Jacques Magliolo Diamond giant De Beers released its unaudited results for the year to December 1994 this week and promised investors virtually unchanged earnings per share and a mere 4,5 percent increase in dividends. It seemed that the sole focus of the presentation was to voice their annoyance at Russia’s refusal to adhere to signed […]
A rather unlikely witness gave evidence at the Eugene de Kock trial this week, writes Jan Taljaard AS the prosecution this week trotted out its star witness in the case against former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock, Judge Richard Goldstone’s “Mr Q” turned out to be an incongruously boyish policeman with an itchy trigger finger. […]
Combating discrimination was the main focus of the international Aids conference held in Cape Town this week. Justin Pearce reports BURIED in the agenda of this week’s Cape Town International Conference for People Living with HIV and Aids was a session entitled “Identities”. Delegates split into interest groups — sex workers, heterosexuals, drug users, lesbians/gays, […]
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 […]
OPERA: Coenraad Visser DONIZETTI’s comic masterpiece Don Pasquale fares very well in Pact Opera’s restaging of its 1990 production. Against the backdrop of Anthony Farmer’s beautiful sets and with the characters splendidly and sometimes zanily dressed by Lindy Grindlay, Neels Hansen’s production sparkles with many deft comic touches deriving from the music. Hanli Stapela is […]
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 […]
If Dance Umbrella’s contemporary ballets are meant to be populist, why, asks Stanley Peskin, do they continue to elude understanding? DANCE Umbrella is now seven years old, and during its formative years some bad habits have set in. In the case of children, there are absent fathers, working mothers, lost sons. In the case 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 […]
Clive Simpkins Years of recession and the new reconstruction-and- development-programme spirit have bred a healthy clutch of street intersection entrepreneurs — but buying from them is not for the incautious or the unwary. The bunch-of-flowers brigade are particularly slick operators. I recall a businessman friend of mine with all the Seigel-Sand-nous that comes from eastern-block […]
Super 10: Skilful forwards lay the foundation RUGBY: Jon Swift THERE are times when the performance of a pack of forwards takes your breath away. The famed All Black eight-man blanket is invariably capable of eliciting this reaction. The French rise to these heights when Gallic whim takes them, and of late both the English […]
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 […]
THE deputy minister of arts, culture, science and technology should have been the government member with the longest title and the shortest job-lifespan. Instead, her political survival is being assisted by incompetence and prevarication. The South African Police Services may have changed its title, but it still lacks the savvy to know that when you […]
Will Kader Asmal’s new disciplinary committee be able to curtail the ‘corrupt and hungry elite’ that has put the ANC into a tailspin? Eddie Koch reports KEY members of the ANC are holding thumbs that a new high-powered disciplinary committee, headed by Water Affairs and Forestry Minister Kader Asmal, will be able to pull the […]
CINEMA: William Pretorius IF, as Situationist Guy Debord announced would happen in the 1960s, the rise of the mass media has turned society into spectacle, then serial killers are the prime exhibits. They are no longer regarded as murderers, but as gruesome celebrities. That’s why Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers got it right: the movie […]
ANTON Harber has been named sole editor of the Weekly Mail & Guardian. Harber has been co-editor since the paper’s launch a decade ago. The other co-editor, Irwin Manoim, has been appointed to head the planning for a new publishing venture that is part of the WM&G group’s development “Changes in South African politics and […]
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 […]
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 […]
# What about coloured fears, Mr President? THE ANC has failed to heed the concerns raised by activists from the coloured community. These concerns centre around the continued marginalisation of the community and access to resources. Fears around affirmative action are not taken seriously, yet the ANC has bent over backwards to address white fears […]
Gaye Davis A BID to democratise the selection of a new rector for the University of the Western Cape appears to have backfired. While a decision is expected next week, the process has sharply divided the campus community. UWC’s founding statute was specially amended to throw open the selection process to include workers, students, academics […]
Sources say the IFP has no alternative but to quit the government of national unity and form a vocal backbench opposition. Weekly Mail & Guardian Reporter THE Inkatha Freedom Party is likely to pull out of the Government of National Unity but return to parliament before the expiry of the 15-day deadline that could see […]
Clive Simpkins Talk about tweaking the tiger’s, or is it the pussycat’s, tail? There were howls of protest from the advertising industry at my comments in the February 17 column Selling with a nudge and a wink, on phallic or sexist advertising, defending their use of it in order to “stand out in a crowd”. […]
Tales of incompetence emerged during the trial of the 26 rightwingers who allegedly went on a bombing spree on the eve of the April elections, reports Gavin du THE rightwing bombing campaign on the eve of South Africa’s first non-racial election, in which at least 20 people were killed, proved to be as vicious as […]
Lewis Machipisa in Harare Zimbabwe’s four-year-old economic structural adjustment programme (Esap) has failed to meet its key targets, despite strides to implement the austere measures, says a report by a leading Zimbabwean bank. According to the strategic planning division of Standard Chartered Bank, the government has not been able to check its extravagant spending, money […]
Stefaans Brummer ONE of the men allegedly involved in the 1982 bombing of the ANC offices in London is now an Anglo American security supervisor. John Adam is one of the seven alleged bombers named by former South African agent Craig Williamson two weeks ago when he confessed to his own role in the London […]
Winnie’s fall could spell the end of the populist elite in the ANC, report Stefaans Brummer and Eddie THE fall of Winnie Mandela may sound the death knell for the “populist” faction within the ANC and could have strong repercussions, reaching as far as the race for succession to President Nelson Mandela. The extraordinary occurrence […]
GOLF: Jon Swift WHILE this country basks in the glow of a memorable inaugural win in the Alfred Dunhill Challenge at Houghton, there are some areas which requrie some thought before next season’s professional tour kicks for next year, there is no Dunhill Challenge to take the edge off some of the problems which lurk […]
SOCCER: Clinton Asary WHEN the 24th BP Top 8 final kicks off on Saturday afternoon there will be two contrasting eras in South African soccer on view. Wits defender Peter Gordon (31), in the twilight of a distinguished career that has spanned 11 years of professional soccer, 10 of them at Wits, might well be […]
The hiring of the chairman’s daughter as a PR for a JCI wine estate has caused mutterings in the firm. Reg Rumney reports The appointment of the daughter of the chairman of the soon-to-be-unbundled Johannesburg Consolidated Investments as a public relations officer for a subsidiary company raises prima facie questions of Frances Retief, daughter of […]
THERE is a common belief that the ANC’s fiery four — Winnie Mandela, Bantu Holomisa, Peter Mokaba and Rocky Malebane-Metsing — are too powerful and too popular among the grassroots for the party to deal with them firmly and adequately. This is a myth that needs to be Most of the power and influence of […]