Staff Reporter

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 […]

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, […]

AS rumours multiplied yesterday of the imminent release of Nelson Mandela, the African National Congress in Lusaka said any plan to fly their jailed leader to freedom in another country would be And a representative of the state president’s office in Pretoria said there was absolutely no truth in speculation that an unconditional release of […]

Faces of 1996: We speak to the Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for theatre Thestre: Matthew Krouse CHEWING heavily on nicotine gum, Lara Foot Newton confesses to being born and bred in Pretoria. “And Pretoria is an identity of its own,” says the 28-year-old winner of the 1996 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for […]

Leon Perlman COMPUTICKET, the national computerised entertainment and leisure reservation service, has teamed up with service provider Internet Africa to provide an Internet booking service to cinema patrons on a 24-hour booking basis. Developed by Internet Africa’s World Wide Web service division, the service is an extension of Computicket’s telephone reservation system. According to Mike […]

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 […]

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 […]

ATHLETICS:Julian Drew IN 1986 the Commonwealth seemed to be teetering on the edge of the precipice. Only the stand against apartheid seemed to be preventing its disintegration as an organisation and even then Margaret Thatcher obstinately refused to agree with the rest of its leaders. But the rallying call which ensured the Commonwealth’s survival nearly […]

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, […]

Change is not new at Eskom, although it faces some novel challenges. Reg Rumney reports PEERING down into the garden of the cavernous three-storey atrium at the centre of the Megawatt Park HQ, with its hanging baskets of greenery, one is struck by the scale of what has been dubbed Eskom’s hanging gardens of Babylon. […]

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 […]

With its huge prize money the Million Dollar can attract top overseas players, but the poorer tournaments on the local tour can’t compete GOLF:Jon Swift THERE IS a feeling of distinct inevitability about the way the professional golf tour in this country is starting to fragment. The Zimbabwean customs holding back golf balls and equipment […]

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 […]

AND at the end of the week, does it really seem any less important than it did in the instant 1 000-megawatt surge of collective astonishment on Monday night? Absolutely not; indeed if anything, it seems more important rather than less. Re-viewing the interview with the Princess of Wales two things are clear. First, it […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

Sol Kerzner has severed his links with his South African business just as a police investigation into alleged corruption draws to a close. Louise Flanagan reports UNTOUCHABLE Sun King Sol Kerzner withdrew from his South African company this week as an eight-year-long criminal investigation into allegations of corruption against him drew to a close. Kerzner […]

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 […]

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 […]

Worldwide African Investment Holdings has withdrawn its Free-to-Air shareholding to pursue satellite interests, writes Niel Bierbaum WISEMAN NKUHLU’S Worldwide African Investment Holdings has given notice that it intends to withdraw as a shareholder from Quentin Green’s Free-to-Air consortium. According to spokesman Joe Makobe, WWAIH intends to pursue direct-to-home satellite opportunities “rather than waiting for terrestrial […]

FINE ART: James Garner KROTOA’S Room — in the Grain Cellar at the Castle, Cape Town — will confound anyone with a penchant for reductive categorisations. Consisting of a photographic component by Lien Botha and “utility furniture” by Raymond Smith, the exhibition operates somewhere in the undefined territory between historical display, site-specific installation and commercial […]

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 […]

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 […]

THERE are not many people who can question President Nelson Mandela’s moral authority. There are not many who have the credibility and authority to stand up to him. Indeed, there are not many who would have the courage to try. This week’s crisis over Nigeria threw the spotlight on one of the very few people […]

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 […]

Ann Eveleth reports on the bizarre trial of KwaZulu-Natal rightwingers accused of a fantastic plot to take control of the province THE white right wing wanted a volkstaat. The Inkatha Freedom Party wanted a Zulu kingdom. Pat Hlongwane wanted explosives. And the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging wanted to wipe out African National Congress township strongholds in KwaZulu-Natal. […]

Professor Charles van Onselen, Wits University historian, in THE MARK GEVISSER PROFILE PERHAPS the problem Charles van Onselen has, I think as we sit together on a Sunday afternoon, is that he looks — ; and sometimes sounds — like the enemy: bulging eyes beneath a balding pate, ware-ding khaki shorts, blustering physicality, bombast and […]

Louise Flanagan THE South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has refused to disclose details of any links between Military Intelligence (MI) and individuals in a private security company accused of running a destabilisation campaign against the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa). This raises the possibility that MI may still have well-hidden links […]

Rowan Callaghan THE Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), which has helped over half-a-million people and paid out over R1-billion so far this year, is to begin improving its service immediately. The steps are the first in a range of changes it will introduce to improve its public image. The Department of Labour reports that so far […]

The faces of 1996: This week and next, we speak to the four new recipients of the Standard Bank’s Young Artist Awards DANCE: Itumeleng oa Mahabane SOUTH Africa’s “current wonderboy of contemporary African choreography”, Vincent Mantsoe, is sitting patiently, fingering his bead necklace, in the lobby of the Braamfontein Recreation Centre, where the Moving into […]