Native tongue Bafana Khumalo ‘I HATE these bloody coconuts, I wish somebody would shoot them,” she said as she viciously ground out a half-smoked cigarette with the heel of her shoe. I had never come across this word coconut before and I was certain that my companion would explain its meaning to me. Her name […]
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 […]
Moveable Feast Marino Corazza IN time I’ll have the guts to rip Africa out of my heart.=20 I have this strange romantic notion that I’ll retire in=20 Sardinia. Not as the Aga Khan’s neighbour on the Costa=20 Smerelda, but at some forgotten spot on the coast,=20 surrounded by silver granite, fragrant woods, craggy=20 reefs, emerald-clear […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Pat Sidley THE old boys’ club of the church’s anti-apartheid movement had a celebration this week — to acknowledge Beyers Naude’s 80th birthday. At the celebration, which took place near Sharpeville, the World Council of Churches, South African Council of Churches and All Africa Council of Churches indulged what the human memory does best — […]
CINEMA: William Pretorius SOONER or later, I guess, we’d all like to turn into our=20 favourite cartoon character. As nerdish bank clerk=20 Stanley Ipkiss in The Mask, Jim Carrey turns anarchic=20 when he puts on a magic Nordic mask personifying the god=20 of mischief, banished from Valhalla and accidentally=20 released from the sea. The Mask, […]
Bafana Khumalo WHAT the bloody hell am I doing here? I am on an Air Force base tarmac and am about to catch a cold from the rain that has been building up from a gentle drizzle to a serious body-drenching downpour. “Well, I am doing Gallagher and thereafter I don’t think that I am […]
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 […]
Absent talent: Super 10 and World Cup keep top players=20 away from festival in Hong Kong RUGBY: Barney Spender IT’S that time of the year again when, for one mad=20 weekend, the serious business of grinding 15-man rugby is=20 put on the back burner and in its place hops the rather=20 frisky and entirely unserious […]
Audrey Brown There are those among the coloured people who have always been uneasy with that label and, in the last year or so, their discomfort has grown. Complaints and accusations that they are not “black enough” do not sit easy with these people. Emerging as they do from the old townships of Kliptown, Sofiatown, […]
Handel’s Messiah is a ‘fitting celebration of the South=20 African experience’, says Lord Yehudi Menuhin, who will=20 be conducting this work in Johannesburg tonight. Coenraad=20 Visser reports WHEN Lord Yehudi Menuhin is ushered into a crowded press=20 room hours after his arrival in South Africa this week,=20 his slight physical stature takes one by surprise. […]
Critical Consumer Pat Sidley IT IS a commonly held view that South African consumers are ignorant, apathetic and don’t stand up for themselves. There is good reason for thinking this at times — particularly when well-educated, well-heeled consumers who know the ropes of life don’t take up the challenge of bad service, sue for medical […]
You have to hand it to Winnie Mandela. She is unmatched for fighting power. Not only is she back on her feet and fighting back when everyone had counted her out, but she seems to be stronger than ever. She is the Mohammed Ali of the ANC, though Ali limited himself to three returns to […]
With a dose of South African wit and a whipping by the=20 British team, the local brand of rugby league kicked=20 off last week RUGBY LEAGUE: Luke Alfred THE recent test between the Rhinos (the South African=20 amateur Rugby League side) and their amateur=20 counterparts from Britain was the ideal laboratory to=20 test the following […]
Reg Rumney reports on what the Minister did not do to=20 the tax system. Finance ministers cannot do everything they are=20 expected to do, but the Budget this year has some=20 significant tax reform gaps. One big sin of omission was that no adjustments were=20 made to the tax table to take into account “fiscal=20 […]
Gaye Davis FREEDOM Front member Tom Langley’s nomination as South Africa’s ambassador to Portugal has sparked frantic behind-the-scenes lobbying in a bid to stop his Sources told the Weekly Mail & Guardian there was deep concern in Portugal over the move to post Langley, a former National Party and Conservative Party MP, to the country. […]
This year’s Windybrow Arts Festival tackles inner-city=20 issues in an appeal to the people of Hillbrow. Matthew=20 Krouse reports T HE logistics of running an annual arts festival that=20 caters for all interest groups in Johannesburg and its=20 immediate surrounds continue to be hotly debated. In=20 planning such events, administrators leave themselves=20 as open to […]
The scrapping of non-resident shareholders’ tax is a=20 strong move to attract foreign investment, reports=20 Jacques Magliolo The scrapping of non-resident shareholders’ tax (NRST)=20 and remaining import surcharges has elicited a positive=20 response from the market during this week’s Budget=20 Experts perceived it as one of the most positive=20 Budgets in decades as it aimed […]
CLASSICAL MUSIC: Coenraad Visser AUDIENCES in Gauteng have been treated to a feast of=20 new music — a world premiere and two first South=20 African performances. For the third time Carlo Franci conducted the Transvaal=20 Philharmonic Orchestra in a first performance of one of=20 his works. But enough is enough. This year’s creation, Time of […]
The Budget sacrifices public health to the interests of=20 the tobacco industry, says the anti-smoking lobby=20 Jacques Magliolo reports=20 IncreaseS of 25 percent on cigarette taxes and nine=20 percent on beer are not high enough, the National=20 Council Against Smoking has commented on this year’s=20 “The new tobacco taxes continue to reflect a conflict=20 between […]
EGYPT is the third-largest movie producer in the world,=20 earning the country the title of the “Hollywood of the=20 Middle East”. The Egyptian Film Festival, which begins=20 today at the Seven Arts Cinema in Norwood,=20 Johannesburg, will present eight of the country’s=20 landmark films, made between 1968 and today.=20 The films, presented by the Egyptian […]
It is the viewer who makes the artwork, Chile’s Carlos=20 Capel=FCn told Ivor Powell IN 1974, Carlos Capel=FCn was one of a group of anti- dictatorship activists in Chile who, as the chilling=20 violation of grammar has it, “were disappeared”.=20 Somehow, this particular group managed to smuggle out a=20 piece of paper bearing the names […]
It is incumbent upon legislators to pen their semantic outpourings in a manner comprehensible to the populus … Sorry, government language should be simple, argues Justin Pearce ‘ESSENTIAL budgetary reforms, linked to the enhancement of systems and institutional management and the improvement of professional practice, will bring major equity, efficiency and productivity gains, amounting to […]
So far the battle between the Zulu king and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi has been a war of words — now it’s headed for the courts, writes Ann Eveleth INKATHA Freedom Party (IFP) leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s new power base in kwa-Zulu/Natal, the controversial House of Traditional Leaders, came under a double-edged legal sword this week following […]
The Department of Defence has been allocated R9,8- billion, which is a 11,7 percent decrease (or a cut of=20 R1,3-billion) from last year’s R11,1-billion. However,=20 the South African Police Service was allocated R8,9- billion in the 1995/96 Budget.=20 The reduction in defence will finance increased=20 spending on social services, said Chris Liebenberg=20 during his Budget […]
CINEMA: William Pretorius BLUE SKY, in which Jessica Lange plays the=20 unconventional wife of an army officer, is British=20 director Tony Richardson’s last film. Working in=20 Europe, Britain and the United States, Richardson’s=20 career has veered wildly from brilliant (Tom Jones) to=20 awful (The Hotel New Hampshire), with seldom a dull=20 He has a definite […]
The SANDF has come clean on covert links with African countries during the 1980s, writes Stefaans Brummer THE National Defence Force has owned up to a secret mid-eighties project to help build a military base in the West African state of Gabon — part of Pretoria’s efforts to forge covert links with African states whose […]