RUGBY: Jon Swift Boy Louw said it best. “Looks for the scoreboards” was his superbly unique and ungrammatical reply to criticism of how the Spingboks played. So it should be with the 43-18 scoreline from this week’s test against Fiji at Loftus Versfeld. This was not an inspired perfomance. But it was a winning one, […]
Muslim members of Mozambique’s Parliament are trying to pass a law recognising the days of Eid as public holidays. Andrew Meldrum reports from Boane Sabati Omar breaks from his work building a mosque to explain how Islam is growing in Boane, a rural area in southern Mozambique. “Every month we see somebody convert,” says Omar, […]
Jacquie Golding-Duffy A Cape Town-based Muslim community radio station is being hauled before the Independent Broadcasting Authority following an alleged contravention of its licence conditions. Voice of the Cape, which shares air-time with Radio 786, is to appear before the IBA’s Broadcasting Monitoring and Complaints Committee (BMCC) on July 9 for allegedly failing to inform […]
M&G Crime Correspondent Angella Johnson, who spent 10 years working on papers like The Guardian, London Times and Los Angeles Times, finds herself at loggerheads with the SAPS `Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as […]
David Beresford President Nelson Mandela’s tendency to “shoot from the hip” on foreign policy matters — a trait which is the despair of diplomats, but admired by others as straight talking — was on display again this week when he panned the British prime minister on the eve of his state visit to the United […]
Julian Drew At the colourful and emotional send-off for the South African Olympic team last Sunday, the Olympic oath was read on behalf of the team by modern pentathlete Claud Cloete. While it is true that Cloete is only in the team courtesy of a wild card granted to athletes from developing countries to ensure […]
Vietnam, with its frequent changes in policy and bureaucratic rule, has left investors confused and wary. Nicholas Cumming-Bruce reports from Hanoi An 18-storey hotel, soaring above a jumble of low- rise Hanoi houses and construction sites, is a landmark to the rapid changes rattling this once- sleepy capital of faded colonial villas and lakes. Foreign […]
“During the apartheid era there was no channel for negotiation. Now that there is such a channel, students don’t have to protest immediately, when something is wrong” — Benedict Radebe, 19, BSc first year “A lot of the protesting isn’t justified. Here at Wits, it hasn’t been about genuine student grievances, but more about a […]
HOME Affairs’ highly paid special adviser Mario Ambrosini has been taking some time off during the past two weeks to keep tabs on KwaZulu-Natal’s progress at the Constitutional Court. (Perish the thought that either he or his boss, Mangosuthu Buthhelezi, would do party work on government time). Last week he was popping in and out […]
Singing along with Mariah Carey is no challenge, as Brian Logan discovered at her first-ever concert in London MARIAH CAREY once said about her video for the single Fantasy: “It’s difficult wearing all those hats, but the positive results were worth it.” By this standard, the UK debut of the top-selling recording artist of the […]
Mountaineers question whether the South African Everest team ever really reached the summit. Justin Pearce and Gaye Davis report A row is brewing over who owns the still-unpublised photos of the South African Everest team at the summit. Everest expedition leader Ian Woodall says he is holding on to the photos of the South African […]
The excitement this week over the release of Greg Blank seems to have less to do with the merits, or otherwise, of the parole system than the general sense of frustration in the country over crime and punishment. As Blank himself has complained, he is “white and rich” and as such a ripe target for […]
Bronwyn Jones EVERY year the Sahara Desert expands its arid boundaries and the population of Africa grows. And while big plans are afoot to tap the waters of Zambia and Lesotho to quench South Africa’s industrial thirst, none of it will prove enough unless tied with long-term protection of water sources and a sharp curb […]
The Mark Gevisser Profile Since the Market Theatre opened in 1976, Janet Suzman has come home to do a play three times — almost exactly once a decade. And that, says theatre boss John Kani, is just about as much of her as they can take: “She’s a monster! An absolute monster! She presents a […]
Patrick Donovan in London The mysterious Yasuo Hamanaka, the disgraced chief copper dealer at Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation, has found himself cast in the sinister role of “Mr Big” in what appears to have been a worldwide attempt to rig the global commodities markets. For more than 10 years, he has apparently carried out more than […]
Lynda Loxton Boland Bank, based in Paarl, has been transformed over the last year from a relatively small, mostly Western Cape bank into a more sophisticated market player serving the country as a whole. Not surprisingly, the process has placed some strain on management and revealed weaknesses in bad-debt control, which it is working hard […]
BORIS YELTSIN urged Russian voters not to allow their “grievances and tiredness” to sway the vote. But what if Boris himself is too tired? It may only be a sore throat, but Yeltsin’s backers must be on their knees and praying hard. They are faced with an unpalatable scenario. What happens if Yeltsin’s sore throat […]
Andrew Wilson WOZA ALBERT 15 years on? If it was Brecht, there would be no question: the German’s works had sufficient form and structure to carry them decades into the future — something the loose, informal construction of Woza Albert doesn’t have. Brecht is offered to students as an example of didactic, political theatre; commentary […]
BOXING: Gavin Evans THE first and last time Sugarboy Malinga and Vincenzo Nardinello met it was all hugs, kisses and fun and games in foreign accents. Fun’n’games, in fact, is one of the things this Italian enjoys most about the fight game, even when he is on the wrong side of a beating, as he […]
Gaye Davis THE media are in danger of becoming unwelcome guests in Parliament. Speaker Dr Frene Ginwala has ordered an inquiry into the justification for the R1-million paid out by taxpayers each year to accommodate journalists in its precincts. Attempts by the Mail & Guardian to get a copy of the report on the investigation, […]
1 NATIONAL EMBLEM. Outstanding win in the Premiers Cup, and a good third in this race last year. Better than last run when 8th at Clairwood (1 600m) but should run a couple of lengths off them under top weight. Rating: Fair Minus 2 COUNTER ACTION. Queen’s Plate winner with the “guv’nor” Jeff Lloyd aboard. […]
Justin Pearce A schoolteacher seeking paternity leave, a group of prisoners claiming to have been assaulted and a schoolboy defending his right to have long hair are among the stories told inside the cardboard folders stacked on the desk of Human Rights Commission (HRC) member Pansy Tlakula. Upstairs in the stately Houghton office suite occupied […]
South Africa’s top linguists are to wrestle with the practicalities of 11 official languages at a conference in Midrand this weekend. Marion Edmunds reports FORMER Robben Islander Dr Neville Alexander has to unravel one of the tightest knots tied by the politicians of the post-apartheid order. At a crucial conference on Saturday, Alexander and the […]
Ann Eveleth KwaZulu-Natal’s local government polls were probably the most peaceful political event the historically stormy province has ever seen. Here and there a dark cloud hovered over the province’s 3,5-million voters as political opponents waged a final stand to protect — or extend — their turf, and in some cases angry voters’ tempers burst […]
There were some stutters in Tuesday’s match, but there were signs that the new Springbok team can live up to South Africa’s world champions status RUGBY: Jon Swift ANDRE MARKGRAAFF, the man charged with shaping the South African rugby side, was at some pains to dispel any idea of the South African XV playing festival […]
Belgians are joining the protests against a costly armaments plant in Kenya, reports Greg Barrow from Nairobi THE citizens of Eldoret, a small town at the top of the Rift Valley, cannot believe their luck. Eldoret, once known only for its mushroom farming and world- class middle-distance athletes, has become Kenya’s main beneficiary of government […]
MATTHEW KROUSE met up with the cast of Indiscretions during rehearsals this week `ARE real tears wrong?” asks actress Fiona Ramsay of director Robert Whitehead during a break in rehearsals. Eyes all red and puffy, she’s just been emoting heavily in the maddened climax of Indiscretions, which began previewing last night. Real tears, it transpires, […]
CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale CINEMA audiences, it seems, have fallen in love with drag queens. Mike Nichols’s The Birdcage, a distinctly unfunky remake of La Cage aux Folles, grossed $18-million on its opening weekend in the US, and is still going strong at over $117-million; Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes in frocks drew over $40-million in […]
TWO pulsating European Championship semi-finals both ended in exactly the same way on Wednesday night when the sudden-death penalty shoot-out sealed the fate of England and France. In the first match favourites France had the most chances against a Czech Republic team determined not to concede a goal. France’s Youri Djorkaeff came closest to scoring […]
After two-and-a-half years of TV captioning for the deaf, how do we rate? Elsa Semmelink reports This month it will be two-and-a-half years since the former NNTV introduced the SABC’s first half-hour magazine programme for the deaf, but some people within the corporation feel South Africa still lags far behind international broadcasters. Sign Hear! was […]
A new reef may alter the economics of platinum mining in South Africa, reports Bronwen Jones FOUR Chinese geochemists, visiting their South African partners in a platinum exploration joint venture, have found evidence of a significant new platinum reef close to the surface. In an exclusive interview, project manager Yao Wensheng said: “The co-operation between […]
The Constitutional Court must heed the dangers involved in giving corporations the same rights as individuals, argues American consumer advocate Ralph Nader SOUTH Africans should be aware that a key provision of the new Constitution risks entrenching a new form of power abuse in the country: autocratic rule by big corporations. The new Constitution establishes […]