A Garankuwa liquor wholesaler is fighting a battle in court with South African Breweries over contaminated quart beer bottles. Pat Sidley reports A FASCINATING tale of bootleggers, shebeens, condoms in beer bottles, monopolies and homelands is unfolding in the Mmabatho Supreme Court as beer giant South African Breweries fights a court case which, if it […]
Critical Consumer Pat Sidley THABO MBEKI, the deputy president, raises some important issues as he tramples on some dearly held principles. But, perhaps, in the debate which follows in the wake of his desire for the government to colonise our airwaves to get its message across, he may take stock of what this critical consumer […]
Justin Pearce How can the provinces turn the idea of provincially-based broadcasting into a reality? While this matter is still up for discussion, the Bophuthatswana Broadcasting Corporation this week presented the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) with a proposal to open up Bop Broadcasting’s facilities as a resource for all the provinces. This plan would see […]
Business considers the March 15 Budget a resounding success, reports Reg Rumney Business response to the first Budget of the Government of National Unity was overwhelmingly positive. A survey of 100 of South Africa’s top business people, undertaken by the Community Agency for Social Enquiry (Case) just after the Budget of the GNU, shows almost […]
THEATRE: Guy Willoughby THERE’S a certain sly satiric purpose behind Dylan Thomas’ poetic drama Under Milk Wood (first produced 1953); like the similarly folksy tales of Herman Charles Bosman, which date from the same period, Thomas’ detailed recreation of a little seaside village, Llaregyb, was not intended as soppy pastoral. There are all kinds of […]
Provincial governments may be on the verge of bypassing the IBA, reports Justin Pearce Provincial governments, furious at being sidelined by SABC television coverage, are planning to hit back at the Auckland Park monolith. Representatives of eight of the nine provinces met last month in Ulundi to discuss their unanimous concern that the SABC is […]
Gave Davis reports at the struggle by woman MP’s to break down the old boy’s club mentality of parliament. AFRICAN National Congress MP Jenny Schreiner leaves Parliament each day at 5 pm. If she’s in a meeting, she excuses herself. If the National Assembly is sitting late, it does so without her. As a principle, […]
Gaye Davis SPAIN’s counter-trade proposals if South Africa gave it the contract to supply four corvettes amounted to a “rand for rand deal” but would first have to be closely scrutinised by cabinet, Deputy Defence Minister Ronnie Kasrils said this week. In terms of the offer, South Africa would be able to pick counter-trade proposals […]
Cinema Stanley Peskin WHEN, in 1977, Herbert Ross made The Turning Point, it was possible in a mainstream film to deal explicitly with women’s rights, but it was certainly not commercially advisable to explore with any sympathy gender issues and gay liberation. That film was soap-ballet, self-conscious and maudlin. In 1995, Boys on the Side […]
Barbara Ludman IT doesn’t have the catchiest name or the greatest tunes, but English in Action, launched this week on Radio 2000, may well have the highest listenership in the country — among the under-eights, at any rate. The half-hour programme of songs, drills and word games has been broadcast daily at 10.30am since Tuesday. […]
South Africa’s arms industry will be discussed in Parliament next week. Armscor spokesman Krish Naidoo looks at the industry’s options IN the hope of reaping a peace dividend, the form, composition, and even the need for an indigenous arms industry has predictably come under public scrutiny. Some 800 companies make up the defence industry in […]
Some 63 percent of business respondents to the survey vote “no” to the question, “Should the ANC/Cosatu alliance continue?” Seventy-one percent of whites say no, and 39 percent of blacks. The contrast, says Case, mirrors the divisions between black and white business leaders on economic issues like redistribution, and contract quotas for small businesses. Many […]
THE quota of elephants to be culled in the Kruger National Park this year will be cut by half and only “humane” methods will be used to kill them. This was announced by the National Parks Board yesterday after a marathon debate was held in Johannesburg between conservationists and animal rights groups over the controversial […]
Jacques Magliolo The Board of Executive Corporation (BOECorp) has once again proved to investors that it is a financial force to be taken seriously. In the first six months of its present fiscal year, the company has more than satisfied its shareholders, producing a 94,4 percent annualised increase in attributable income. Other annualised figures are […]
Gaye Davis SOUTH Africa’s new status as not only a democracy, but one where women have significant representation, has not come about without cost. The influx of women into Parliament has drained the women’s movement of some of its dynamos. Speaker Frene Ginwala identified the problem in her keynote address to a conference on Gender […]
Anne Eveleth hit the deck with hundreds of others as bullets flew at Umlazi’s King Zwelithini Stadium on Monday The deadly crackle of gunfire punctured the air as tens of thousands of African National Congress and Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) supporters thronged the stands of Umlazi’s King Zwelithini Stadium for a Cosatu […]
Foreign affairs’ plans for the allocation of its budget took a bashing from MPs in Parliament, writes Gaye Davis MPs grilled Foreign Affairs Director General Rusty Evans this week, asking why his department’s R1,13-billion budget did not reflect South Africa’s new foreign policy goals. Figures presented by Evans to Parliament’s portfolio committee on foreign affairs […]
THERE is something both sad and courageous about Bert’s Buskers, a Johannesburg skiffle band that contains six of the oldest musicians in the country. Sad because, in the case of their eldest member, 81-year-old spoon-player Gunner Burns, time is getting on; courageous because, despite their age — the average is seventysomething — their capacity for […]
Gerald Combrinck TO THE average man, this Sunday’s derby between Cape Town Spurs and Hellenic will be just another game, but to the soccer die-hards of the Cape the game is more important than the Milan derby at San Siro, or the London one between Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal. Be it on the field or […]
NELSON Mandela interceded on behalf of Dr Allan Boesak which had been ripped off in the Indonesia bank loan bungle
An agreement has been signed which allows banks to enter the inner stockbrokers’ circle. Jacques Magliolo reports on this and other changes at the stock exchange Chaos was averted at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange last month, but not completely eliminated. The JSE and the Council of South African Banks (Cosab) reached an agreement to provide […]
A programme focused on illegal immigrants won an Artes award for investigative journalism this week for Weekly Mail Television producer Harriet Gavshon, and Nicolaas Hofmeyr, who directed the episode. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday was flighted in the Ordinary People series. The programme showed police raids in restaurants and hotels; the deportation of an illegal immigrant; and, […]
THEATRE: Di Mannie WHAT is the very best treatment that can be given to someone suffering from Aids or terminal cancer? Without a doubt, it is the support and concern of a loving family. This is the message that shines through loud and clear in the tender, humorous Moira Blumenthal production of Two Weeks with […]
DR ALLAN Boesak’s embattled FPJ suffered huge losses in a $40-million bungled bank loan that lead to the doorstep of Indonesia’s President.
Passing trend, ritual adornment or self-mutilation — whichever way you look at it, body piercing is ‘in’. Malu van Leeuwen investigates IN Tsukamoto’s cult film Tetsuo: The Iron Man, a metal fetishist inserts a large tubular bar of steel into an open, self-inflicted wound in his thigh. We may not have reached this level in […]
Dr Sibongile Zungu in the Mark Gevisser profile Something quite miraculous happens to Dr Sibongile Zungu, nkosi of the Madlebe tribe, when she dons her chiefly regalia: the rather frumpish, prematurely-matronlike woman, swaddled in a faux-kente caftan, transforms into the coquettish ntombi; flirtatious and swaggering in equal measure. Previously, sitting inside her classically bourgeois living-room […]
CINEMA: Bafana Khumalo=20 SOWETO GREEN is one of those new South African hot=20 potatoes which make newspaper editors want to send black=20 reviewers to critique the film as opposed to white=20 reviewers, lest whities hate it and be accused of=20 racism. This is because the scriptwriter, Mfundi Vundla,=20 is a very well connected brother who […]
Ann Eveleth The Inkatha Freedom Party’s 30-day deadline for international mediational on constitutional issues runs out next week and so far the party sees no progress on the issue. Unless some agreement is reached by Wednesday, party leaders say they will be forced to walk out of the Constitutional Assembly. IFP constitutional affairs spokesman Sipho […]
Clive Simpkins=20 True marketing expertise takes years to develop.=20 Academic theory is often very different from the reality=20 of business. =20 Astonishingly, almost as soon as a superb base of such=20 expertise is in place in a corporation, the pool of=20 talent or the individual talented marketer is retired.=20 In some regions of South Africa […]
Tara Turkington=20 I Want to Tell You by OJ Simpson=20 (Little, Brown, R80,99)=20 Orenthal James Simpson, ex-American football star,=20 congenial endorser of Hertz Rent-a-Car and mediocre=20 actor, ousted the United States’ afternoon TV soaps by=20 leading Los Angeles police on a televised car chase in=20 June last year. =20 Now on trial for the murders […]
Sue Lund has calmly negotiated the ‘landmines’ of the land issue to write a balanced five-year plan for land distribution, writes Eddie Koch TEN years ago she was an idealistic young student who wanted to change the world. Today, still looking wide- eyed and innocent, Sue Lund is doing just that. She is the author […]
Moveable Feast=20 Chris Louw=20 NEXT to the Apies River in Sunnyside, in a quaint little=20 art village known as Oeverzicht, actor Tjaart Potgieter=20 set up house last year. His homely restaurant, in a=20 restored dwelling dating back to the days of Paul=20 Kruger, has already won a reputation as one of the top=20 visiting-places in […]