Matthew Krouse Agfa Theatre on the Square, Sandton Square. Neil McCarthy returns to stage writing with The Great Outdoors, a tense but tender psychodrama starring Isidingo’s Jamie Bartlett. Tickets at Computicket (www.computicket.com) or Tel: 883 8606. Barney Simon Theatre, Market Theatre complex, Newtown Cultural Precinct. Sweat on Somerset is a 70minute docuperformance about real life […]
David Beresford Another Country This space has had to be used again this week to accommodate the heated debate over the merits, or otherwise of Another Country, the column that usually fills it. Regretfully, after receiving a letter from David Beresford’s representatives, we are compelled to regard the subject as having now been fully ventilated […]
This time we ask this question in the knowledge that it is on the lips of many South Africans, many of them dedicated members of the ANC, SACP and the trade unions … Whether in his dealings with the Aids crisis surely the greatest threat ever to the country his timidity over Zimbabwe, or his […]
Barry Streek Many prominent Cape Town companies still own dismal hostels in the city’s townships and are hindering the redevelopment plans of the city council. Thousands of people are cramped into the decrepit and unhygienic buildings described as “appalling” by a development organisation helping to upgrade them. In the apartheid era the government actively encouraged […]
Alex Sudheim Bat Hall, Bat Centre, Durban harbour. St Raphael’s Special School, a primary school for the physically disabled, presents nine stage performances of the smash hit musical Sarafina! The public is invited to attend the openingnight performance at 8pm on Friday May 4, whereafter dedicated schools’ performances will take place from May 7 to […]
Directors face the ultimate challenge as corporate raider Active Value moves in for the kill Alec Hogg Shareholders of Primedia are being asked to vote on five key proposals at a special general meeting called for early May. This is the climax to a year-long war of attrition and could result in wholesale changes of […]
Yvette Gresl On June 16 1976 groups of Soweto schoolchildren took to the streets to protest against Bantu education and Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. Police, sent to the township to suppress the uprising, opened fire. The shooting of protestor Hector Petersen was poignantly captured in one of South Africa’s most publicised press photographs, […]
Marianne Merten In December 1986 Benjamin Olifant was on his way to visit his mother when Klerksdorp police arrested him for “causing unrest”. He was shot dead in a police cell. Elsie Olifant received interim reparations of R2000. More than 30 months after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommended various forms of reparations for […]
Nawaal Deane In a desperate attempt to get rid of the worst outbreak of algae in 20 years, Hartebeespoort Dam residents have come up with an innovative solution: a floating bulldozer. In February a few residents ó tired of the stench and the complaints ó formed the Water Action Group in an attempt to clean […]
Michelle Matthews Baxter Theatre Centre. From Wednesday May 2, see Evita Bezuidenhout’s new show, Symbols of Sex and Stage, in which she takes on unsafe sex and careless politics. Book at Computicket (www.computicket.com). Cape Comedy Collective. These laughmongers have added a new gig to their circuit. On Mondays three comedians will perform at 1st Base […]
These vehicles are not more than four years old, but some have rusted so badly that the doors have fallen off Paul Kirk Hundreds of armoured vehicles bought from a major British arms supplier are being scrapped by the South African Police Service. The vehicles, called Scouts, are being taken out of service as they […]
After the drama of the Test series, the Proteas go on a whistle-stop one-day tour of the islands Peter Robinson With the highbrow stuff out of the way now, South Africa and the West Indies go downmarket for the next two-and-a-half weeks in a seven-match one-day international series that starts in Jamaica on Saturday before […]
Alec Hogg Boardroom talk AME is set for better days. The JSE-listed penny stock owns 15% of the new undisputed World Heavyweight Boxing Champion and the right to promote his first title defence. A $250 000 punt on American heavyweight boxer Hasim Rahman turned to gold early on Sunday for African Media Entertainment (AME). In […]
Delegates rejected the idea of a Khoisan people at a conference in Windhoek John Grobler San teachers and linguists from Namibia, Botswana and South Africa have agreed to produce a standard orthography for their language groups. At a meeting in Windhoek last week they devised a plan for the new system that will divide San […]
Cyril A Hromnk Crossfire Commenting on the closure of the Kung (Bushman) diorama in the South African Museum (“Unmaking the San”, April 6 to 12), Pippa Skotnes writes: “The challenge is not to get rid of the diorama, but to alter it … to find ways to displace and replace the stereotype it perpetuates.” She […]
Highlights from the Department of Finance briefing presented to Cabinet ministers in August 1999: l “The South African government is fully exposed to the depreciation of the rand against foreign currencies, which account for about 75% of the total purchase amount. There is no effective means of hedging the currency risk inherent in the procurements.” […]
John Stremlau a second look Twenty years after the first nuclear explosion Albert Einstein issued his famous lament about politics falling behind physics. “The unleashed power of the atom,” he warned, “has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophes.” Africa’s contributions to the nuclear age were poignant but […]
Bruce Whitfield looks at some of the first quarter’s biggest disappointments The first quarter of this year saw a range of financial, industrial and technology shares take a pounding on the JSE Securities Exchange. There was not a single resources stock among the bottom feeders this time. The worst-performing share in the first quarter was […]
Leadership battles are emerging in the ruling party. Jaspreet Kindra reports Former African National Congress Youth League leader James Nkambule, who is in the witness protection programme, told the Mail & Guardian this week that former Mpumalanga premier Matthews Phosa was aspiring to stand for the position of the party president next year. Nkambule, who […]
Mail & Guardian reporters The Cabinet signed off South Africa’s R50-billion arms deal despite being warned of serious repercussions the buying splurge could have on the country’s economy. In August 1999, the Department of Finance stopped just short of advising the Cabinet not to proceed with the package on the scale proposed because of the […]
Shaun de Waal CD OFTHEWEEK Clint Mansell’s score for the film Requiem for a Dream (Nonesuch) contributed in no small measure to the devastating impact of that nerveshredding tale of addiction. It works very well, even separated from the movie, employing a mode somewhere between Philip Glass and Bernard Hermann, with some very original twists. […]
THE Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) on Wednesday called on President Thabo Mbeki to declare amnesty for all former freedom fighters on Freedom Day. PAC deputy president Motsoko Pheko said a number of such prisoners were languishing in the prisons of the “new South Africa”. He accused the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of being biased in […]
PRESSURE is mounting on Swazi authorities to disclose the nature of King Mswati IIIs protracted illness following unconfirmed media reports that he was poisoned. A religious leader accused the government of fuelling public despondency by hiding the facts surrounding the 33-year-old kings illness. “They must disregard the culture of secrecy because the king is the […]
AN outbreak of meningitis that is sweeping across Africa has killed at least 3_500 people, the international Red Cross said on Wednesday. “From the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, a total of 38_000 cases have been documented, but many more are likely to have gone unreported,” said the International Federation of Red Cross and […]
AN Angolan army helicopter crashed at the weekend in central Angola, killing five of its 13 passengers, most of them military personnel, the Portuguese news agency Lusa said on Monday. A military official interviewed by the agency said the fate of the eight other passengers aboard the Russian-built helicopter that crashed on Saturday was unknown. […]
A MAN who pleaded guilty to skinning and beheading a dog was sentenced by a North Carolina court to three years probation and ordered to read the “Lassie” books. Jason Vincent Revels, 19, was charged with felony animal cruelty in the November death of his mother’s mixed pit bull. At a hearing on Monday, Revels […]
LIBYAN leader Moamer Kadhafi and Namibian President Sam Nujoma met on Monday and stressed the “importance of African unity,” Libyan television reported. Nujoma, who arrived in Tripoli on Monday, discussed the setting up of pan-African institutions and bilateral relations with Colonel Kadhafi, one of the most ardent proponents of such ideas on the continent. The […]
THE captain and crew of a vessel suspected of ferrying children destined for slavery appeared in a Benin court on Monday, judicial sources said in the capital Cotonou. The investigating magistrate in charge of a probe into the status of 43 minors aboard the ship heard Nigerian Lawrence Oghototuya and his crew, who had been […]
EMMANUEL DEFOULOY, Brussels | Wednesday DECADES before the 1994 Rwandan genocide an anti-Tutsi apartheid created a mind-set in school children that Tutsis were a sub-human class, a middle-aged Tutsi woman in tears told a jury in an historic trial here this week. The system created both “consenting victims and potential executioners,” the woman, who escaped […]
A 61-year-old South African man who was fitted with an external artificial heart died on April 15 in Cape Town’s City Park Hospital, the facility disclosed on Monday. The man, who had asked not to be identified, was given the heart – a pump made from polyurethane with two ventricles – by a 10-member team […]
BELGIAN military intelligence has uncovered an illegal diamond trafficking network between Antwerp’s huge diamond market and Angolan guerrillas using the gems to buy arms, the Belgian daily Le Soir said on Monday. Le Soir said a secret military report entitled “Diamond trafficking from Angola, Belgium’s role,” contends that certain Belgian diamond merchants are dealing directly […]
DUMISANE LUBISI, Pietersburg | Tuesday LAWYERS defending nine rugby players accused of killing a rural teenager have demanded that the presiding magistrate recuse himself after he was caught chatting to the prosecutor in the case during lunch recess. Magistrate Ronnie Rambau of the Pietersburg Magistrate’s Court is presiding over the bail application of nine members […]