After a couple of years in the wilderness, Marius van Heerden is firmly back in the limelight after breaking the South African 800m record ATHLETICS: Julian Drew THREE years ago Marius van Heerden approached the new athletics season full of optimism. He was one of this country’s rising new stars who, the previous year, had […]
seeming fair Clients often complain that they lost their court case because the judge was biased. When are they to be taken seriously? MOST lawyers have heard their unsuccessful clients complain, after their case was lost, about the judge who decided against them. If the complaint is merely that the judge was an idiot, then […]
Gaye Davis THE Human Rights Committee has asked the Constitutional Court to allow members of the public to appear before it to give their views on the final Constitution, on grounds that much of what has emerged has come out of closed political party negotiations. The Constitutional Court has set aside the month of June […]
The District Six Museum is a memorial to the evils of the Group Areas Act, but its survival is threatened by the government’s lack of support, writes Rehana Rossouw ALTHOUGH memorials celebrating Afrikaner history receive millions of rands of support, the government has only been prepared to make a one-off payment of R200 000 for […]
Mungo Soggot JUSTICE Minister Dullah Omar said this week he was awaiting “certain information” about the controversial retirement of former Witwatersrand attorney general Klaus von Lieres und Wilkau, but had yet to launch an official investigation. After resigning and receiving a R12 000-a-month ill-health pension courtesy of the taxpayer, Von Lieres took on the defence […]
Arthur Goldstuck Give it to me straight: how many people really are on the Internet? How many people will get my marketing message and buy my product? That remains the single most vexing question about the potential of the Internet, at least when you get past the hype about pornography and security. If you still […]
CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale POSSIBLY the greatest action director in the world, John Woo is relatively unknown in South Africa. The only one of his films to have played on the main circuit is Hard Target, his first US feature, with local boy Arnold Vosloo as a dinkum Afrikaans mercenary, and Jean-Claude Van Damme intent on […]
The man at the centre of a black-white battle for Zimbabwe’s tobacco trade has links with a former CCB agent, reports Jan Raath The delicate perfume of freshly cured, silk- textured, golden tobacco leaf wafting from the sprawling tobacco auction floors in Harare is the setting for Zimbabwe’s latest race tangle. A bitter black-white war […]
Rehana Rossouw THE failure of some magistrates and members of the medical profession to assist victims of human rights abuses emerged as a theme in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Western Cape hearings this week. The family of Looksmart Ngudle, a journalist and Umkhonto weSizwe operative who died in detention in September 1963, testified that […]
arena? Jacquie Golding-Duffy Chairperson of the National Association of Model Agencies, Gaenor Becker says standard modelling rates range from anything between R200 an hour for a photographic shoot to R500 for every media in which that photograph is used. The money paid to Ricardo Adonis for his time was well below market-related prices, she said. […]
exploitation In advertising one ‘must use whatever one can to make whatever point one needs’. But are children abused by this system? A decision by the Olympic Bid to use the photograph of an impoverished child in its ad campaign has sparked a debate on the ethics of using children in marketing. Jacquie Golding- Duffy […]
Ann Eveleth A strike by awaiting-trial prisoners in Durban’s Westville prison entered its second month this week. At least six prisoners have escaped and hundreds of others are refusing to attend court proceedings until their demands are met. Topping the prisoners’ list of grievances, presented to the ministries of justice, safety and security and correctional […]
CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale Patrice Leconte’s Yvonne’s Perfume arrives in this country over two years after its international release. But don’t miss it: in many ways it’s his most lyrical work to date. Leconte’s Monsieur Hire caused a ripple at the art house in 1989, with its subtle dissection of a murder tale and economical narrative. […]
The events of a single day may make all the difference to Lawrie Fraser’s battle for his adopted child, reports Justin Pearce The adoptive parents of the infant son of Lawrie Fraser and Adriana Naude took the child out of South Africa only a day after the adoption was secured, according to a letter submitted […]
Shadley Nash A national strike is looming in the chemical industry, should demands by workers for a centralised bargaining council not be met. This warning was issued on Wednesday by Welile Nolingo, vice-president of the Chemical Workers and Industrial Union (CWIU), at a mass protest march in Port Elizabeth. The union also used the opportunity […]
Family planners who still believe in the slogan ‘development is the best contraceptive’ are nuts, argues Ann Cluver Weinberg ‘BECAUSE it feels right” is no way to run a country. In the United States presidential campaign of Senator Barry Goldwater in the early 1960s, the slogan was coined: “In your heart you know he’s right.” […]
With youthful rebels on a cannibal rampage, Westerners are fleeing the anarchy in Liberia, a country abandoned by the West, writes Phillip van Niekerk TWO-and-a-half weeks ago, soldiers overran the village north-west of Monrovia where Sensi Momoh lived. They were young, some no more than teenagers, and heavily armed. They fired at random and ransacked […]
Bafana Khumalo ‘Ahm tellin’ ya, that’s one fahn hoe!” Fahn Hoe!? No children, I have not decided to make my column more relevant. Nor am I trying to write about the plight of white farmers and the scarcity of hoes. In fact, I am sitting in a downtown bus eavesdropping on a conversation between two […]
Mail & Guardian Reporters PRETORIA Attorney General Jan D’Oliveira, whose office this week wound up its marathon prosecution of Eugene de Kock, plans to charge more security force members in high-profile “political” murder trials over the next “month or two”. These prosecutions may pre-empt applications by perpetrators of apartheid crimes to the Truth and Reconciliation […]
Transvaal’s players are now being properly paid, but they have to perform to justify those high salaries RUGBY: Jon Swift TO ANALYSE the current problems within the Transvaal team, you have to go back to the euphoria which greeted the South African side — the bulk of that side Transvalers — winning the World Cup […]
The SABC is keeping its involvement in a R20- million locally made production under wraps, reports Jacquie Golding-Duffy BRITAIN’S Channel 5, which will begin transmission in the UK next year, is planning to buy one of South Africa’s biggest ever locally made television co-productions. The R20-million family action adventure series called Legend of the Hidden […]
Serjeant AT THE BAR The Truth and Reconciliation Commission should not be treated like a court of law THE Truth and Reconciliation Commission kicked off, this week, in an appropriately dramatic and South African fashion — with threats of litigation and bombs at the first hearing. There will probably be plenty of both over the […]
A firm proposal on the Johnnic deal is yet to be made, despite a deal between Nail and the NEC. Madeleine Wackernagel and Jacquie Golding-Duffy report on the progress so far To judge by the media frenzy sparked by Cyril Ramaphosa’s entry into business, the deal between Anglo-American and the National Empowerment Consortium (NEC) — […]
TELEVISION: Andrew Worsdale THE state of Britain’s independent TV drama took a nosedive in 1992, when Carlton Television won the franchise for the greater London area and started playing to the lowest common denominator. Class Act — SABC 3’s new Saturday night sitcom — financed by Carlton in 1994, is no exception. This 14-part series […]
As government reconsiders its expenditure, certain ministries will suffer cuts to their budget votes. Lynda Loxton reports As parliamentary committees started examining the 1996/97 budget votes of the various ministries this week, it was clear that the Ministry of Defence is hurting the most from the reprioritisation of government spending. South African National Defence Force […]
attitude Madeleine Wackernagel The rand retreated from its record lows this week, no thanks to Trevor Manuel’s insistence that the government’s position on exchange controls remains firm. The finance minister is labouring the point, said one economist. He should have made suitably reassuring noises at the onset of the crisis, and then let the markets […]
Justin Pearce SUSPICIONS of the Vorster government’s complicity in the 1977 assassination of National Party election candidate Robert Smit and his wife Jeanne-Cora hardened this week following an announcement the police have reopened their investigation into the murders. The Smits were found dead with multiple stab and bullet wounds in their rented house in Springs […]
ATHLETICS: Julian Drew FEW of the 1 500 or so crowd who actually showed up for last Sunday’s Pepsi All Africa International Athletics Meeting were still in the stadium when the highlight of the afternoon’s proceedings took place. The 800m, which was the last track event of the meeting, had just finished and the spectators […]
Baby Jake growing bigger Baby Jake Matlala will be stepping into the big time when he steps into the ring for his next bout against a meanie from Mexico BOXING: Gavin Evans THE magnificent renaissance of lovely little old Baby Jake Matlala is about to be taken into a higher realm. He is set to […]
As the first black consortium bids for TML, a charter is suddenly being drafted to safeguard editors and to preserve traditions in the group. Jacquie Golding-Duffy reports THE editors of Times Media Limited’s (TML) core publications say they do not fear losing their jobs under a new black stakeholder. However, on the eve of the […]
Ann Eveleth When former Military Intelligence Sergeant Andre Cloete shifted from his rigid attention- like stand in the witness box on Tuesday morning, lifting his right arm to his face, it seemed as if he might offer an apologetic salute to the generals in the dock. The salute never materialised, but the impression of the […]
Rehana Rossouw RECENTLY divorced President Nelson Mandela is not in the market for a first (or should it be third?) lady. He can cope perfectly well on his own, say his staff. But bachelor presidents are the exception rather than the rule, with most heads of state relying on their wives to lend a helping […]