Mungo Soggot An extraordinary legal decision involving a controversial lawyer lies behind the case of acid- burn victim Bernadette Gibson, which has provoked an uproar over damages awards by the supreme court. The attorney who represented Gibson, Peter Soller, is an unrehabilitated insolvent who specialises in championing the causes of victims of medical negligence. She […]
TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj is not having an easy time trying to become the Cabinet’s Robin Hood. First he came under fire for suggesting the idea of taxing petrol to hit the rich, leaving diesel as the people’s fuel. And then the Law Society this week lambasted his proposed shake-up of the state’s accident insurance […]
Kathy Evans Osama Bin Ladin, who organised thousands of Arab volunteers in the Afghan jihad and has been linked to dozens of terrorist incidents, is homeless after being forced to leave his haven in Sudan. He had been living there for the past three years with his former mojahedin fighters. According to his spokesman in […]
Mungo Soggot IN a bid to become more transparent and accountable, Transnet has appointed three ombudsmen to handle complaints from employees, customers and business partners. They are chairman Louise Tager, general manager of auditing Nigel Payne and non-executive director Magamola Nana. Tager this week dismissed the suggestion that the appointment of three top company officials […]
born Jon Henderson recalls the birth of the tie-break, reviled by many as vandalism but the flashpoint for an epic battle MANY of us saw it as a nasty American innovation, others regarded it simply as gratuitous tinkering with an exquisite scoring system, while few, as I recall, spoke up for it. Twenty-five years ago […]
Philippa Garson MASSIVE security force deployment, recent peace initiatives and a desire to get local elections over with have contributed to a significant decline in violence in KwaZulu-Natal in recent weeks. Although more than 50 people have died in the province so far this month, and intimidation and tension are still widespread, peace monitors report […]
Stefaans BrUmmer JAY Naidoo is embroiled in his first major controversy as post, telecommunications and broadcasting minister after he made “secret” eleventh-hour changes to the Telecommunications Bill accepted by Cabinet last week. Stakeholders accuse him of reneging on consensus painstakingly built over more than a year by his predecessor, Pallo Jordan. The version of the […]
Eddie Koch DURBAN must qualify as South Africa’s capital of paradox. Thousands of residents celebrated a week of political crisis in the city — shootings outside the civic centre by armed marchers, threats to bomb the truth commission hearings and talk of escalating civil war over local government elections next month — by heading to […]
Cindy Shiner in Accra NINE West African heads of state met in the Ghanaian capital Accra this week for an emergency summit to try to end the renewed civil war in Liberia. Hopes of success are slim. Officials are trying to rehabilitate an eight- month-old agreement that was supposed to lead to the disarmament of […]
NO matter which way you cut the cake, professional golf in this country has some serious problems to address. And there is the inescapable feeling that it has been coming for a while. It came to a head this week when the South African Professional Golfers Association threatened to withdraw its backing of the Pro […]
Uganda’s president is waging an election campaign based not on economic prosperity and greater freedom, but on the country’s bloody past, writes Chris McGreal in Kampala YOWERI MUSEVENI, unlike most African presidents, has a record to run on. Campaigning for this week’s presidential election, Uganda’s leader could point to economic prosperity, greater social freedoms and, […]
Election workers fear that the postponement of the KwaZulu-Natal elections is a recipe for chaos, writes Ann Eveleth KWAZULU-NATAL’S elections are still in jeopardy despite a unanimous central government decision this week postponing the polls by one month. Inkatha Freedom Party local government MEC Peter Miller’s warning the delay would create enormous logistical problems was […]
AMID all the talk of unbundling and black empowerment, one obvious means of broadening the economic powerbase — employee share ownership programmes (Esops) — is being largely ignored. Not to be confused with share incentive schemes, which are aimed at management, Esops are open to all employees, with the employer providing the funding mechanism. Says […]
‘Hawk’ Makepula is the joker in the Olympic team, but in the ring he’s deadly serious BOXING: Julian Drew IN the first round of the All Africa Games boxing tournament in Harare last year the opponent of South Africa’s light-flyweight contestant failed to come to his corner. As Masibulele “Hawk” Makepula did a mock victory […]
THEATRE: Reviewed by: David Le Page OFTEN the oldest of dramas attract the most radical interpretations, the recent production of Medea at the Market being but one example. Phaedra at the Civic Theatre has not attracted a radical interpretation, but it is a production where radical design, at least for South African theatre, does much […]
Manchester United have won the Premier League and now they’re going for the FA Cup, but Liverpool are a tough proposition even for United’s unique blend of youthful skill and wily experience SOCCER: David Lacey HISTORY beckons Manchester United. Now only Liverpool stand between Alex Ferguson’s team and a unique second double, the first of […]
DANCE Naked on a goat – Market Theatre, Newtown Reviewed by: HAZEL FRIEDMAN IF Robyn Orlin were an artwork, I’d buy her in bulk. She, more than any other artist has straddled, subverted and transcended the boundaries of art-making in all its forms. And her latest offering, Naked on a Goat (see picture – Backstage […]
Two years after the inauguration of Nelson Mandela, Martin Woollacott, the Guardian’s leading commentator on the world’s geopolitics, visited South Africa WHEN historians reassess the South African revolution, they may well decide that the old regime gave up less because of pressure from its enemies or because it belatedly realised its own wrong-doing than because […]
The IBA will no longer formulate telecommunications policies, writes Jacquie Golding-Duffy THE announcement early this week by Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Minister Jay Naidoo that his department will take over the task of developing telecommunications policies has met with mixed response. While some in the industry are apprehensive about the Independent Broadcasing Authority (IBA) shedding […]
The Reverend Fernando Kuthino promised everything from a place in heaven to a cure for Aids, but he was no match for President Mobutu Sese Seko. Chris McGreal reports FOR Israel Ciswaka, his pastor’s arrest, torture and dispatch to a Zairean military prison for 12 months’ hard labour was confirmation that there is a God […]
Constitutional law expert Dennis Davis takes a look at the pros and cons — and concludes that the new Constitution does us proud AT first blush, the Constitution of 1996 looks decidedly similar in structure and content to the interim Constitution which was cobbled together under the pressure of the Kempton Park negotiations. The significance […]
Michael White and Seumas Milne in London ARTHUR SCARGILL, leader of the newly formed Socialist Labour Party (SLP) in the United Kingdom, has opened a new phase in the guerrilla war which small parties are threatening to wage against the Labour- Conservative hegemony at the coming general election. When the SLP was finally given its […]
Eddie Koch THE lesson from this week’s truth commission hearings in Durban is that the effects of the organisation’s work can never be easily predicted. Instead of hearing evidence from mainly ANC- aligned victims — as was widely expected because of an Inkatha boycott — the commission ended up strengthening its non- partisan image and […]
‘A BIRTH certificate” for the new South Africa was the way Cyril Ramaphosa characterised the final Constitution when it was approved this week. And, as is the custom at times of birth, the parents put aside any misgivings about the future to celebrate the occasion. Amid all the ceremony, jubilation and celebrations there were grounds […]
CINEMA Reviewed by: Derek Malcolm FEW opening films at the London Film Festival have caused such consternation as Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days. Yet, on the evidence of this futuristic epic (as well as Blue Steel and the highly successful Point Break), Bigelow is clearly one of the most proficient practitioners of pyrotechnical in-your-face film-making working […]
Marion Edmunds THE most coveted documentation at Parliament this week was not the latest draft of the Constitution, but an invitation to the party to end all parties, the big bash to end it all held on Wednesday night at Fernwood, the Parliamentary Estate in Bishops Court. In the last late nights of the constitution- […]
CINEMA This year’s FNB Vita Art Now Awards were strengthened by being selective rather than widely inclusive, writes HAZEL FRIEDMAN. BABBIAGE” is the French word for a babble of noise, in which one voice is indistinguishable from another and sense is subsumed in a barrage of sound. If you looked for a visual equivalent, you […]
Mark Behr ‘I BOUGHT this huge tree to plant by the front wall,” a colleague says with a laugh: “I couldn’t get the hole deep enough so I walked across the road to where that white beggar always hangs around at the supermarket. I offered him R20 to dig the hole. He agreed and I […]
Greg Barrow in Nairobi THE Kenyan government has published a 40-page dossier defending its human rights record. The report comes as Kenyan human rights groups grow increasingly vocal about a rise in mob violence and a breakdown of law and order. In the report, The Way It Is, the government says its overall record is […]
With four teams jammed at the top of the log, working out the permutations on paper is harder than playing it out on the field RUGBY: Jon Swift PERHAPS the greatest thing about sport is its unpredictability: the propensity of competition to turn the form book on its head; the sudden lapse of concentration which […]
US threats to penalise businesses trading with Cuba, Iran and Libya have pitted it against the European Union. John Palmer reports from Brussels THE European Union warned this week that it is heading for a serious diplomatic and trade confrontation with the United States over laws that would penalise European businesses trading with Cuba, Iran […]
An historic agreement between the government and teachers’ unions will affect the jobs of thousands of teachers, reports Rehana Rossouw A GROUP of negotiators has finalised the route to achieving equality in education and breaking down apartheid’s legacy of unequal funding for different races. Unequal spending will be erased by the year 2000, following an […]