Mamohloga Ramohlale Cape Town commuters are increasingly becoming victims of gang activity on trains with three people murdered in train violence in the past fortnight. Yet, the Department of Transport says it does not believe this is a trend and has therefore not prepared special measures to combat the crime. The latest incident occurred last […]
Judith February a second look If there was ever any justification for revisiting the 1994 King Report on Corporate Governance, the recently revealed shenanigans at South African Airways (SAA) and Transnet have provided it. The drama that has unfolded has seen accusations flying from Cape Town to London between Jeff Radebe, Minister of Public Enterprises, […]
Thebe Mabanga music Thebe Mabanga The illuminated, garish dcor of the Horror Caf will witness a peculiar vibe when four musicians and a hip-hop DJ take to its stage in the Politburo sessions this Friday. “We are not trying to create a band,” says S’Bu Nxumalo of the Nuff Said Kollective (Nsako), organisers of the […]
Barry Streek French scientist-artist Jean-Marc Philippe came to South Africa this week to promote the world’s largest and, perhaps, wackiest art project: to launch a satellite into orbit with six billion messages that will come back to Earth in 50 000 years’ time. “It is a gift from man of today to the man of […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo rugby More than a third of the South African under-21 players competing in the Southern Hemisphere Champion-ships in Australia this week are black showing the South African Rugby Football Union’s (Sarfu) development programme is beginning to bear fruit. Sarfu is dedicated to the development of new players, who will be representative of the […]
whipping boy As Durban prepares for the biggest day on the South African racing calendar, with bitter disputes and possible legal challenges again hanging over the July, racing goes ahead with a truly horrendous eight-race programme at Greyville on Saturday night. While the blaze fanned by trainer Mike de Kock’s protest against the weight allocated […]
Barry Streek About 7,5-million people in South Africa still have to be provided with adequate housing despite more than five million people being given shelter in the past six years. Since 1994 about 1,129-million houses have been built, and secured tenure, running water, sanitation and electricity provided. Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi-Mahanyele says the provision […]
The horror of addiction can be replaced with a new threat in rehabilitation centres Hazel Friedman “I began my life right on track Then my enemy appeared. His name is crack. But as the vapour explodes in your head, Be prepared for an early deathbed.” These are extracts from a poem penned by Kevin Castle […]
Guy Willoughby It’s not often that a playwright has two full-length dramas running concurrently in a major centre, but such is the happy fate of Fiona Coyne, actress, elephant lover and recently author, whose plays Dearly Beloved and Glassroots open at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown this weekend. “Please God they don’t close too […]
Bafana Bafana need one point from their final two matches to qualify for next year’s World Cup Ntuthuko Maphumulo Next year’s World Cup seems so near yet so far for Bafana Bafana. South Africa is waiting with bated breath to see whether the national soccer side can do as they did in 1998 and qualify […]
Paul Kirk Things fell apart for Durban’s director of community and health services this month. First his promotion to the post he has few qualifications for was deemed unreasonable, then he had his law degree revoked. University of Zululand officials have established that Arnold Shange did not earn his BJuris degree, but was one of […]
Martin Gillingham athletics South Africa’s top-ranked athlete, shot putter Janus Robberts, has admitted that until last month he had no intention of competing at the world championships and changed his mind only when the world governing body’s rulebook was waved at him by local athletics officials. The 22-year-old from Louis Trichardt, who studies and competes […]
All eyes are on Jennifer Capriati at Wimbledon this year, reports Frew McMillan The world’s number-one player is not playing the world’s number one tournament. As bright as a light is Gustavo Kuerten’s tennis, but all he will be doing at Wimbledon is casting a dark shadow over the men’s field. Kuerten played some wonderful […]
Joseph Harker Who first decided that a tick is “good” and a cross “bad”? n I work in a junior high school in Japan, where both ticks and crosses are “bad” and a circle is “good”. Elizabeth Marks, Yamagata, Japan n As far as I know the tick is derived not from the word veritas […]
Nawaal Deane Gauteng schools will soon receive guidelines on how to interpret official policy dealing with promoting to a higher grade pupils who have failed. Teachers in the province are complaining that schools’ matric pass rates are dropping because the Department of Education has introduced a policy that pupils should be promoted to a higher […]
Eddie Butler rugby Without wishing to be too catty, the touring Lions are not great time-keepers. A lot of it has to do with the fact that Graham Henry is notorious for losing track of the clock in training. And if he’s bad, then Andy Robinson is worse. And Phil Larder worse again. It’s quaint […]
movie of the week ‘Tis the season of the crowd-pleasers. That’s because it’s summer in the northern hemisphere, though we’re freezing down here. We’ve had Pearl Harbor, The Mummy Returns and Shrek; still to come are Evolution, Bridget Jones’s Diary and oh dear Dr Doolittle II. This week’s blockbuster, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider should do […]
According to a survey released last week, Wild Coast residents still don’t have the means to make a living Marietjie Myburgh ‘I don’t have work and I don’t have money.” In 1997 this was the most common response to a survey that asked Wild Coast residents what their problems were. The survey was conducted to […]
The Australian leg-spinner brought colour to cricket but his powers have been fading recently David Hopps The one thing that can be predicted with certainty about Shane Warne’s Ashes summer is that there will not be another Ball of the Century. The bleach-blond Australian may still be one of cricket’s leading attractions, but life does […]
According to law, children should be jailed only as a last resort, but this has never been clearly communicated to magistrates by Correctional Services. Barry Streek reports Two boys, aged 12 and 13, arrested for alleged housebreaking, have been removed from Pollsmoor prison. The acting head of the prison, Eric Morton, initially refused to admit […]
Timothy Wood American notes It is common cause that swashbuckling corporations are gaining power at the expense of governments. But the reverse is true as shown by General Electric’s (GE) stuttering merger with Honeywell. Worse still, it is unaccountable bureaucrats who are gaining ascendancy. GE, the United States’s fifth-largest company with sales of $130-billion, won […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo soccer The South African under-23 Amaglug-glug squad this week began preparing for the All Africa Games and the 2004 Olympics to be held in Athens. They kicked off the Sasol Four Nations Cup with a 1-1 draw against Mozambique at the Orlando stadium in Soweto on Monday and followed that up with a […]
Tracey Farren A Cape Town photographer was robbed, stripped and left in the bush with a sock stuffed in his mouth in February. A policeman rounded up the culprits on the same day and returned the man’s goods to him. Three of the suspects were below the age of 18 and this was their first […]
Mail & Guardian reporter The Mail & Guardian is moving to consolidate its position as the newspaper of the intelligentsia and political classes with a major redesign of the paper to be introduced next Friday. The redesign coincides with our record-breaking circulation growth among South Africa’s high earners and intellectuals. The most significant growth has […]
Site content and community were vital to plans to get rich quick. But sites with great content and large communities are still being forced to close, writes Jim McClellan In the mid-1990s, techno-gurus claimed that successful websites needed to focus on “the three Cs” content, community and commerce. Of these, content as in stuff to […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION What adds to the horror of the violence that frequently occurs is that it no longer surprises. Our daily news is stitched through with the often vicious reactions of a society as it reveals the ferocity of its embedded prejudices. This is the new and even more terrible “struggle” and, as if […]
Niki Moore If the University of Zululand (Unizul) was a business, what happened there would be called a hostile takeover. Last Friday, Mangosutho Buthelezi was voted out as chancellor and Deputy President Jacob Zuma was voted in. Friday’s meeting of the university council should have been a fairly mundane affair, to discuss various matters related […]
Lynda Gilfillan DRINK That exotic margarita you’ve just knocked back may well have come from the Karoo. Tequila is being made in a great white barn of a building outside Graaff-Reinet and is exported to Europe. Agave Distillers, a partnership between South African and French investors Rockwood and Hines, is pioneering the distilling of tequila […]
Count Riccardo Agusta the Italian helicopter company heir and a top investor in South Africa sees no wrong in his relationship with mafia man Vito Palazzolo Stefaans Brmmer Count Riccardo “Rocky” Agusta has had a hectic decade. As a racing driver he endured Le Mans and Daytona. As an entrepreneur he invested around the globe. […]
THE United States administration’s point man for Africa, Walter Kansteiner said on Thursday the US would only restore normal relations with Zimbabwe when violence there ends and rule of law is reestablished. Kansteiner, the US assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, said there had been a significant deterioration in Zimbabwe’s human rights record, a […]
James Campbell Glue by Irvine Welsh (Jonathan Cape) Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting was about a bunch of daft lads (or sub-psychopaths) whose violence and amorality were supposedly explained by their origins in soulless Edinburgh housing schemes. They devoured drink, drugs and wee lassies by the ton. The one thing that inspired them was tribal loyalty: they […]
Despite its drawbacks, the initiative opens the way for a new, positive international engagement with the continent Greg Mills The finer details of the Millennium Partnership for the African Recovery Programme (MAP) will be revealed, we are told, after the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) summit in Lusaka next month. The MAP concept has apparently […]