Yo, Babe! Bafana Khumalo welcomes Queen Elizabeth with some helpful advice for her visit to South Africa. He will be following the royal entourage throughout their I sure hope you had a cool trip and and you were chillin’ in your set of water wheels. I am certain that you are going to have a […]
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 […]
President Mandela’s report to the UN World Summit on Social Development shows that South Africa still has a long walk to prosperity, writes Justin Pearce South Africa is one of the most unequal nations in the world with regard to income distribution. This is the essence of the National Social Development Report which President Nelson […]
Jacques Magliolo WHILE local stores-listed companies fight for market=20 share on South African soil, there is a universal trend=20 for retailers to become world players. The Americans,=20 Asians and Europeans have suddenly realised the=20 advantages of the global village and they intend to=20 make the most of its conveniences. Everyone has heard of easy access […]
We are of our time. Just a few years ago, even a relatively progressive Budget from a National Party government drew almost universal howls of outrage and fury at its lack of concern for the majority of people in the country. Now, a conservative budget from an ANC- led government draws almost universal praise for […]
CINEMA: Stanley Peskin THE brilliantly coloured and designed credit titles for=20 High Heels (1991) are shots of high-heeled shoes which=20 in the film come to be associated with the world of=20 fashion and show business, as well as with=20 impersonation and performance. These are replaced with=20 shots of revolvers, and so murder and mayhem are=20 […]
Jan Taljaard NO ma’am, you’re most definitely not welcome. If there is one group that will not be curtseying along in the expected upsurge of post-colonial fawning that will accompany Queen Elizabeth’s visit, it will be the far- Addressing a public meeting in Pretoria on Thursday night on the theme: “British Queen, keep out!” the […]
R750 000 in church funds have gone missing but anti- apartheid activist Rev Eddie Leeuw denies he benefited THE Reverend Eddie Leeuw, one of the leading church activists of the Eighties and current director of Eastern Cape Peace Initiative, has become embroiled in a R750 000 church fund fraud scandal. The announcement of the police […]
CDs/Malu van Leeuwen SWANS: The Great Annihilator (Young God) MICHAEL GIRA must be the most depressed individual in=20 the galaxy. “I am insane,” he intones on I am the Sun,=20 with Jarboe warbling somewhere from the third ring of=20 Saturn. Still, if Gira ever cheered up, scores of Swans=20 devotees would sink into irreversible melancholia. […]
Native tongue Bafana Khumalo It was that time of the evening when one can glare at the boss and waltz out of the office and the glare is followed by a smug smile that says: “This time is mine and there is nothing you can do about it. For the next couple of hours I […]
Justin Pearce AS the University of the Western Cape battled against boycotting students this week, Professor Cecil Abrahams was still pondering whether or not to take up the post of rector which he was offered last Thursday. After consulting students, workers and academics on campus, the UWC council voted unanimously to give the job to […]
South Africans eager to get housing could learn a lot from the way Afrikaners used co-operatives, argues James McGregor All of South Africa’s citizens are aware of the challenge ahead in aiming to house the nation’s lower- income population. The recently published White Paper quantifies the problem: 40% of all households earn less than R800/month; […]
Reg Rumney Chemicals giant AECI’s 40 percent increase in earnings per share to 186 cents for the year ended December is no mean achievement. As managing director Mike Smith points out, with the first half of 1994 disrupted by public holidays, and the second half made problematic by a long automotive strike, a 40 percent […]
Finance Minister Chris Liebenberg has walked a tax tightrope in compiling next week’s Budget. Reg Rumney reports Expect no boon from the March 15 Budget if you are in the higher income tax bracket. However, on the positive side, expect no rise in value added tax. Given the political opposition to this tax as being […]
Gaye Davis A LEADING candidate for the post of Public Protector, Brian Currin, has withdrawn his nomination. The former national director of Lawyers for Human Rights told the Weekly Mail & Guardian he was no longer available as he had had to take other employment. He said he had not expected he would land the […]
John Velzian coaches the Kenyan athletes so he’s well qualified to reveal the secret of their success ATHLETICS: Julian Drew IT was on a Friday evening in July 1954 at London’s White City that the barefooted figure of Chepkwony from Kenya went to the line for the six miles at the English AAA championships. In […]
She is 20, and she’s the editor and chief pinup of a porn magazine that’s taking South Africa by storm. Anouk Mommer reports ‘Hi, I’m Satinder and … I will be editing all letters sent in by you, the South African reader. Please don’t hesitate to write to me to ask me about whatever’s on […]
A new Bill before parliament, if passed, will bring South Africa in line with world standards of censorship. Gaye Davis reports CLAUSES barring hate speech or acts likely to incite racial hatred have been erased from a new censorship Bill which sweeps away the draconian rules of the past, allowing adults to think for themselves. […]
Gauteng’s new director general is a former student leader who spent his time dodging the police. He spoke to Annie Mapoma A LEADER of the 1976 Soweto students’ uprising dubbed “master dodger” because police never arrested him is now Gauteng’s new director general, with a R13-billion budget and 130 000 administrative staff under his Vincent […]
Mapula Sibanda South Africa’s nine regions have been in place for more than six months, but old provincial sports structures — as many as 22 in rugby, for example — play on. Some officials respectably cite the “hampering of development” or “confusing” provincial name changes for this laxity, but the more frank attribute it to […]
As Pick ‘n Pay loses its lead in the stores market and Pepkor gains ground, Jacques Magliolo explains why Pepkor is the horse to back Behind the scenes battles took place in two of South Africa’s largest stores listed companies in 1994. While Pepkor finished the year by concluding a major corporate deal and seeing […]
Environmentalists have threatened to interdict the police minister unless he puts a stop to a Natal dagga-spraying operation, reports Eddie Koch A COALITION of civic organisations yesterday threatened to interdict Police Minister Sydney Mufamadi unless his commissioner stops the narcotics bureau from spraying large areas of KwaZulu Natal with a dangerous herbicide designed to stamp […]
Native tongue Bafana Khumalo ‘It’s the potency of black pussy.” She curled her lips around the words as if they were a choice titbit of a particularly delicious morsel. “It’s diminishing.” These words she spat out like a snake spitting poison designed to kill. I am a fly on the wall and I am viewing […]
Although crowds at the New Zealand Test were disappointing, it was a triumphant end to a hard season for South Africa’s cricketers CRICKET: Krish Mi’rams SOUTH AFRICA’S one-off Test win over New Zealand at Eden Park in Auckland capped a season of great triumph for South Africa’s cricketers. The 94-run victory was the fourth in […]
Stefaaans Brummer THE mere fact of another young man in Pretoria testing HIV-positive was not what caused the news to spread so rapidly through the city’s sizeable gay community last week. Too many have already had contact with the condition to take special note. But in the case of 25-year-old student Martin Erasmus it was […]
THEATRE: Guy Willoughby JUST what are Barney Simon and his cast doing in this bad production of a good but dated play about hopelessness in London’s East End? Sad to tell, but Simon — one of South Africa’s most celebrated directors — seems to have lost his way; at the very least, this version of […]
Critical Consumer Pat Sidley NEXT week’s Budget will please citizens who have become secondhand tobacco consumers without their consent: the anti-smoking lobby is expecting a tobacco tax increase. This may be between 25c and 40c per pack of 20s. It may not be nearly enough, but at least it’s something. And if the past is […]
LIVE shows and radio and TV will be governed by public indecency laws and the Independent Broadcasting Authority respectively. A new rating system for films and publications –including computer software — envisaged by the new Bill uses four categories. An XX rating bans the distribution of material that * Child pornography; * Explicit, prolonged sex […]
A hard-headed tycoon, a powerful sports politician, the Olympics , millions of rands at stake. Julian Drew looks at the battle over Cape Town’s bid to host the 2004 games IT was a battle that even the feisty and influential Raymond Ackerman could never win. ——————In the end his feud with Sam Ramsamy, president of […]
In search of an outside perspective on Johannesburg’s much- mooted Biennale, Ivor Powell spoke to influential visiting ArtForum critic Thomas McEvilley As interviewees go, Thomas McEvilley is more than a little like a chess player: the strategy unfolds according to interior logics that are more telling in their totality than as individual responses to individual […]
Eddie Koch WATER Affairs Minister Kader Asmal this week instructed his officials to investigate pollution charges against the controversial Thor Chemicals factory in the kwaZulu/Natal Midlands. The minister’s move follows a personal inspection of the factory where at least two workers have died of mercury poisoning and scores of others have been exposed to dangerous […]
Moveable Feast Marino Corazza WE’RE all part of the global village — or are we? There are still suburbs (however few and small) where the inhabitants nonchalantly live in their own worlds. Like the Glamour Village, where people on the hoof sport helenca jodhpurs, velour protective hats, that frothy, horsey smell and dung on their […]