu kings, famous for leading a 1902 rebellion against Portuguese rule, […]

WHEN it was announced that the SABC was to sell six of its regional radio stations everybody cheered. Government rubbed its hands in anticipation of receiving a huge whack of much needed revenue. Potential bidders were finally in with a chance of becoming rich as well as famous. Even the public agreed that 70 years […]

SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi THE arrival of Nigerian champions Shooting Stars this week heralds the start of a hectic period of international activity involving Bafana Bafana and Orlando Pirates. On Sunday at the Free State Stadium in Bloemfontein, the Buccaneers continue their defence of the African Champions’ Cup with a quarter-final tie against highly-rated Stars. The […]

Marion Edmunds WHILE Pagad is baying for quick justice from blood- stained streets, the police at head office are scrabbling for money to buy a fingerprinting system which would remove one of the key blockages in the criminal justice system. The purchase of an automated fingerprint system Afis would speed up police investigations and court […]

THE cruise missiles have flown again, with even greater accuracy, it is said, than before. They have certainly had a devastating effect on what remains of the alliance which mustered against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. United States President Bill Clinton has described the operation as in defence of US national interest and as […]

Catholic schools in Gauteng are outraged by a 30% retrospective subsidy cut, reports Max Gebhardt INDEPENDENT Catholic church schools which cater for thousands of disadvantaged black schoolchildren will be the first to suffer in the wake of cutbacks in their subsidies by the Gauteng Education Department. Religious and independent schools in Gauteng have been plunged […]

Julian Drew THE opening ceremonies of both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games used Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech to portray the lofty ideals to which they aspire. But it is the Paralympics and their constant struggle against the stereotyping of disabled people with which King would probably have identified most. […]

time At Stellenbosch, blacks are running for office. And that’s not the only thing that’s different about this year’s student elections, report Joshua Amupadhi and Thandi Lewin In a first for the new South Africa, political parties — the African National Congress, the National Party and the Freedom Front —are taking part in student elections […]

crime wave to fight crime with corruption A policeman is shot while allegedly robbing Eastgate … the head of a car- theft unit is caught in a stolen car … Angella Johnson investigates rife police corruption EVIDENCE is mounting that corrupt police officers are at the heart of the country’s escalating crime-wave, with worrying signs […]

sixes CRICKET: Jon Swift ONE of the inevitable things about sport is that as the seasons change, so do the faces of the men out there in the middle. And so it is with the composition of the two cricket sides announced by the South African selectors this week. Adrian Kuiper, once such a vital […]

Pronounced guilty, Eugene de Kock will now have his turn to incriminate members of the old security forces, writes Eddie Koch The day of judgment had come. Yet there was no air of anticipation in the courtroom. No murmurs of approval in the gallery as the judge delivered his verdict. Not a single family member […]

KAREN DAVIES finds out what Yvonne Chaka Chaka has been up to between starting a limo-hire service and receiving a songstress of Africa award in Zaire SHE was chosen above Madonna to launch Pepsi in Nigeria. Flowers were strewn on the road from Entebbe Airport to Kampala in Uganda for her visit there and she […]

A COMMISSION set up to determine what salaries and benefits public representatives should receive has employed consultants to do just that — at a cost of more than R1-million. Sakkie Olivier, secretary of the Commission on Remuneration of Representatives, said KPMG Global Edge’s tender of R992 000 to investigate and make recommendations on salaries and […]

Mungo Soggot Reserve Bank Governor Chris Stals’s key annual address this week drew consensus among economists that South Africa’s top banker is caught between a rock and a hard place. But while there was agreement that the economy’s vital statistics — huge imports, a shaky balance of payments, and crippling debt levels — were far […]

of cocaine INSPECTOR Jacques Swanepoel is not an exception within a police force widely perceived to be teeming with rogue cops. Swanepoel (33) has been charged with murder, assault, possession of cocaine and defeating the ends of justice. He was granted R1 000 bail. A member of the hard-pressed South African Narcotic Bureau (Sanab), it […]

Robert Mugabe’s marriage to his former secretary has changed the face of Zimbabwe’s political hierarchy forever, reports Iden Wetherell WHEN President Robert Mugabe returned to Harare last weekend from his brief honeymoon in Cape Town and an even briefer South African Development Community summit stopover in Maseru, it was immediately clear that things would never […]

Good journalism is grounded in a dislike of special privilege, a contempt for anyone who suggests that they stand above the law, a deep-rooted scepticism of special pleading of any kind. This being the case, journalists can hardly claim professional privileges which other citizens do not enjoy; the rights and responsibilities of the media and […]