`I BELIEVE in inner beauty,” says Tarryn Meaker, 17 years old and winner of Cosmopolitan’s Supermodel 1996 competition held at Carfax, at Johannesburg’s Newtown precinct, last week. She’s won a place in the annual search for the International Ford Models Supermodel of the World competition to be held in Los Angeles later this year. The […]
The Media Monitoring Project has charged that the media industry is understaffed, under-resourced, and not critical enough of the government, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy MEDIA coverage of the government is more positive than negative, reports an independent monitoring group. The report, in which the Media Monitoring Project (MMP) considered print and broadcast media between April and […]
Sprinting isn’t called an explosive event for nothing and personality clashes are rife in the 100m ATHLETICS: Duncan Mackay TO SAY that Donovan Bailey hates Linford Christie might be too strong. Dislikes him, probably. Wants to dust him right off the track, without doubt. For proof, just look at his face, frozen on the finish […]
Last week this newspaper reported an event which brought back just what the old South Africa was like. We pictured a 1991 meeting involving the governor of the Reserve Bank, a Cabinet minister and a former chief justice at which the bank’s extraordinary secret decision to hand out money to an ailing bank was discussed […]
Max Mosselson AS a disinterested observer it seems that the recent “acid-burn case”, as it has come to be known, has four important repercussions for the South African legal system, apart from the individual participants in the drama. As any legal practitioner with experience in the field will confirm, there is an almost total blanket […]
Thandi Lewin For the first time in decades, the University of Cape Town is without an elected students representative council (SRC). Less than 25% of students turned out to vote at the last poll, which, according to the constitution, is not enough to form an SRC, and now new elections must be held next month. […]
CRICKET: Barney Spender MAYBE it was the belated arrival of the sun. Maybe it was just that the cobwebs were well and truly shaken off. Maybe it was simply that the getting-to- know-you process was over. Whatever the formula, the South African A cricket tour to England took a noticeable turn last week as everyone […]
FIX your bayonets, send in the drummer boys and duck: the Gauteng Children’s Theatre Wars continue to rage. Over the past decade or so the genre has been ruled by two titans — sure, there’ll always be Janice Honeyman and the Civic, Annie Barnes’s Out-of-the-Box, Pact and others gripping your children’s attentions, but if you […]
Eddie Koch South Africa’s first legal dagga plot — an experimental project near Rustenburg in the North West province — has just completed pioneering research which could provide farmers with a lucrative new cash crop. The Tobacco and Cotton Research Institute (TCRI) recently produced a report on a two-year research project aimed at developing a […]
SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi THE final whistle will be blown on the Coca-Cola Challenge Cup this Sunday when Sundowns host Orlando Pirates at the Israeli-designed Odi Stadium north- west of Pretoria. Pirates enter the match needing an eight-goal victory to overtake arch-rivals Kaizer Chiefs on goal difference while success for Sundowns would lift them above Wits […]
Joshua Amupadhi The University of the Orange Free State (UOFS) has at last admitted there may be racial tensions on its campus and has agreed to investigate the causes of campus violence last week — which university authorities earlier dismissed as the result of drunkenness. UOFS Dean of Students Professor Teuns Verschoor said both black […]
Human rights abusers are staying away from the truth commission — and the attorneys general are being blamed, reports Stefaans BrUmmer THE Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been left in the lurch by those it needs most to solve the mysteries of the past — human rights abusers — and attorneys general are being blamed […]
Marion Edmunds IT’S being called the Group Areas Act for immigrants. Foreigners who acquire permanent residence status in the new South Africa will not be allowed to move home from one province to another for a year after their application is approved. Nor will they be able to change jobs without permission from the Home […]
Nine murders, five attempted murders — that’s this year’s toll in Jo’burg’s roughest `hood. Angella Johnson visited Westbury this week JOEWA BOTHA leaned nonchalantly against the graffitied wall. He knows the risk of standing on a street corner — a target for drive-by gang shooting. “Look!”, he said, as he pointed excitedly at pock-marked plaster. […]
Among Beatrice’s conundrums is how she came to live in a pigsty. She can put all the elements together. War. Persecution. Genocide. Survival. Even a victory of sorts. But the way things have worked out just don’t make sense to the forlorn Rwandan Tutsi who believes her life is over although she is only in […]
WHEN University of Zululand lecturer Mandisa Hlatshaneni resisted hijackers who were trying to steal her car on campus recently, she was shot dead. The evening before, student Sibusiso Mehlo was murdered two kilometres from the same campus, allegedly by the same notorious “Khumalo gang”. Incidents like these are becoming almost commonplace, shattering the illusion that […]
The Mark Gevisser Profile A voice of truth and dissent My comrades and friends killed my granny with fire… But before that, they sucked her breasts dry… so that she could burn well This poem by Sandile Dikeni, soon to be published in the upcoming two-volume edition of Staffrider, must be the most devastating and […]
TO Freddy Nyathela, the road travelled by local black music technicians is less a road than an obstacle course. Founder and head of Sara (South African Roadies Association), a union established in 1992 for technical crews from disadvantaged communities, Nyathela has taken on the Ministry of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, the Standard Bank National […]
Alliances are unlikely to make opposition parties more powerful against the ANC, writes a sceptical Marion Edmunds Opposition parties have begun flirting with each other in the post-election political lull, in an attempt to find common ground and sharper definition against the ANC, before the1999 ballot. And while meetings between political parties lead to speculation […]
Art was put in service of advertising in the spectacle that was BMW’s Sandton Square sculpture garden. IAN TROMP reports `IN the beginning there was silence.” Not even powerful lighting and loud music could redeem the voice-over accompanying Revelations in Form, an exhibition that was really a product launch for BMW’s new 5 Series. A […]
Despite two losses, South Africa are showing plenty of promise, except when it comes to handling the referee RUGBY: Jon Swift `SEAN FITZPATRICK,” remarked South African coach Andre Markgraaff dryly, “tends to have that effect on people.” The reference was to the now infamous head-butt laid on the All Black skipper by John Allan in […]
With 2% at stake, Western Cape clothing workers are to make history by striking for higher wages, writes Rehana Rossouw The clothing workers’ strike is their first in the Western Cape for higher wages. Although there have been work stoppages over the years, never before has there been a co-ordinated strike by the overwhelming majority […]
DONNING a security uniform and patrolling one’s campus may seem as uncool to students as belonging to Girl Guides. But these days, soaring crime on campuses has led students to rethink the value of “cool”. With armed robberies, car hijackings, rape and even murder becoming increasingly commonplace on campuses, the idea of being a student […]
Rob Davies discusses the implications of a free trade agreement for South Africa’s neighbours with Lynda Loxton As the South African government continues to finalise its mandate for negotiations with the European Union on a free trade agreement (FTA), the ramifications of such a deal are becoming more complicated. African National Congress MP and trade […]
SWIMMER Penny Heyns has shown the way for the South African team with two gold medals for the 100m and 200m butterfly evets. Marianne Kriel also finished among the medals with a bronze in the 100m backstroke. Now it’s the turn of the athletes and none has a better chance than 800m sensation Hezekial Sepeng. […]
RUGBY: Jon Swift THROUGHOUT the tragically under-promoted Student Rugby World Cup which came and went with barely a ripple over the past month, there was the feeling that this was a shop window of one of South African sport’s biggest failings … the big things we do well, in the lesser concerns we do dismally. […]
The world has learnt some sobering lessons about intervention in civil conflicts in the past few years. The United States experience in Somalia led to a consensus that it was foolhardy for an international power to intervene when the political groundwork had not been done beforehand. Peacekeeping could only work when the parties wanted a […]
Chris McGreal in Kigali Burundi’s beleaguered Hutu president, Sylvestre Ntibantunganya, has sought refuge at the United States ambassador’s residence in the capital, Bujumbura, and appears ready to relinquish office amid fears that he could become the third successive leader of his country to be assassinated. The overwhelmingly Tutsi army denied this week that there had […]
A group of black farmworkers and a few tough white boers in khaki have worked together to turn their farm into a record-producing money-spinner, reports Eddie Koch The Lomati Valley, a fertile piece of subtropical bushveld that lies in the shadow of the Lebombo Mountains in Mpumalanga, has produced some of the hardiest of South […]
delivery Tebello Radebe Private developers look set to be next in line for criticism over slow housing delivery. So far, the government and the banks have borne the brunt of most of the attacks. A report by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the focus of a housing workshop in Johannesburg next week, recommends that […]
Lynda Loxton A leading member of the South African Communist Party has called on the government to take tough action to stop the “investment strike” by the private sector. African National Congress MP and SACP central executive committee member Philip Dexter told the Mail & Guardian that business seemed intent on pitting members of the […]
A feud between Iscor and a Namibian businesswoman over a zinc mine has taken a new twist, reports Mungo Soggot A Namibian zinc mine is the focus of an acrimonious billion-rand battle between the daughter of a German Jew who fled the Nazis to prospect in Africa and steel giant Iscor. When Mose Kahan on […]