Eddie Koch NELSON MANDELA’S air force helicopter was covered in camouflage paint and created a scene from a war film as it thudded over the green hills and thorn trees that surround Weenen. Although unintended, the image was appropriate because the president had come to this farming town in kwaZulu- Natal on Sunday to help […]
RAVAN, one of the stalwart anti-apartheid publishers of=20 the dark years of South Africa’s history, have started a=20 new series of titles called the Ravan Writers Series.=20 It was Ravan that first published JM Coetzee; that=20 published Mongane Wally Serote’s first (and thus far=20 only) novel. Many of their books were banned by the=20 white […]
Jan Taljaard THE first salvoes in the battle for the rightwing vote in November’s local government elections have been fired by two big rightwing guns, Ferdi Hartzenberg and Constand Viljoen. Competing against the rain, rugby and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the capital last week, neither the Freedom Front’s (FF) Viljoen nor Conservative Party (CP) leader […]
Jane Rosenthal=20 EXIT INTO HISTORY: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE NEW EASTERN=20 EUROPE by Eva Hoffman (Minerva, R48,99)=20 IN Exit into History, Eva Hoffman invites us to=20 accompany her on a thoughtful meander through Eastern=20 Europe. As readers of her first book, Lost in=20 Translation, will know, she was born in Poland in 1946=20 and emigrated […]
Louise Flanagan Defence Minsister Joe Modise says he wants to get to the bottom of the Anton Lubowski affair — but he is refusing to meet a Weekly Mail & Guardian request to view the files which Military Intelligence (MI) supposedly have on the assassinated Namibian advocate. By producing the files, the military should be […]
Despite her ranking as one of the more prominent and most highly-regarded women in the African National Congress caucus, Brigitte Mabandla’s appointment as Deputy Minister of Arts and Culture, Science and Technology has come as a surprise. Mabandla, a constitutional and human rights lawyer, has no experience in either the arts or the technology world. […]
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 […]
In film and fiction, vampires are bigger than ever. Now,=20 a new author has given the ‘undead’ a vigorous new life,=20 writes Shaun de Waal=20 EXACTLY a century ago, Bram Stoker was hard at work on=20 his novel Dracula, which was to become the prototype for=20 innumerable incarnations, in books and films, of the=20 figure […]
Some of the sharpest words about the Budget were said by ANC members in Parliament this week, writes Gaye Davis IT was the first Budget on which the ANC was able to exert its influence — but that didn’t stop ANC MPs from handing out brickbats along with bouquets in their assessment of it this […]
Zimbabwe’s farmers are suffering under punishing=20 interest rates. Lewis Machipisa in Harare reports=20 Two years ago it was drought, a freak of nature, that=20 crippled Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector. Now the=20 problems besetting the industry’s recovery are entirely=20 man-made. =20 At 32 percent, the country’s interest rates are=20 punishingly high, undermining efforts to resuscitate=20 farming, the […]
Affirmative action appointees are job-hopping for ever-higher salaries, reports Mapula Sibanda A new affirmative action trend is taking root in South Africa’s job market as skilled black recruits find themselves in short supply, and hop from one management post to another — sometimes changing positions for as little as R100. These moves would not have […]
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 […]
Eddie Webster suggests that Wits University academics would do well to look at other African universities for some hints on how to handle change IN his insightful article on his alma mater (“Wits — Barometer of Change”, Weekly Mail & Guardian 24-30), Anton Harber concludes that Wits “has become a model of poor change management”. […]
Native tongue Bafana Khumalo I am sitting in an apartment in Hillbrow and opposite me is a white man dressed in a hood that is similar to that of some medieval monk. He hands me a bunch of metal coins with holes in them and tells me to shake them in my hands and throw […]
Chris Louw HUSTLER shop owner Eugene Marais looked forlorn in his almost empty premises this week. Boxes with deflated “love dolls” and a scattering of erect rubber dildos were all that remained in his sex shop in Sunnyside, Pretoria, after a second police raid in six weeks. Marais’ shop featured in the Weekly Mail & […]
THERE could hardly be a more exciting time to start a=20 revamped national radio service in South Africa. Just=20 look at us! We no longer stink like a polecat. The=20 president jets all over the place receiving hero’s=20 welcomes. The Queen of England comes to dinner. In=20 Washington, President Clinton of the United States shakes=20 […]
ICE HOCKEY fans are in for a treat — the Pool C World=20 Championships, featuring top new teams such as Lithuania=20 and Croatia. Between this week and the end of the month, 10 teams will=20 fight for places in the semi-finals and finals at the=20 Carlton and Krugersdorp rinks. “From a purely competitive point of […]
PAC President Clarence Makwetu used Sharpeville Day to remind people that nothing much had changed in South Africa. This is an edited version of his speech The day Comrade Mandela was inaugurated in May last year, we watched with interest the fly-past. Here was the South African air force demonstrating its might. Here was the […]
The people of Namaqualand didn’t just want to see the queen, they wanted to ask her for help, writes Justin Pearce The people from Namaqualand didn’t wave flags to greet Queen Elizabeth on her arrival in Cape Town on Monday. They waved placards. The only obviously dissenting voices in the crowd, they had travelled 500km […]
Jacques Magliolo Engen has intensified its thrust for exploration and=20 production of oil in West Africa in an attempt to stem=20 declining profits and to rectify a free-falling share=20 The chemical and oil giant’s 1994 financial year saw a=20 13,6 percent drop in earnings per share and its share=20 price has fallen from a 1993 […]
The auditor-general’s report to parliament on the Transkei Public Debt Commission is a litany of corruption and incompetence, writes Gaye Davis SPARE a thought for Eastern Cape premier Raymond Mhlaba, for he has inherited the shambles left by the administrative collapse of Transkei. Spare a thought too for taxpayers, for they will be footing the […]
As increasing numbers of coloured people become disillusioned with the big political parties, a new group has stepped into the breach, writes Stefaans Brummer ‘THE brown man’s struggle did not end when Nelson Mandela was freed. Our struggle is against a new form of slavery which hangs over us like a black cloud,” is how […]
The actions of a British paper led to the arrest of a mercenary accused of third force killings. Did they double-cross a murderer for the sake of a good story? Eddie Koch reports THE London Sunday Times is facing controversy over its role in the arrest of a mercenary who was its source in an […]
Gaye Davis A TRIUMPHANT Winnie Mandela is weighing up launching a civil suit for damages against Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi, sources close to the deputy minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology indicated this week. She consulted with her lawyer, Templeton Mageza, on Wednesday to “discuss the way forward” after the Rand […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin LEGENDS of the Fall has the look and feel of a film made=20 in the 1950s. Its emotionally overwrought style, replete=20 with biblical echoes, is resonant of Elia Kazan’s self- important adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden=20 (1955) in its treatment of sibling rivalries and love.=20 Most of the characters have […]
The ANC is being forced to address growing divisions between coloureds and Africans, reports Gaye Davis. Tensions between coloureds and Africans within the ANC in the Western Cape are paralysing the movement and jeopardising its chances of regaining political ground in the local government elections. Western Cape ANC leader Reverend Chris Nissen was to meet […]
Louise Flanagan Although Ernst Penzhorn and some of his partners at the prestigious Pretoria law firm where he worked at the time, MacRobert De Villiers Lunnon and Tindall, have registered several front companies for MI, both the military and Penzhorn deny he worked for Military Intelligence (MI) Information published at the time of the Harms […]
Assassinated Namibian advocate Anton Lubowski may have been set up as a Military Intelligence informer, reports Louise Flanagan Documentary evidence which points to South African Military Intelligence (MI) having framed assassinated Windhoek advocate Anton Lubowski as a military source in an apparent attempt to cover up for his killers has now come to light after […]
Controversial Danie Malan, Johannesburg’s high-flying sports chief, is set to grab the top job in SA athletics, reports Julian Drew Next week the controlling body of the sport, Athletics South Africa (ASA), will hold its first election since official unity was achieved more than three troubled and turbulent years ago — and Danie Malan, Johannesburg’s […]
THEATRE: Bafana Khumalo T HERE is something terribly dated about The Hill, a=20 Zakes Mda-penned play looking at the lives of the poor in=20 Southern Africa. It transports one back to the bad old=20 past, when migrant labour was still considered a thing=20 worth talking about and the collusion of the church in=20 people’s oppression […]
Gauteng is cheesed off at its slice of the national=20 revenue pie. Reg Rumney reports The Gauteng government may have to find R1,2-billion this=20 year to get its sums right. That is the shortfall between=20 the money Gauteng will get from the central government=20 and its own revenue and spending.=20 It might have to borrow […]
Justin Pearce asks why democracy has worsened the conflict on our campuses The annual row over student fees has become as regular an event on the calendars of some universities as the intervarsity rugby match at others. Students invoke their right to education — the university invokes dwindling government subsidies and rising costs. Usually, everything […]