Staff Reporter

THEATRE: David Le Page MARABI is a musical story of the Doornfontein slumyards of early Johannesburg, and of the musical culture that sprang up from that misery. If anything, this Junction Avenue Theatre Company production at the Market Theatre celebrates marabi culture more than the music The play focuses on the lives of the Mabongo […]

FINE ART: Ian Tromp PAINTINGS by Walter Meyer, on view at the Newtown Galleries, freeze moments in Eastman Color eternities, like slightly faded catalogues for holiday destinations called “Home”. Seen from afar, Meyer’s scenes are photo- realist in the rendering of their subject, bordering on coolness in their apparent dispassion. Step nearer, and – as […]

There were good and bad performances from both sides in the first Test in Pretoria and only the weather showed consistent form CRICKET: Jon Swift IT IS HARD to formulate any real opinion of the current series against England when one side has not batted and the other not bowled. Even more so when those […]

Barbie dolls and plastic telephones vied with live goldfish in last weekend’s Smirnoff International Fashion Awards. But, in the end, it was the cows’ stomachs that walked off with the prize, reports MALU VAN LEEUWEN ‘IMAGINE your mind is shut away from the real world, you are living in darkness, completely detached. Then, suddenly, the […]

The National Gallery’s exhibition of images of District Six is a valuable reconstruction of our collective memory, writes NEVILLE DUBOW Question: Name the place in Cape Town that was destroyed and where the residents were forcibly emoved to the Cape Town townships? Answer: District Six Question: Name the building that was erected through the heart […]

SOCCER:Lungile Madywabe AS an international defender Ruud Krol played 83 games for Holland before going to Belgium and Switzerland where he coached Mechelen and Servette. He then went on to become coach of the Egyptian under-23 team and after the success of the youngsters at this year’s All Africa Games in Harare two months ago, […]

With lucrative contracts on offer, the temptation is great for Springbok players to switch to rugby league, especially those who weren’t in the World Cup squad RUGBY:Jon Swift THE Jacques Olivier affair has had the effect of making the mantle of world champions start to fray at the edges. In the wake of the 24-14 […]

Rehana Rossouw PW BOTHA could face two years behind bars if he remains opposed to testifying before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission after it begins its work next year. His defiant refusal this week to “repent” before the commission could see him falling foul of the law. The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act […]

The debate concerning state enterprises is in need of transformation, reports Meshack IF foreign investors were looking for dramatic statements on privatisation to emerge from the recent state enterprise restructuring bosberaad, they would have been disappointed. The government, under persistent pressure from some major stakeholders to take a definite stand, is adamant not to be […]

Are there any solutions to prevent sophisticated fraud syndicates plundering our credit card accounts? asks Karen Harverson CREDIT cards represent convenience to card holders, big business for banking institutions and increasingly, easy pickings for criminals. Credit card fraud, estimated at millions of dollars a year worldwide, has more than doubled in South Africa this year, […]

The government has retreated behind a wall of silence to wrestle with the Nigerian issue, writes Gaye Davis FEARS of ruffling the feathers of African leaders and of being seen as acting as an agent of western governments abrogating their own moral responsibility dominated top-level government talks on the Nigerian situation this week. Led by […]

Luanda’s market grew from a rubbish tip to an open-air shopper’s mecca that offers a glimmer of hope for Angola, writes Phillip van Niekerk LUANDA’S market began on the edge of the city’s rubbish tip, in the shade of a baobab tree, in the late Seventies, as a blackmarket for United States dollars and scarce […]

Ann Eveleth FINANCIAL irregularities of R6.7-million were unearthed by the KwaZulu-Natal auditor general during a check on the former KwaZulu government’s 1992/93 budget, the provincial Public Accounts Committee (PAC) heard this week. Accounts chairman NP MP Tino Volker said Auditor General Chris Foster reported “43 cases of theft and irregularities involving motor vehicles and cash […]

SOUTH AFRICA this week passed the test of religious tolerance after a “misunderstanding” about visas almost blocked a visit by controversial Reverend Sun Myung Moon, “messiah” of the Unification Church. No sooner was Moon allowed into South Africa than his followers showed intolerance of their own. Press photographers were assaulted when they tried to get […]

Bronwen Roberts THE South African Association of Municipal Employees (Saame) has sought an urgent meeting with Eastern Cape Local Government MEC Max Mamase following his announcement that several hundred white municipal workers are to be replaced by blacks. Chairman of the Eastern Cape Saame branch Johan Crafford said this week the union is concerned the […]

WHAT happens when Mandela goes? The concern underlying the question becomes even more acute when one considers his performance over the last week. As the president’s stature continues to grow, so does the likely vacuum when he finally and voluntarily bows out of the political arena. Mandela is deserving only of praise for the way […]

Faces of 1996: We speak to the Standard Bank Young Artist Award-winner for Music Music: S’busiso Nxumalo EVEN when Victor Masondo recounts the story of how he landed a two-month gig as musical director for trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie’s 1991 Live the Future world tour, you never feel like he’s blowing his own horn. But perhaps […]

Justin Pearce INSURANCE brokers in Johannesburg are advising clients that drivers of luxury cars such as BMWs run the most serious risk of being hijacked. BMW South Africa has in turn accused the insurance industry of giving customers inaccurate information about car hijackings and has called on the police to reveal the truth about which […]

THE National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) on Wednesday said it would appeal against prison sentences imposed on three miners’ wives for trespassing at a De Beers diamond company in The women are serving their sentences at a prison in the Northern Cape town of Springbok. Two children, aged eight months and four years, were staying […]

CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale PAUL VERHOEVEN and Joe Eszterhas’ latest collaboration, Showgirls, is at once the tackiest movie ever made by a major Hollywood studio and a satisfyingly bitchy backstage melodrama overlaid with all the usual sexual peccadillos common to both men’s previous work. Verhoeven’s first major hit was the Dutch art film The Fourth Man, […]

Karen Harverson THE platinum market, although sensitive to sudden increases in supply, is unlikely to be hit too hard when the United States sells off its strategic stockpile of platinum as announced in September 1994. “The US has not yet decided how much of its 453 000oz of platinum will be sold off or when […]

Symbiotic relationships between established and emerging enterprises are paths to solidifying black identity, reports Meshack Mabogoane VISTAS of low-cost housing and other public works projects, coupled with elaborate affirmative action measures formulated by government, are cementing relationships between established (largely white) and emerging (mainly black) enterprises. The construction industry is on its way to becoming […]

A court case this week saw Winnie Mandela lose R100 000 following her failure to pay an air charter bill — and revealed some bizarre facts about her Co-ordinated Anti-Poverty Programmes, reports Justin Pearce A PRINCE telling a court of law he took his orders unquestioningly from “Mummy”. A church minister and self-appointed business consultant […]

Whether I live or die is immaterial. It is enough to know that there are people who commit time and energy to fight this one evil among so many others predominating worldwide. If they do not succeed today, they will succeed tomorrow. We must keep on striving to make the world a better place for […]

Although the team will be without many of their foreign-based stars, there will still be some tough competition in the Four Nations tournament SOCCER:Lungile Madywabe POLITICAL turmoil in Africa has for a long time undermined the continent’s ability to fullfil its potential in world sport, especially the world’s number one, soccer, and the South African […]

The SABC is in the midst of a tortuous transition that is testing staff, top management and the board to the limits of patience and endurance, writes Marion Edmunds UNTIL recently, the bust of former Broederbond leader and SABC board chairman Piet Meyer graced the foyer of the SABC in Auckland Park. nnnNobody thought it […]

Bruce Cohen Way of the dodo THE great guru of electronic media, Roger Fiddler, has sentenced Anton Harber to 10 more years. Fiddler, speaking at a recent conference in Bali, forecast the end of print journalism by the year 2005 and its replacement with electronic “tablets” and other digital media. He says the superior economics […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman ASK anyone who knows anything about Trevor Makhoba’s art where his best paintings can be found, and you’ll be told to look not in the myriad institutions and public collections that house his work, but in the township of Umlazi. It was here, before this area of KwaZulu-Natal became one of […]

Fascist groups are using the information superhighway to spread the word of Aryan supremacy, reports Bruce Cohen NEO-NAZIS and racists are spinning a busy web of hate on the Internet. Previously limited to private bulletin boards, a number of these sites have emerged on the World Wide Web, offering a chilling and fascinating insight into […]

THERE was a sense of deja vu as South Africa’s most litigated public servant, Winnie Mandela, failed to testify in her own defence this week. Mandela has frequently been unavailable when called on to face the consequences of legal proceedings. l President Nelson Mandela resorted to a supreme court order to serve a divorce summons […]

ATHLETICS:Julian Drew WHEN the iron curtain was swept aside in Bulgaria in November 1989 with the toppling of Todor Zhivkov’s discredited regime, the athletics career of Rumen Koprivchin crumbled too. Back then when his life and all around him seemed in turmoil he would have given short shrift to anyone who told him that in […]

OPERA: Coenraad Visser AS one has come to expect, the Italian Opera Gala presented by the Roodepoort City Opera is something of a curate’s egg. But the good parts are quite simply stunning. Excerpts from eight Italian operas are presented on an open stage, without the aid of props or costumes. But with imaginative direction […]