Right-wing political groups are trying to use a UN initiative to protect indigenous peoples for their own political ends, reports Eddie Koch A GROUP of boers, bushmen, basters and Zulu nationalists will make a bizarre set of bedfellows when they rally around the vierkleur, the pennant of the white right, at a conference this month […]
Clive Simpkins THREE very different events, one sporting, one advertising, and one political, focus attention on the eclectic nature of marketing in South Africa today. The Rugby World Cup is in full swing. The marketing lesson that emerges from this event is this: there should have been some central co-ordinating unit, looking at all intrusions […]
The IBA has a new target in its sights — satellite TV — and it’s heading for a battle with those who believe it has no business there. Dirk de Vos reports EARLY this year, the Independent Broadcasting Authority attempted to amend the Act by which it is governed by inserting the words “space stations”, […]
Shirley Kossick THERE has been a bumper crop of women’s writing this year, both in fiction and biography. Pride of place must go to Pat Barker, whose novel The Ghost Road (Viking) swept in to win the Booker Prize ahead of Salman Rushdie’s favoured The Moor’s Last Sigh The final volume in Barker’s trilogy about […]
SOCCER: Gerald Combrinck=20 AFTER their defeat in the BP Top final, log leaders Kaizer=20 Chiefs have a score to settle with Wits when the two sides=20 meet in a league game at Milpark on Saturday.=20 “We are ready to destroy Wits in revenge for the cup=20 defeat,” said Chiefs PRO Louis Tshakoane.=20 Wits are likely […]
Jay Naidoo MENTION the “word” RDP and what’s the reaction? People look around for the bricks and houses. Where are the houses one year after? How many are there? Yes, ultimately, the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) is about putting roofs over people’s heads and food on the table. But before getting there, we need […]
The Beatles came back, the Stones kept going — and Blur and Oasis echoed an old rivalry, writes Shaun de Waal TWENTY-FIVE years after they broke up, The Beatles are back — well, sort of. The band broke up in 1970, and John Lennon was killed in 1980, but in 1995 the remaining Beatles put […]
RUGBY: Barney Spender=20 AFTER a noisy, boisterous Saturday night to celebrate a=20 Welsh victory over Japan, the Hard Rock Cafe in=20 Bloemfontein was a ghost pub on Sunday at lunchtime.=20 Michelle, a bubbly waitress, who had seen the tips over the=20 previous 10 days rise quicker than a Kobus Wiese line-out=20 lift, cut a forlorn […]
Ann Eveleth Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi has lost a significant battle in his bid to clean up the controversial KwaZulu Police force. Former Sundumbili station commander Major Owen Zama — the first of 14 officers Mufamadi ordered suspended last year — was acquitted on Friday on charges related to an alleged 1990 attempt […]
Pauline Corfe THIS weekend, two exhibits from Cape Town’s South African National Gallery — Ezakwantu: Beadwork from the Eastern Cape and Jane Alexander’s The Butcher Boys — left for Europe and the prospects of international acclaim. But SANG curator Emma Bedford said lack of funds could jeopardise the showing of the latter work at the […]
Evan Speechley may be a “glorified water boy”, but his job is a lot more important to the Springboks than that RUGBY: Luke Alfred THE sports physiotherapist’s role is overlooked by fans and journalists, yet the physio is surely one of the more crucial members of any team. In the case of Evan Speechley, physio […]
SAILING: Jonathan Spencer Jones WITH little more than two weeks to go before the start of the next Rothmans Cape to Rio race, preparations are gathering pace for this, one of the foremost southern hemisphere yachting events. Yet it has not proved as popular as had been expected with the final total of 59 entries […]
Ann Eveleth African National Congress (ANC) and Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) leaders have taken off their gloves to wage an all-fronts battle between their respective power- As negotiators from both parties prepared to sit down at the table this week for what turned out to be little more than “talks before talks before talks” discussions, […]
CLASSICAL CD OF THE YEAR: Andrew Clements GURRELIEDER was Schoenberg’s farewell to 19th- century romanticism, the “key to his development”, as he described it. It was begun in 1901 but was only performed 12 years later, by which time he had left the lush Wagnerian world that it celebrates far behind. The massive proportions of […]
Aspasia Karras Mike Gcabo has landed a coup: the North West Builders=20 Federation (NWBF), of which he is president, has just=20 embarked on one of the biggest construction contracts ever=20 awarded to black builders. A R60-million joint venture between Mawite (a consortium of=20 nine builders from the NWBF) and LTA Building will rebuild=20 the Mabopane […]
The listing of two new companies on the JSE this week put dealers in the mood for making money, Jacques Magliolo Investors received a double treat at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) this week as two new company listings took place, bringing to an end weeks of lacklustre market performance. The listing of ChromeCorp Holdings […]
Bronwen Jones Soweto’s first bookshop will open its doors in Dobsonville on June 1. The bookshop idea, which has been tossed back and forth since last year in NGO-land, initially met with doubts and tales of doom. Publishers and possible investors wondered: “How safe will our stock be? How will we be paid? How can […]
Bafana Khumalo=20 Native Tongue=20 I should have let the son of a female dog be. I really=20 should have let him walk past me as I stood at the Civic=20 Theatre foyer trying to convince my dearly beloved that I=20 was the most important person in that theatre — that with=20 a flick of my […]
Julian Drew IT is early morning in Johannesburg’s trendy suburb of=20 Yeoville. I venture into the street and am greeted by=20 three blond Swedish girls. “Can you tell me the way to the=20 Pink House?” they ask in chorus. “Just follow the yellow brick road,” I am tempted to say.=20 But this is no fairy […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin=20 THE title of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, which is about the real- life film-maker Edward D Wood Jr, is perhaps a play on the=20 word Hollywood (a name we see emblazoned more than once on=20 the famous Beverly Hill) as well as a reference to his own=20 Edward Scissorhands (1990) which, like […]
CINEMA: Digby Ricci THAT acerbically brilliant novelist and essayist, Brigid Brophy, once titled an essay on Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women: “A Masterpiece, and Dreadful”. The “dreadful” aspects, inevitably, provoke the most enjoyable and unabashed tears: Marmee’s long- suffering, instructive “storytelling” (“So they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings already possessed”), Beth’s affectionate […]
Despite its small size, Malawi sparkels with quickly=20 accessible variety, writes Stephanie Nettell FOR a while the road south from Lilongwe, Malawi’s spacious=20 but somehow amiably suburban capital, closely follows the=20 Mozambique border. On its right are the remains of=20 pathetically blasted dwellings, on its left neat undamaged=20 huts — but they are empty and […]
Nicholas Lezard WHEN asked “Read any good books this year?”, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernires (Minerva) is the one that has most consistently sprung to mind. It is a story of the Italian occupation of Cephallonia in World War II — a conventional historical epic, it’s the kind of book you’d take on […]
His body told him it was tired but the messages on Shaun Meiklejohn’s arms helped him to victory in the Comrades Marathon ROAD RUNNING: Julian Drew A CURSORY glance at many photographs of Shaun Meiklejohn could present the newly crowned Comrades Marathon champion as a trendsetter in the sphere of body adornment. As was the […]
HAZEL FRIEDMAN, a rookie recruit to the Internet, ventures into the cyber-art world – — but decides that, after all, there’s nothing like the real thing I AM haunted by a serial nightmare. I’m travelling through space on a surfboard, when this little guy — a brunette John Denver – — flies up to me […]
THEATRE: Bafana Khumalo THE first time I saw Welcome Msomi’s Umabatha was over 20 years ago. The play was well-marketed to the township schools’ audience, and we paid the princely sum of 10 cents to go to the open-air Jabulani Amphitheatre in Soweto. For that we were rewarded with an afternoon out of the classroom, […]
Eddie Koch IN a bold move to clamp down on venality in public office, the African National Congress has decided its MPs must open their family assets and extra- parliamentary earnings to full public scrutiny. The dramatic decision — possibly a first for any political party in the world — coincides with efforts by the […]
Gary Cummiskey=20 SOUTH AFRICAN REVIEW 7: The Small Miracle edited by Steve=20 Friedman and Doreen Atkinson (Raven Press, R49,99)=20 THE Small Miracle is a compilation of essays and the sequel=20 to The Long Journey, which traced the story of Codesa I and=20 II. This wide-ranging new volume focuses on events and=20 issues from Codesa to […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin BOTH Just Cause and Captives are set in prisons, one in London, the other in the Florida Everglades. In Just Cause, directed by Arne Glimcher, Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery), a retired lawyer, comes into a district that is insular and hostile to his cause, which is to investigate the murder and rape […]
Welcome Msomi, creator of Umabatha, in The Mark Gevisser Profile The divine justice of it all. When Welcome Msomi took his “Zulu Macbeth” to New York in 1979, he found it boycotted by the African National Congress and its supporters, who claimed that because it was “ethnic” (Zulu costumes, Zulu language, Zulu dancing), it had […]
Puppets will magic away the mundane conventions of teaching science in an innovative multimedia series starting on NNTV this week, writes David Le Page A MULTIMEDIA approach to primary science education developed entirely in South Africa, and already acclaimed overseas, is to be launched today with the broadcasting of the first of thirteen half-hour episodes […]
Trade unions are planning a major offensive against the new Labour Relations Bill, reports Eddie Koch ORGANISED labour flexed its muscles this week as talks between trade unions and employers over the new Labour Relations Bill headed for deadlock. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) will hold an emergency executive meeting at the […]