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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
A secret UN report has blamed Burundi’s army for assassinating President Melchior Ndadaye three years ago, reports Chris McGreal from Bujumbura A confidential United Nations report on the murder of Burundi’s first Hutu president — kept under wraps because of its potentially explosive impact on the conflict-ravaged country — accuses the army high command of […]
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 […]
Ann Eveleth THE University of Zululand campus became a war zone this week as police and students clashed following the alleged rape of a female student in a campus residence last Saturday. Campus security fired teargas canisters on Tuesday to disperse students demanding the immediate suspension of Jabulani Msweli, the campus security guard charged with […]
In comparison to the sums being paid for other players in the Premier League, Manchester United really got a bargain when they paid 3,6-million for the exciting Karel Poborsky SOCCER: Michael Walker IT WAS a grey, uninviting Monday morning in June but international reporters were still sparring for position on the front steps of the […]
GWEN ANSELL pays tribute to the man who introduced the sounds of West Africa to the world THE king of highlife is dead. Emmanuel Tetch (ET) Mensah, trumpeter, saxophonist, bandleader, composer (and, in periods of musical layoff, a practising pharmacist), has died in his birthplace of Accra, Ghana, at the age of 77. Highlife music […]
Tebello Radebe All electricity users will ultimately pay for the more than R1,3-billion apartheid rent boycott power bills at some point, says Kevin Morgan, legal adviser to the electricity regulator, following the agreements reached by Eskom and debt-ridden local authorities. “Eskom, being a state-owned enterprise, can only write off the debts against income from what […]
Stephen Bates in Brussels Jean-Luc Dehaene, the Belgian prime minister, has found himself cast in the unlikely role of the absolutist French monarch Louis XIV by angry compatriots and press cartoonists since he ruthlessly seized control of the economy in an attempt to prepare the country for the European Monetary Union. The man spurned by […]
Although the business confidence index has dropped significantly, Sacob believes the longer-term outlook is positive, writes Madeleine Wackernagel The sharp reversal in the business confidence index for July came as no surprise, says Dr Ben van Rensburg, chief economist of the South African Chamber of Business (Sacob), which compiles the monthly measure. “Inflation, interest rates […]
Anthony Egan PASSIVE RESISTANCE 1946: A SELECTION OF DOCUMENTS compiled by ES Reddy and Fatima Meer (Madiba Publishers/Institute for Black Research, R75) When the government of Field-Marshal Jan Smuts first announced a new Bill — what was later passed into law as the Asiatic Land Tenure and Indian Representation Bill in June 1946 — little […]
Nthato Motlana’s high-profile team that is supposed to be raising R300-million for higher education has been hit by criticism, reports Philippa Garson THE high-powered team of academics and business executives set up by the education department last year to raise money for needy students has not yet raised a cent. Some members of the Eminent […]
Kevin Mitchell says Atlanta’s juggernaut has left the Olympic caravan in need of urgent repair for Sydney 2000 and finds a growing belief that it can only move ahead with confidence if Juan Antonio Samaranch is ousted TO STUTTER and then triumph, as Michael Johnson did, surely defines the resilience and the brilliance of the […]
Credit Lyonnais may become the latest in a series of botched sell-offs, reports Alex Duval Smith from Paris If rumours are confirmed that the French government is preparing a rush privatisation of the Credit Lyonnais (CL) bank, it will be the latest in a long line of sell-offs motivated more by desperation than design. The […]
THEATRE: Hazel Friedman IF there’s one conclusion to be drawn from On My Birthday, Aubrey Sekhabi’s play about domestic violence, it is this: while noble causes and educational initiatives may go together like a horse and carriage, they can also make for pretty dodgy theatre. All too often, the well-intentioned playwright-cum- sociologist reduces life’s twists […]
Bronwen Roberts A special session of the Eastern Cape legislature was convened this week to look at ongoing charges of corruption and maladministration. Whenever the Eastern Cape government faces another scandal involving internal corruption, officials emphasise it is because of their own efforts that corruption is being exposed. The implication is that the government is […]
To become globally competitive, South Africa’s marketers have to be innovative, argues Hunt Lascaris TBWA director Paul Bannister The poor state of the rand is a reminder of the strength of incoming competition. Foreign competition’s marketing budgets are more powerful as they are backed by a much stronger dollar. Marketing budgets for global brands targeting […]
ANC leaders are not backing Free State premier Patrick `Terror’ Lekota in a fight against corruption, reports Rehana Rossouw Free State premier Patrick “Terror” Lekota has exposed abuse of almost R6-million of public money. A Mail & Guardian investigation has found that some of the money was allegedly spent by senior members of the provincial […]
Jacquie Golding-Duffy Labour Party leader Tony Blair is expected to address the Commonwealth’s biennial conference to be held in South Africa in October. Chairperson of the organising committee and Cape Times editor Moegsien Williams says the conference is significant as it is the first time since South Africa walked out of the Commonwealth in the […]
Angella Johnson It would seem that not even the national police commissioner is safe from South Africa’s tidal crime wave. Thieves broke into one of George Fivaz’s offices last weekend and made off with two large fax machines and a kettle. The bold-faced crooks marched into what should be one of the countries’ safest buildings […]
Is Felicia Mabuza-Suttle’s personality preventing her show from attracting advertisers? Jacquie Golding-Duffy reports on the politics behind the `high-risk’ programme The Felicia Mabuza-Suttle show, regarded by black audiences as the “African version of Oprah Winfrey”, has failed to attract advertising despite its popularity. Although one of the most successful SABC local television talk shows, the […]
Cape Town gang buster leader Muhammed Ali “Phantom” Parker is not the caped crusader his nickname suggests, but a man who has tasted death and is prepared to die for the cause he believes in, friends and relatives said this week. Parker was shot in the chest at the siege of gang leader Rashaad Staggie’s […]
The Mark Gevisser Profile One Free State, one Lekota? `One Free State!” yells Councillor Bazooka Ma-baso, working the crowd for Comrade Terror. “One Lekota!” the overflowing classroomful of Mangaung residents yells back, on cue. The chant, first heard in Welkom a week or so ago, is moving like tumbleweed across the Free State’s plains as […]