Staff Reporter

Musicians made an impassioned plea for an airplay quota for local music at this week’s IBA hearing. Hazel Friedman was there IF you happened to be walking past Johannesburg’s Mariston Hotel on Tuesday this week, you might have thought you’d stumbled upon a replay of The Concert at Ellis Park. You would have noticed Hugh […]

RUGBY: Andy Capostagno IT has been well documented that Ireland is a place where the unusual happens on a regular basis. And so when the greatest rugby player of all time walked into the Springbok hotel, ignored the tourists and invited their baggage master to dinner it should really have come as no surprise. When […]

COUNTRIES listed in the 1989 version of Log 17 are as follows. Group Three (sales prohibited): Zambia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Iran, Kampuchea (a note states this depended on “the course of peace negotiations”), Laos, Libya, Mongolia, Syria, South Yemen, Nicaragua, North Korea, Vietnam and Russia. Group […]

Eric Naki THE yet-to-be-established House of Traditional Leaders in the Eastern Cape looks set to be a thorn in the flesh of premier Raymond Mhlaba. Rhetoric from traditional leaders in the province indicates that the government may face a drawn-out battle. The Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa), which represents a majority of […]

After his successful comeback at Sun City last week Brian Mitchell is aiming for a title fight BOXING: Drew Forrest UNLOVABLY arrogant he may be, but Brian Mitchell showed he had lost little of his two-fisted magic after a three-year layoff at the Sun City Superbowl last Saturday. Beefier, harder-hitting but marginally slower than when […]

Overall leader Isabelle Autissier is up with the leaders in the first week of the second leg of the BOC Challenge SAILING: Jonathan Spencer Jones TABLE Bay put on her best with clear skies, sparkling seas and a fresh 15 knot south-westerly and over 300 craft turned out to send the fleet on its way […]

Native tongue Bafana Khumalo I HAVE cut my hair. “Who cares?” you say. Please, can’t you be kind to me just this once? I really do need a shoulder to cry on and yours looks as if it was meant to be a weeping post, it’s all creased and damp from the tears of all […]

A tendency for films to celebrate the evil of violence brings censorship closer, argues Reg Rumney AS a writer I feel bound to oppose censorship because I will contest anything that tries to limit artistic expression. As an ordinary person I increasingly favour censorship, particularly of violence. This was distilled for me by Natural Born […]

The release this week of Natural Born Killers raises the question of whether violent films encourage violence in real life and should be censored. They don’t and they shouldn’t, argues Shaun de Waal (also see film review below) OLIVER STONE’S film about a pair of casual serial murderers, Natural Born Killers, opens in South Africa […]

The King Committee report won’t satisfy everybody, but it’s a good start to more openness and accountability by companies at board level. Reg Rumney reports COMPANIES will soon be under pressure to reveal exactly how much directors as a group earn. But individual salaries of the top dogs in the corporate pack — unlike in […]

The West Indies are taking on India at the moment in a country where cricket is the greatest uniting force CRICKET: Mike Marqusee `THERE is simply nothing in cricket which matters more than a series for the Ashes,” declares Christopher Martin- Jenkins, the authorised voice of English cricket’s ancien regime, in his new anthology, The […]

THE code of corporate practice and conduct set out by the King report applies to all listed companies, large public entities, banks, financial and insurance companies, large unlisted companies, and large unlisted quasi-state entities such as control boards and co-ops. Key recommendations of the code are that each company subscribing to the code should: * […]

Moveable Feast Marino Corazza ACCORDING to Marco Polo, milk ices were being sold in the streets of Chinese towns in 3000 BC. The Italians, who are renowned for their ice-creams, can thank the Chinese for its introduction — Polo brought the recipe back from China in 1274. Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) was said to […]

Critical Consumer Pat Sidley JUST when you thought it was safe to dump your increasingly expensive Telkom phone and service and invest in a cellular alternative, Telkom has opted for legal action to make it less tempting to get the “better connection”. Court action — which was postponed this week, but will go ahead in […]

Mduduzi ka Harvey THE Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) has split, amid accusations that the leadership has given undue priority to police issues, misused union money and failed to resolve internal problems. The newly formed breakaway group, the Correctional Officers Union of South Africa (Cousa) — launched last week by prison staffers and […]

CINEMA: Stanley Peskin OLIVER STONE’S Natural Born Killers portrays a Darwinian vision of modern society as an inferno in which only the most brutal survive. America is perceived as a war zone, not unlike Vietnam territory, that encourages guerrilla warfare and mass slaughter. In a florid and tendentious treatment of the career of two serial […]

Urban Creep have been called an ‘African REM’. Can they live up to it? Luke Alfred reports THERE’S nothing to stop Urban Creep becoming the best band in South Africa. They have a high standard of musicianship, stage presence, some great epic songs and an uncommonly well-articulated vision for the future. They also have a […]

CINEMA: Fabius Burger THERE are amazing explosions in Blown Away. It’s just as well, considering the plot is so silly. A mad bomber (Tommy Lee Jones) kills off members of Boston’s bomb disposal unit, trying to wipe out James Dove (Jeff Bridges) — something to do with trouble back in Belfast. Blown Away is an […]

You want a Monet, but can’t afford to pay the price? No problem, says the self-styled queen of fakes. She spoke to Hazel Friedman DEONA VAN VUUREN is disarmingly honest. She calls a spade a spade. Which is pretty impressive given the fact that, in her line of work, spades often pass for spoons, and […]

Teigue Payne THE new director general of trade and industry, Dr Zav Rustomjee, has given an exposition of his vision of how industry works and how it should be encouraged to be more competitive. The vision involves identifying pipelines, or forward and backward linkages, and nurturing these to greater competitiveness through tariffs, assistance and incentives. […]

Jacques Magliolo `ALL I owed was R5 000 — that’s all! And now I’ve lost my business.” Renowned South African couturier Hilton Weiner was placed in liquidation by holding company Bergers before it too was placed under final liquidation.Like so many professionals Weiner concentrated on his craft and neglected making it a priority to understand […]

Media and Marketing Clive Simpkins MARKET-SHARE greed versus service standards calls for scrutiny in the cellular telephone industry. I was advised by an overseas cellular guru that on the launch of cellular services, the existing telephone network operator is usually in a better technical position for the first year or so. It is then typically […]

Steuart Wright in East London SUN City supremo Sol Kerzner is safe from prosecution for bribery — at least for the next seven months Business Age, an overseas magazine, has suggested that Kerzner could escape prosecution following a secret deal with President Nelson Mandela and Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, who the magazine said was a […]

A top-secret Armscor document contains startling information about arms sales. Gaye Davis reports ARMSCOR sanctioned the sale of military materiel to repressive dictatorships like Haiti, to countries on the brink of civil war such as Somalia and Sudan, and sold weaponry to Warsaw Pact countries — though not the Soviet Union — well before the […]

WE have sympathised with new cabinet ministers who have had to grapple with sometimes recalcitrant departments as they try to take hold of the machinery they need to implement their policies. So we are quite taken aback at Minister of Defence Joe Modise’s frank admission that he seeks no such control over his charge, the […]

Intersite is showing the way in profitable, socially responsible use of state land, reports Reg Rumney A LITTLE-KNOWN property company managing R2,3-billion worth of assets mainly in the major metropolitan areas — and getting a good return — claims also to be achieving this in a socially responsible way. It’s the done thing now to […]

The Locker Room Project is a showcase for ‘queer’ culture – – but that doesn’t mean it’s a moffie jol, writes Justin Pearce THE River Club looks as if it will never be the same again. That’s probably a good thing. The club may be Cape Town’s most interesting music venue, but until now it’s […]

Pat Sidley SPORTS sponsorship received a major boost this week when the Department of Health announced stringent new regulations for advertising and packaging tobacco products. With both packets and adverts re-quired to carry visible health warnings, sports sponsorship may look to the to-bacco companies as the only way to go. The new regulations take effect […]

The prison service is breaking its own guidelines on the treatment of HIV-positive prisoners, reports Mark Gevisser WHEN the kitchen staff of Johannesburg Prison were told, in September last year, that blood would be taken from them as part of a routine annual medical checkup, “Gerrit” thought nothing of it. Two weeks later, he was […]

MUSIC: Johnny de Goede THE power of her voice and stage presence alone have ensured Heather Mac a prominent place among South Africa’s rock luminaries. I remember being spellbound by one of her performances with Ellamental in 1984, after which the band went to Europe, basing themselves in Ireland. They even got to play at […]

Vuyo Mvoko STORMY petrel of the North-West, Rocky Malebane-Metsing, still expects to be reinstated as the regional government’s MEC for agriculture — despite premier Popo Molefe’s pledges to the contrary. Molefe, who fired Metsing two weeks ago, has insisted that the latter cannot be accommodated in the provincial cabinet but may be given a lesser […]

Senior National Parks Board members have pushed their own self-destruct button. Eddie Koch reports A SHAKE-UP in the management of South Africa’s game reserves is on the cards. Senior members of the National Parks Board have — in the face of pressure for them to resign — pushed their own self-destruct button by asking the […]