Staff Reporter

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 […]

WHAT’s the cost of transformation? Well-placed senior sources claim that the transformation process has already cost R500 000, the lions’ share of which has been spent at Television News Productions. One group of facilitators was reportedly paid R200 000 for the work they did facilitating workshops at TNP; three days of workshops in the radio […]

Dogtroep kick off their performances at Arts Alive tomorrow night. Neil Wallace gives an idea of what to expect HOLLAND’S Dogtroep, a group of performers, musicians, sculptors and technicians specialising in bizarre performance events, work both indoors and out. The snow spectacle commissioned for the 1992 Winter Olympics confirmed them as one of Europe’s most […]

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 […]

Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s political power was built on three pillars: homeland patronage, which he has lost; control of the kwaZulu Police, which he is now losing; and a claim to represent Zulu traditionalism and nationalism, which he is in danger of losing. This may explain why he has behaved so badly in recent weeks. His […]

Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Pulp Fiction, opened the South African International Film Festival this week. The controversial director spoke to Andrew Pulver in London WHEN Quentin Tarantino strolled up the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year to take possession of the Palme d’Or for his second feature, Pulp Fiction, it wasn’t […]

Mapula Sibanda PIETER MAYISELA was starting to lose hope of ever finding his younger sister, Fikile, who left their rural home in 1991 at the age of 19 to seek her fortune in the cities. “We are a family of 12 and our ageing parents do not work any more,” says Mayisela. “It is customary […]

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 […]

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 […]

The defence ministry is investigating Armscor’s mysterious shipment of AK47s to Yemen — which may originally have been intended for Unita. By Eddie Koch, Paul Stober and Stefaans Brummer A CLANDESTINE consignment of AK47 assault rifles sent to Yemen by Armscor officials has opened new tensions between Defence Minister Joe Modise and conservative elements in […]

Gwen Ansell pays tribute to late great South African percussionist Makhaya Mahlangu MAKHAYA MAHLANGU is no more. The 42-year-old percussionist died in his sleep in the early hours of Monday morning. “Makhaya was a person who’d gone through many things in his life: poverty, oppression from the system. Yet he became one of the greats […]

THE National Intelligence Service is so keen to show that it is part of the new South Africa that it is gathering information on the implementation of the reconstruction and development programme and identifying impediments to the implementation of this government policy. The NIS is out of bounds. It is the role of the national […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The reconstruction and development programme White Paper may have doused some hopes. By Reg Rumney ‘NO cornucopia of new money for social upliftment programmes” is the hidden message of the White Paper on the reconstruction and development programme, the ANC’s grand plan to put right the economic wrongs created by apartheid, released last week. The […]

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 […]

With a carload of prejudices Charles Leonard recently attended his first hotrod races at the Wembley International Raceway in Johannesburg MY first experience with hotrods not only taught me some of life’s valuable lessons, but it also gave me my first taste of class analysis. As a farmer’s son my father took me along to […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

MEDIA AND MARKETING CLIVE SIMKINS ‘DESPITE equality, wage parity and liberation, women still can’t: start barbecue fires, hook up a stereo, shine shoes, do anything on a roof, hang a picture, investigate mysterious house noises at night, kill and dispose of large insects, walk past a mirror without stopping to look.” — National Lampoon 1979. […]

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, […]

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 […]

Pat Sidley THE fledgling cellular phone industry has become the latest field for thieves and fraudsters with about R10- million of theft and crime occuring in the five months of the industry’s life. The scams are so rife and the amounts involved so steep that police have seconded a full-time officer from the fraud squad […]

William Pretorius ALLOW children to make their own films and you won’t get Mary Poppins, as producer Brent Quinn discovered when he workshopped scripts with groups of children from Hillbrow, Lenasia, Eldorado Park and Soweto. The results form the project Developing Visions, part of the South African International Film Festival. The children were chosen from […]

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 […]

A little-noted post-election building boom provides valuable lessons for the recovery of our injured economy, writes Terence Moll ‘IF you’re a small builder and aren’t working every day,” the salesman said, “then you must be either lazy or fast asleep.” He should know: he works for a firm which sells precision saws, drills and concrete-cutting […]

Farouk Chotia ZULU king Goodwill Zwelethini has spurned Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s efforts at reconciliation. Speaking to about 10 000 people in kwaMashu last Sunday, Buthelezi said he had twice sent IFP deputy secretary general Mandla Zakhele “MZ” Khumalo (the sacrificial lamb for the Inkathagate scandal) to the monarch, offering two head of […]

Media & Marketing By Clive Simkins KEEPING a finger right on the pulse of market change is vital. Here are two more of Ogilvy & Mather’s seven recently researched trends, unique to South Africa, that fly with joyous abandon in the face of Faith Popcorn’s American “future”: Informalism: The sheer inability of economic growth, as […]

Critical Consumer Pat Sidley EVER wondered why you get off a long-haul flight feeling tired, clogged up or — worse still — carrying the start of your fellow passenger’s cold? The likely answer is not to be found in the mysteries of jet lag and circadian rhythm, but in the air you have been breathing […]

MOSS CHIKANE, national co-ordinator of the former National Co-ordinating Committee for the Return of Exiles (NCCR), comes in for severe criticism in the report on NCCR activities. A former United Democratic Front activist and Delmas treason trialist, Chikane decided unilaterally, while a NCCR regional liaison officer, to take managerial and financial decisions without any consultation, […]