Tricky revolutionised UK hip-hop with his debut album, Maxinquaye. Seasoned music writer SHERYL GARRATT considers his breed of cross-over TO punks, disco was the enemy. Veterans of the battle of the beat are now a bit sheepish about telling their war stories, but not so very long ago the British music press was split into […]
Mail & Guardian Reporter THE white, male edifice of the South African judiciary sustained another blow this week with the announcement of three new women judges. The three, attorney Kathy Satchwell, Geraldine Borchers, SC, and Vivian Niles-Duner, will bring to seven the number of women on the Bench. They will join the small club which […]
Has that 15-million been well spent — or did Newcastle want Alan Shearer more than they actually needed him? SOCCER: Paul Wilson ACCORDING to the feedback from the Atlanta Games, Britain is a cash-strapped uncompetitive backwater which has lost the knack of producing sporting heroes. All the odder then, that an English football club has […]
BILL CLINTON’s promise in the 1992 presidential campaign to “end welfare as we know it” is turning out to be all too true. As the next election approaches, he has bowed to a Republican Congress, signing a Bill that abolishes the federal safety net set up after the Depression to protect those most at risk. […]
Tebello Radebe The stage is set for powerful foreign interests to play an increasingly dominant role in the domestic air travel industry — first came South African Airways’ (SAA) link-up with Lufthansa, then the Comair-British Airways (BA) franchise deal, and now it is the Virgin Airlines and Sun Air talks. Virgin Airlines’ South African representative […]
Tom Petruno For all the anguish on Wall Street in July over corporate earnings, here’s the tally so far of second-quarter reports: 57% were above expectations, 16% were as expected and just 27% were below expectations. So where’s the big profit problem that helped trigger the stock market’s slump last month? That’s what Wall Street’s […]
Mungo Soggot reports on a bizarre supreme court case against the dog squad which has cost the taxpayer about R60 000 THE police dog squad has spent about R60 000 of taxpayers’ money challenging allegations that it stole a design for a dog kennel despite a supreme court judgment against it last year which found […]
Ann Eveleth Three policemen facing murder charges in connection with the Christmas 1995 Shoba-shobane massacre of 19 African National Congress supporters are back at work in neighbouring Nkulu ward, police confirmed this week. Sergeants Bekeni Mngadi, Muzuvukile Ngeleka and Joseph Zulu were suspended from their posts at the Izingolweni police station in May after their […]
Police failed to heed warnings which could have prevented the Cape Town vigilante killing of an alleged gang leader, said the former head of a watchdog group overseeing investigations into police corruption. As war psychosis simmering in the Cape Flats threatens to erupt into full-scale war, criminologist Wilfred SchSrf said the police had been aware […]
Mohammed Farah Aideed, the Somali warlord who humiliated the United States in 1993, died last week in clan fighting. Mark Huband witnessed his bloody career first-hand HE was usually grinning, broadly enough to expose a sparkling gold tooth at the back of his mouth. It sparkled almost as brightly as the massive diamond perched on […]
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 […]
Allegations of secrecy have been levelled against Radio Highveld’s favoured bidder. Barbara Ludman reports THE multimillion-rand fight for ownership of Radio Highveld Stereo has moved from merely monetary issues to questions of ideology. With Highveld licence hearings scheduled for the first week in September, the second-highest bidder, Worldwide Consortium, has accused the frontrunner of keeping […]
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 […]
Dale Carnegie would have been proud of FW de Klerk’s performance at the National Party’s weekend congress, writes Gaye Davis NATIONAL Party leader FW de Klerk is credited with being something of a magician among politicians, capable of producing a rabbit from a hat. The analogy was particularly apt at the opening of his party’s […]
Facing the first of four Tests against the fearsome All Blacks and with a long list of injuries, the Springbok coach is justified in feeling a trifle nervous, but there is some comfort for him as well RUGBY: Jon Swift THERE has always been something special about a meeting between South Africa and New Zealand […]
Arnold Schwarzenegger is 49 and still conquering. Undaunted, ANDREW WORSDALE tackles his new film, Eraser AS a child growing up in Graz, Austria, Arnold Schwarzenegger was encouraged by his father to become a soccer player. Soon enough, however, the teenager discovered that his true passion was weight-lifting. Five years later, at the already bulging age […]
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 […]
Artist Brett Murray brings a piece of Cape Town’s `generous cultural spirit’ to Johannesburg this weekend. He spoke to HAZEL FRIEDMAN THE boy with the golliwog hair and dangling earrings smiles impishly at the lens, his teeth and the whites of his eyes made more luminescent by the contrast with blackened, cherubic cheeks. This is […]
South African Koto Bolofo has been picking up awards on the international festival circuit, so why have we never heard of him? Dinah Arnott finds out `SOME 30 years ago, a history teacher was accused of communist infiltration: a quotation from Karl Marx had been found in one of his text books. This was criminal […]
The misguided choice of coal-based technology is limiting a potentially booming sector, reports Lynda Loxton Plastics and chemicals giant Polifin upset many manufacturers when it managed to persuade the Board on Tariffs and Trade to slap anti-dumping duties on polymer (plastic raw materials) imports. But while many ranted and raved about “high-handed measures to reduce […]
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 […]
Rapid growth in income inequality threatens the world’s economic future as the skills gap increases in the West. Edward Balls reports from London The scourge of inequality is back on the political agenda. Reports published over the past few weeks have highlighted the rapid growth in wage and income inequality and the threat this poses […]
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 […]
Aspasia Karras In the year ending 1992/93, the parastatal that ran the nine state airports was operating at a considerable loss. Dirk Ackerman, the recently appointed managing director of the Airport Company formed in August 1993, is clear about the reason: “Traditional bureaucratic inefficiency.” Too many captains wanting to direct the ship resulted in three […]
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 […]
Edwina Spicer Blacks don’t buy books. At least, that is the apparent sentiment of many Zimbabwean bookshops. And yet the Zimbabwe International Book Fair (ZIBF) attracted thousands of mostly black visitors, including hordes of children who packed the reading tents. Harare’s big booksellers display a daunting range of coffee-table books, hard-covered and full-colour, on topics […]
Suspected Rwandan killers could be allowed to remain in South Africa indefinitely, reports Mungo Soggot THE Rwandan government is monitoring two war criminals who are living in South Africa, and it believes there could be more lurking among the many Rwandan refugees in this country. But the absence of an extradition treaty between South Africa […]
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 […]
Philippa Garson THE future of Ravan Press, renowned for its fierce independence during apartheid, is under threat. Founded by Beyers Naude nearly 25 years ago, Ravan will be absorbed by its holding company Hodder and Stoughton Educational Southern Africa, unless its staff can find a buyer before the end of the month. Ravan was bought […]
John Crowley IN THE BEAUTY OF THE LILIES by John Updike (Hamish Hamilton, R94) THE novel, since its beginnings, has generated large numbers of subgenres. The varieties have lately seemed to proliferate wildly, like varieties of snack foods on supermarket shelves, and the bright if somewhat illusory array attracts not only readers but writers tempted […]
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 […]
Bantu Holomisa says Sol Kerzner paid for it, but host Paul Ekon says he and other businessmen bore the cost of Thabo Mbeki’s birthday party, writes Stefaans BrUmmer PAUL EKON, the businessman who hosted Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s 50th birthday party — and who Bantu Holomisa claims was merely a go-between for casino magnate Sol […]