Staff Reporter

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

SENIOR National Union of Metalworkers members are to meet on Saturday to investigate claims of “serious sexual harassment” by two of its delegates during the Cosatu national congress. Numsa general secretary Peter Dantjie said national office- bearers would meet to weigh the allegations. Cosatu’s press officer, Neil Coleman, would not comment on the alleged incident. […]

Instead of depending on the government for a roof over their heads, a group of homeless women from Khayelitsha has started an innovative savings scheme. Justin Pearce reports FOR the women of the Victoria Mxenge Savings Scheme, development starts with coins in a jam jar under the bed. On Saturday, the group of 200 homeless […]

RUGBY: Jon Swift IN the height of Cup final fervour, it would be well not to forget that this country is only a week away from the first test against Marcelo Loffreda’s Pumas. It would be foolish, considering the problems which currently face national coach Kitch Christie, to dismiss the tourists on the basis of […]

Next week’s Constitutional Court selection won’t provide much scandal, writes Lesley Cowling. But will this compromise its transparency? TWENTY-FIVE candidates for the Constitutional Court will be interviewed in the Civic’s Tesson Theatre next week, but it is unlikely that the hearings will contain the stuff of drama. Albie Sachs, director of the Constitutional Studies Centre […]

Elana Meyer has just completed the most successful four weeks of her career ATHLETICS: Julian Drew ELANA MEYER, South Africa’s most successful athlete, finally struck gold last weekend to put the cherry on the top of a highly rewarding season. Her victory in Oslo in the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) world half-marathon championships provided […]

Guy Willoughby LAST week saw the official launch at the Civic Theatre of the Theatre Managements of South Africa (TMSA), set up after intensive negotiations to represent the interests of theatre management nationwide. The body’s executive includes industry movers and shakers, and a management council brings in public- sector and independent producers, as well as […]

Big business parastatal, the Industrial Development Corporation, is up for restructuring, says the government. The IDC thinks otherwise. Reg Rumney reports DESPITE providing almost R400-million to support black economic empowerment, the parastatal Industrial Development Corporation is still up for restructuring. The recently released White Paper on the reconstruction and development programme reiterates an earlier promise […]

EDUCATION: Shattered school windows and poor relationships … PWV MEC for education Mary Metcalfe faces a tough task. But she is not daunted. By Gaye Davis SATURDAY morning at Mapetla Secondary School, Soweto. Parents, teachers, pupils and members of community organisations sit in the stifling heat of the cramped classroom. No one bothers to open […]

Lesley Cowling THE state is obliged to pay a substantial portion of the costs of General Lothar Neethling’s litigation against the Weekly Mail and Vrye Weekblad as a result of this week’s Appeal Court judgment. Neethling sued the newspapers for defamation in 1989, lost the case in the supreme court and won on appeal in […]

Paul Stober A FORMER Vanderbijlpark district surgeon is appearing before a South African Medical and Dental Council disciplinary committee for allegedly helping cover up police torture. Albert Niemann has been accused of sending a false medical certificate to a magistrate’s court, declaring an awaiting-trial prisoner with signs of physical abuse “completely normal”. The prisoner, Michael […]

An Angolan intelligence chief alleges South Africans are still involved in covert support of rebel movement Unita. By Stefaans Brummer South African companies continue to supply Angolan rebel movement Unita with military equipment in contravention of a United Nations ban and South African government policy, claims the Angolan intelligence service. Angolan government armed forces intelligence […]

Will their children should get an equal start in life? Four parents express their views. Pat Sidley reports THE routine business of choosing a school for a six- year-old has become a taxing dilemma for South African parents. Between the expectation of “a better life for all” and the terror of “falling standards”, sending a […]

NATIVE TONGUE Bafana Khumalo IT started on Friday afternoon when he came over to my desk and said I should go to the City in the Sun to cover the Miss South Africa beauty pageant. My first response was to get down on my knees and beg for mercy. “Oh exalted editor,” I said, hands […]

Two transvestites, a stripper and a urologist’s secretary were interviewed live on stage last week. Michael Dresden was there CHARLES J FOURIE, the award-winning Afrikaans fringe-close-to-centre playwright and sometime director, is the ringleader of an extraordinary new series of shows at Cape Town’s Long Street Theatre. The format is a live interview, on stage, and […]

Drew Forrest THE number of shack dwellers in the Johannesburg municipal area has trebled in the past year, and the first shacks are starting to rise on golfcourses and parkland in the city. A year ago, according to Johannesburg’s director of urbanisation, Cedric de Beer, there were 2 000 shacks in the city housing 8 […]

A blitz on gay-bashing in the South African Police Services is under way. Behind it are Gay Pride marchers — and the police force itself. Mark Gevisser reports POLICE recruits will soon go through a “diversity” programme to train them in sexual orientation awareness. The South African Police Services career-planning department is currently developing a […]

Wiseman Khuzwayo THE dissolution committee of the National Co-ordinating Committee for the Return of Exiles (NCCR) is pressing the attorney general to prosecute the eight people implicated in defrauding the organisation of possibly millions of rands. This follows the disclosure in the WM&G last week of a report by a two-member commission of inquiry into […]

The Congress of South African Trade Unions has decided that it will not speak to the Weekly Mail & Guardian until its concerns about our coverage of the federation are addressed. Transparency, it appears, is for everyone in the new South Africa except the labour movement. Coupled with the embargo was an instruction to the […]

Thebe Investment’s latest venture is into the entertainment business, reports Reg Rumney THE formation of a joint venture between cinema chain Ster-Kinekor and Moribo Investments, the subsidiary of ANC-linked Thebe Investments specialising in sport, entertainment and sporting ventures, aims to bring cinemas to black areas. It kicked off with the opening of a cinema in […]

Justin Pearce MORE than 300 candidates who were trained overseas last year with a view to bringing the South African diplomatic corps into the post-apartheid era are still waiting to take up posts with the Department of Foreign Affairs. This is in spite of the fact that the diplomatic corps has been left understaffed by […]

Currie Cup final: Vital roles for Herbert and Le Roux, two pivots with contrasting styles RUGBY: Jon Swift IN THIS weekend’s final throw of the Currie Cup dice in an intriguing season where they have not always fallen in a predictable fashion, one of the oldest arguments in the game of rugby comes under the […]

Farouk Chothia THE Zulu prince who sparred publicly with Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi on Sunday night’s Agenda television programme charged this week that the minister of Home Affairs has his own secret agenda: he wants to be king of the seven-million-strong Zulu nation. In his first in-depth interview since Buthelezi interrupted his appearance on the SABC, […]

CHILDREN’S THEATRE: Di Mannie ‘MOM, must we close our eyes?” asked a little boy in the audience as the show began and the theatre became a time machine with loud noises and flashing lights. When it was all over, it was the same voice that sighed: “Mom, that was so nice.” Director Jill Gerard believes […]

# RENE MCLEAN: IN AFRICAN EYES (Triloka Records) Rene McLean is the very talented son of Jackie McLean, the American sax player of the bebop era who is still blowing up a storm. McLean, who plays flute and all the saxes, was taught by his father, and mixed with and was influenced by such luminaries […]

The seemingly impregnable infrastructure of the SABC is under attack — and it’s crumbling. Mark Gevisser reports on changes at Auckland Park AN SABC journalist, bleary-eyed from one too many late- night meetings of her transformation committee, looks up from the stack of organograms scattered around her: “Yes,” she says wearily, “things are changing here. […]