Susannah Frankel The fashion world is buzzing with rumours that Vivienne Westwood — Queen of Punk, grande dame of British fashion and the woman most famous for parading knickerless around Buckingham Palace — looks set to take over at Christian Dior, France’s oldest couture house. Since Gianfranco Ferre announced his departure in July, speculation has […]
Political manoeuvring among ministers has been behind the delay in appointing privatisation advisers, writes Mungo Soggot Now that the government has finally named its privatisation adviser, it transpires that the endless delays over the appointment stemmed in part from a political struggle over who will control restructuring and privatisation. The outcome of the battle appears […]
Beeld’s new editor, Johan de Wet, will not bow to politics, but claims he will be led by the news, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy He is not arrogant, but soft-spoken, seemingly quite laid-back. As a senior managing director from a rival publishing house put it: “He was never a gutsy type of journalist; nor is he […]
Ann Eveleth Western Cape National Party leader Dawie de Villiers has been tipped for an ambassadorship, along with Inkatha Freedom Party MP Lionel Mtshali, in a new round of appointments expected also to include the Pan Africanist Congress. De Villiers’ imminent appointment comes hot on the heels of former NP parliamentary deputy speaker Bhadra Ranchod’s […]
Journalists covering Pagad’s campaign against gangsters have found themselves staring down the barrels of guns, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy Journalists are once again being targeted, as the war in the Cape Flats continues between the Muslim community group, People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) and gangs. In the 12 days following the shooting and torching of […]
Ann Eveleth Amid widespread perceptions of police inaction and corruption, police investigating other police are either unable or unwilling to take their colleagues accused of serious crimes off the beat. The return to work last month of three policemen facing murder charges for the Christmas 1995 Shobashobane massacre of 19 African National Congress supporters is […]
Plans to restructure the minibus taxi industry involve attracting foreign investment, but will also saddle the government with massive debts, reports Tebello Radebe The strife-torn minibus taxi industry can be made attractive to foreign investors if the government’s plans for the R8-billion sector take off. So says Dipak Patel, head of the National Taxi Task […]
Deep in Angola, men mine illegally — and dangerously — from diamond-rich riverbeds. John Liebenberg reports `BEWARE the devil in the diamond,” smiles the Zairean, Flavia. He rolls the sparkling two-carat oval stone in his palm. He was a teacher for many years until a visit to his brother, also a miner, two years ago. […]
BRITAIN is not the only country wringing its hands over its performance at the Olympics. The Kenyan government plans to set up an independent commission to determine why its athletes won only one gold medal in Atlanta, the worst return since 1984. “We must go back to the drawing board and find the root cause […]
Alexander Sudheim A WELCOME change of location from the formal feel of last year’s event at the Natal Playhouse, the BAT Centre in Durban proved an inspired choice for the 1996 JPS Jazz Festival. At least 1 000 people visited on each of the three days to take in the likes of Bayete, Johnny Fourie, […]
Lynda Loxton As the rand continues its shaky path and investor perceptions remain wary about the ability of the government to deliver on its ambitious macroeconomic plan, government officials are quietly and determinedly working to ensure that stringent budget-cutting targets are met. Whether the political implications will still upset the applecart remains to be seen, […]
Mungo Soggot FOR a member of the Free Market Foundation, Transnet chairman Louise Tager’s anti-privatisation stance is surprising. A glance at Tager’s curriculum vitae, supplied by Transnet, shows she has been a member of the Free Market Foundation since 1990, a trustee of the Don Caldwell Trust — another pro-privatisation group — since 1992, and […]
Dan Atkinson in London Gathering storm clouds overshadowed bumper half-year profits from diamond conglomerate De Beers this week. The sliding value of the rand and renewed uncertainty over a critical trade deal with the Russian government, combined to cast doubt on the survival of the company’s worldwide marketing cartel. Director Gary Ralfe said two weeks […]
Mungo Soggot A TOP Johannesburg accountant has hit the public purse jackpot, earning what appears to be the highest salary in the government sector — as much as R88 000 a month, considerably more than President Nelson Mandela takes home. A spokesman for the Department of Finance confirmed this week that Charles Stride, who was […]
Gaye Davis A group of African National Congress women MPs have launched an eleventh-hour bid to return South Africa to the calvinistic days of star-covered nipples and black tape over salacious text. They are bidding to turn back the clock on the passage of the Film and Publications Bill, believing it is too soft on […]
Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has warned the ANC of further repercussions concerning its involvement with Sol Kerzner. Gaye Davis reports AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS Women’s League president Winnie Madikizela-Mandela has warned the ANC of “further bruising” concerning Sol Kerzner’s relationship with the organisation in a letter to Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. Axed deputy minister of environment affairs Bantu […]
Iden Wetherell in Harare IN stark contrast to reports of their imminent demise, Zimbabwe’s tobacco growers appear to be flourishing. This year’s flue-cured crop is expected to fetch Z$5,68-billion (R2,5-billion), slightly up on last year’s record Z$5-billion. This comes in the face of escalating costs, political flak, and a hefty state levy widely predicted at […]
Overseas acts provide all the excitement at next month’s Arts Alive festival, writes GWEN ANSELL BOLD and brassy Cuban ensemble Irakere will terrify the storks and electrify the dancers at Johannesburg’s Zoo Lake on September 8, as they kick off the popular music programme of this year’s Arts Alive Festival. Irakere, founded and led by […]
Paul Adams came on to the scene with a bang last year, but he has not been so explosive in England CRICKET: Barney Spender A YEAR ago the South African schools’ team was touring England. At home, left to rue the selectors’ decision that he was little more than a circus act, was Paul Adams. […]
Parks board chair Enos Mabuza is being investigated for a farm which he bought for R6 000 and mortgaged for almost R500 000, reports Justin Arenstein RESPECTED National Parks Board chairman and former homeland leader Dr Enos Mabuza bought a farm for R6 000 from the government under allegedly irregular conditions in 1991, and mortgaged […]
FINE ART: Hazel Friedman DON’T go looking for Lolita in Antoinette Murdoch’s debut solo show, Trane Trekkers. Unlike the nymphet in Vladimir Nabokov’s novel, Murdoch’s notions of the feminine are predicated not on precocious sexuality, but on transition; and her rites of passage are not trials by fire, but rather “fluid” journeys of purification. A […]
They’re rude, independent — and raking in the cash. ANDREW WORSDALE on this week’s releases, Mallrats and Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead AMERICAN movie-goers — the most lucrative audience in the world — are finally giving the thumbs-down to the thoughtless, cliched hype dished out by Hollywood. Instead, they’re looking to the […]
Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco is hot property. ADRIAN SEARLE test drives his new show at the ICA in London THERE is a lift stalled in the middle of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London’s upper gallery. The light is on inside and the doors are open: Going Up? But wait, there’s something wrong here. […]
Judith Matloff in Lusaka Zambia’s stringent austerity measures have helped create a crisis in the sexual exploitation of children, with high numbers of under-age prostitutes roaming the streets, child advocacy groups say. The groups, taking stock for an international conference on the sexual exploitation of children this month in Sweden, said that the combination of […]
Madeleine Wackernagel In trying to bring the public service up to speed, the government has made a Faustian pact that could backfire, says one senior official in the Gauteng administration. “Only once we ran the statistics did we realise the scale of the problem. We need more money to keep the better people, which means […]
South African agents attempted to buy influence in the White House by offering to buy a jet for Bob Dole’s running mate, writes Eddie Koch JACK KEMP, currently running as the Republican candidate for vice-president in the United States elections, was deeply embarrassed in the late 1980s by revelations that South African military intelligence agents […]
A photograph of an award-winning artwork designed to provoke debate about the status of women has caused the deputy speaker to call for art censorship, reports Hazel Friedman The deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Baleka Kgositsile, has stirred up furious controversy in the art community with an attack on the Mail & Guardian for […]
Mail & Guardian Reporter IN the wake of Desmond Tutu’s call for apartheid judges to come clean, the search for dubious judgments has unearthed an extraordinary case involving a clerk articled to Nelson Mandela and the late Oliver Tambo. The clerk was charged with contempt of court after sitting in the white lawyers’ seats in […]
Repeal, not reform, is the essence of the new Bill, writes Martin Woollacott The 18th-century British literary figure Dr Samuel Johnson said: “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilisation.” Where, then, does United States civilisation stand after President Bill Clinton’s assent to a Welfare Bill that will cut entitlement to […]
Kevin Mitchell unveils the game behind the Games in which baubles are converted into big bucks as athletes and accessories are reduced to marketable commodities in a procession from the podium to the bank THE organisers say that the Atlanta Games will “break even”. Well, that’s all right then. President Bill Clinton said: “They were […]
With the government unlikely to increase subsidies for tertiary education in the next 10 years, a large-scale student-aid fund is desperately needed, argues Philippa Garson SERIOUS problems lie ahead for the higher education sector if student fees continue to rocket in the absence of a viable student loan scheme. While the sector is set to […]
Islamic Unity Convention, in The Mark Gevisser Profile The Imam of the Flats AN hour before the faithful and the outraged are to gather at Vygieskraal Stadium in Athlone, I sit, in a small apartment somewhere on the Cape Flats, with one of the new footsoldiers of the revolution: a man who has discovered meaning […]