Yasser Arafat and Nelson Mandela are the symbols of peace and hope in the 1990s, but in many ways Arafat faces the more awkward task. John Battersby reports WHY is it that you are more likely to hear Palestinians than Israelis making comparisons between the Arab-Israeli peace accord and South Africa’s transition to democracy? “The […]
* ANGLO American chairman Julian Ogilvie Thompson this week threw his weight behind privatisation, arguing it would strongly support rather than conflict with the aims of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. JOT suggested South Africa’s forests and commercial buildings be privatised first. JOT’s statement comes after similar urgings by visiting UK Board of Trade president […]
WITH the bogey of apartheid a thing of the past, South Africa is becoming a magnet for illegal immigrants from other African countries. By far the largest number of illegals continue to come from the Southern African region, show Home Affairs Department statistics. No less than 80 926 Mozambicans were repatriated from South Africa last […]
Once Were Warriors outgrossed The Piano and Jurassic Park in its country of origin, New Zealand. Fabius Burger spoke to its director and its producer NEW ZEALAND director Lee Tamahori and producer Robin Scholes are rapid- fire talkers. In South Africa for the Durban Film Festival showing of their first feature movie — the gritty […]
MUSIC: Bafana Khumalo I’M no jazz buff, that much I will say. This, however, does not preclude me from enjoying the occasional piece of good jazz. I was not able to do this at the Grahamstown festival for the groups I was able to catch — chosen because they were recognisable and therefore unlikely to […]
Native tongue Bafana Khumalo GRAHAMSTOWN, beautiful colonial Grahamstown. I found myself walking through its streets last week, freezing some very delicate parts of my anatomy, while trying to come up with profound critiques of the theatrical and musical productions at the festival. This town and I go back a long way _ to the early […]
Sydney Mufamadi is expected to run the crucial police ministry without staff or a budget, reports Paul Stober SAFETY and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi, faced with the difficult and urgent task of reforming the police, has a simple problem: he has not been given the personnel or resources to do the job. With policing services […]
USA94: The most open and high-scoring World Cup in years ends in a dream final SOCCER: Sammy Adelman AFTER all the unpredictability and upsets, it is Brazil versus Italy, the final that best accords with footballing history and tradition. The two most football-crazy countries on the planet each appear in their fifth final, seeking a […]
Luke Alfred speaks to Richie Benaud, doyen of cricket commentators, about the test series which starts next week RICHIE BENAUD has always been a lover of cricket, a commentator who manages to preserve the illusion of impartiality like few others. As a servant of the game who floats almost disdainfully above the petty attractions of […]
Andrew Trench “THEY made me sit on the floor with my hands underneath and stuck the crowbar between my arms and the back of my knees. Then they lifted me between two tables with each end of the crowbar resting on the table with my body hanging like a pendulum between the two tables …” […]
Jan Taljaard visits the camp where the AWB awaited the apocalypse ALL along the road to Koster, signposts remind one of the Afrikaner battles of the past: Nooit-.gedacht, where Boer general Koos de la Rey ambushed the British; Tweebosch, where the same De la Rey captured Colonel Methuen, and outside Koster itself, the small railway […]
* BAD news for coffee junkies. The South African Tea, Coffee and Chicory Association chairman has issued a press release warning of price increase in the wake of a 100 percent increase in the price of unroasted coffee beans over the past 10 months. The association cites the world coffee growers’ Opec-style Retention Scheme and […]
South African playwrights do exist _ and so does a demand to see their work. The problem lies in getting the writers and their audiences together, argues Robert Greig SOUTH African playwrights are the cinderellas of our theatre. Though theatre managements support the staging of South African plays, few can do anything to put South […]
THERE is a growing fear deep down the passages of stockbrokers’ research departments that, soon, companies they have advised clients to buy will again face crippling strikes. A host of companies — across numerous sectors — have recently released appalling preliminary results, which showed some pre-tax profits falling by nearly 80 percent. Heading the list […]
Art’s more fun in the new South Africa, says Humphrey Tyler — who enjoyed the Main festival productions with the most double entendres and hobgoblins THERE were some delightful contradictions at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown this year and the prognosis is that art could be more fun than before in the […]
Estelle Randall KWAZULU/Natal premier Frank Mdlalose’s desire for free trade areas in the region has put him on a collision course with organised labour. Free trade areas, or Export Processing Zones (EPZs), are special enclaves in which a country’s normal trade and customs rules don’t apply. Investing companies _ usually foreign _ enjoy preferential treatment […]
Sibusiso Nxumalo IT’S a chill Monday morning in a coal-yard in White City, Soweto. Oupa Nsibande, his face black with soot, is among a group of men gathered around a flaming inner-tyre they are burning for warmth. Though it’s only 6.30am, they’re swigging in turn from a carton of sorghum beer. The yard is dominated […]
RUGBY: Jon Swift THE big man with the ruck-roughened ears carries a mixture of perplexity and exasperation across the scar tissue which serves as his brow. “The Currie Cup this season,” he says. “Don’t ask me. The only thing I know for sure is ek bet nie en ek buy nie. “I mean, Natal beat […]
Reg Rumney reports on an innovative union scheme to help retrenched miners create jobs A TRAIL-blazing union-initiated job-creation centre is already pumping R40 000 a month into the rural community in which it operates. The National Union of Mineworkers’ Mhala Development Centre was launched in the former Gazankulu in the Eastern Transvaal at the beginning […]
* PRETORIA Portland Cement has appointed Douglas Setuke as its Reconstruction and Development Programme manager. Setuke is also general secretary of the National Black Contractors and Allied Trades.
The ANC’s traditional leftwing tussles with a `pragmatist’ camp for the soul of the party. Paul Stober reports The African National Congress’ parliamentary caucus has become the front line of a battle between the organisation’s “socialist” and “pragmatic” camps. According to ANC parliamentary sources, the battle is about the future direction of the ANC. This […]
Weekly Mail Reporter ARMSCOR has admitted to selling arms to Iraq during its war with Iran.The Mail & Guardian revealed last week that Armscor sold Saddam Hussein a range of weaponry during the 1980-1989 Gulf conflict _ and that a Palestinian businessman, Wallid Saffouri, was suing it for $495-million in unpaid commission. Armscor chief executive […]
THEATRE: Bafana Khumalo A GROUP of highly skilled musicians, dancers and singers invades a small stage, bashing out a mournful tune, the sound filling up the venue until even the most restrained member of the audience acknowledges: “They are good, they are damn good!” This is the scaled-down version of Mothobi Mutloatse’s Sell Out! The […]
Weekly Mail Reporter THE Weekly Mail & Guardian is testing the limits of the new government’s policy of transparency by demanding access to police and Military Intelligence files. This could lead to the first important test of the public’s right to state information as guaranteed under the new constitution. The WM&G has asked the ministers […]
Residents of a Hout Bay squatter camp are harassing Ovambo immigrants, claiming that the Namibians are stealing their jobs, reports Mondli waka Makhanya OVAMBO residents of a Hout Bay squatter settlement are living under a virtual state of siege after clashes with Xhosa-speaking residents, in which several people were injured. Conflict has simmered in the […]
Any junior policeman may arrest you at any time … and deport you as an illegal alien. You have no right to appeal not even in the new South Africa. Eddie Koch investigates the Aliens Act, a draconian apartheid throwback that’s still in force Joas Baloyi (not his real name) knew how to make himself […]
Company failures continue at a high rate. Reg Rumney reports TIGHT monetary policy still seems to be taking its toll among companies, although individuals seem to be sorting out their finances. In the first five months of this calendar year the total number of company failures is 15 percent higher than the first five months […]
Alex Dodd A SMALL Grahamstown-based book dealer has made one small step for South African book distribution and one giant leap for readers of offbeat, locally obscure literature. Deep South Distribution (DSD) was started three years ago by Rhodes BA graduate Paul Wessels as a result of his own “frustration with not being able to […]
* DESPITE the inevitable griping about the ad industry’s high profile Loeries Awards, an independent Markinor survey shows this year’s ceremony got the thumbs’ up from those who attended. Seventy percent of respondents thought attending the Loeries was very good or good value for money in terms of business generated or staff motivation.
Moveable Feast Humphrey Tyler IT makes you weep to see so many people turned away — solicitously, even tenderly, but firmly — from Cabrito’s Bistro in Botha’s Hill, Natal, especially at lunchtime on Sundays, because the little kitchen in the back cannot cope yet with too many guests. Some of the would-be diners settle down […]
Sibusiso Nxumalo talks to some `illegals’ A comment by Edwin, a Nigerian now living illegally in Johannesburg and studying business science at Damelin College, sums up the pressures driving many from distant African countries to South Africa: “It’s much better than at home. At least there are still some jobs and there aren’t too many […]
As a new government commission prepares to examine mine safety, Vuyo Mvoko speaks to a victim of a mining disaster A WARD at the Rand Mutual mine hospital in Johannesburg has, for nearly a quarter of a century, been “home” to paralysed migrant miner Marcelino Kangombe. In 1971, he had been employed for only seven […]