Byline: By danny hakim section: Section B; Column 0; Metropolitan Desk; Pg. 1 Length

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: BEHAVIOR & COGNITION (68%); BOWLING CENTERS (67%); BOWLING (67%); MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS (64%); ANTHROPOLOGY & ARCHAEOLOGY (63%); PROSTITUTION (51%); MOBILE & CELLULAR TELEPHONES (90%)
COMPANY: CNINSURE INC (72%)
TICKER: CISG (NASDAQ) (72%)
GEOGRAPHIC: TOKYO, JAPAN (73%); HELSINKI, FINLAND (72%); LONDON, ENGLAND (57%); SHANGHAI, CHINA (57%) MISSISSIPPI, USA (92%); EAST CHINA (57%) GHANA (95%); UNITED STATES (92%); UZBEKISTAN (90%); TAJIKISTAN (90%); CHINA (90%); WEST AFRICA (88%); BRAZIL (79%); VIETNAM (77%); AFRICA (73%); JAPAN (73%); FINLAND (72%); UNITED KINGDOM (57%); ENGLAND (57%)
LOAD-DATE: April 13, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: ''HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN:'' Chipchase talks to Accra street vendors about what an ideal phone (ideally made by Nokia) might do

IDENTITY FOR SALE: A cellphone in the developing world gives a person a fixed location, particularly important for those displaced by war or drought

SELLING TO THE OTHER THREE BILLION: A cellphone shop in Accra, Ghana, which carries and repairs a variety of handsets. (PHOTOGRAPHS BY SHAUL SCHWARZ/REPORTAGE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The New York Times
April 12, 2008 Saturday

Correction Appended

Late Edition - Final
China Seeks To Learn the Art Of Cachet
BYLINE: By JOE NOCERA
SECTION: Section C; Column 0; Business/Financial Desk; TALKING BUSINESS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 1646 words
DATELINE: BEIJING
We were sitting in a small conference room in Li-Ning's Beijing headquarters, Guo Jianxin and I, talking about the importance of brands in China. In case you've never heard of it -- and I'd be a little surprised if you had -- Li-Ning is a Chinese sneaker and athletic wear company named for its founder, Li Ning, a Michael Jordanesque figure in China who won three gold medals in gymnastics during the 1984 Olympics. Six years later, realizing that China lacked a high-end high-quality sneaker, Mr. Li started his company, where he remains chairman of the board.

Mr. Guo, a pleasant, earnest 38-year-old, is Li-Ning's chief operating officer, and he was dressed exactly the way you'd expect a sneaker executive to dress: a polo shirt with the Li-Ning logo, blue jeans and a pair of Li-Ning sneakers. Then again, almost everything about Li-Ning feels like your basic modern sneaker company: the airy, wide-open campus; the casually dressed young executives bustling about; the rows of basketball and tennis courts under construction; the huge posters everywhere of Chinese Olympians and other athletes who have endorsed Li-Ning shoes and clothing, like the tennis player Ivan Ljubicic and, believe it or not, Shaquille O'Neal.

On a large grassy area stood the letters, in English, of Li-Ning's slogan: ''Anything Is Possible.'' Do you hear in that slogan the echo of Nike (''Just Do It'') and Adidas (''Nothing Is Impossible'')? I certainly did.

Although Mr. Guo, like many Chinese executives I interviewed, spoke proudly of his company's research and development efforts, Li-Ning sneakers certainly don't look any different from those you'd find in a Nike or Adidas store. The Shaq figure stamped on his branded line of Li-Ning sneakers looked an awful lot like Nike's Air Jordan figure. As for the Li-Ning logo, it bore a remarkable resemblance to Nike's swoosh, except with a checkmark stuck at the front of it.

Mr. Guo and the other Li-Ning executives have big plans for Li-Ning sneakers. Although they are currently serving the domestic market almost exclusively, they want to begin exporting to Europe and the United States -- and go toe to toe abroad with Nike and Adidas, as it is currently trying to do in China. Mr. Guo told me the company now generates only 1 percent of its $700 million in revenue abroad; by 2013 -- when it hopes to be generating over $2 billion in revenue -- it expects 20 percent to come from exports.

But to get there, Li-Ning will have to become a brand like Nike and Adidas. As Chiang Jeongwen, a Chinese marketing professor at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, said, ''When you get right down to it, Nike is a branding company''; to compete, Li-Ning would have to become one as well.

There is no question that Mr. Guo -- and everyone else at Li-Ning -- is aware of this, and is trying hard to figure out how to make the kind of branding splash that comes so naturally to Nike and Adidas. ''Branding is a necessity for our company,'' Mr. Guo said. But the more he spoke about branding, the more I began to have my doubts that Li-Ning was ready for the big leagues. ''In the coming years, we are going to have to find a Jordan for Li-Ning,'' he told me through a translator. ''Nike had Jordan. Where is our Jordan?''

I pointed to a pair of the Shaq sneakers that had been brought into the conference room for my inspection. The sneaker cost around $120. How much of that price could be attributed to Shaq's endorsement? I asked him. (Shaq signed with Li-Ning in 2005.) Mr. Guo hemmed and hawed, but then finally coughed up his opinion. ''My personal belief is that it doesn't make all that much difference,'' he said. ''It is probably not more than 10 percent. What the consumer cares about is the design, material and professional performance.''

I thought to myself: that's not what they believe at Nike. Then he told me something else. Li-Ning shoes were purposely priced 20 percent below their Nike and Adidas equivalent. He didn't explain why, but he didn't have to. Li-Ning is simply not confident that its current brand can stand up to its big Western competitors.

Truth to tell, neither is just about any other big consumer company in China.

It is easy when you live in the West to take brands -- their power, their ability to conjure up feelings of status among consumers, the loyalty they can generate -- completely for granted. Brands are almost part of the air we breathe. But go to China, and you get a whole new appreciation for brands.

One afternoon, for instance, I went to a big five-story mart called the Silk Market, which was lined with tiny retail outlets all selling ''branded'' goods of every sort -- watches and purses, shirts and suits, you name it. As I walked down a crowded aisle, I was inundated with sellers grabbing and clutching me, while pushing their goods under my nose. But they didn't say, ''Do you want a purse?'' They shouted: ''Louis Vuitton! Gucci! Armani!'' All the goods were knock-offs, of course. But it certainly spoke to the power of brands -- a fake Louis Vuitton was somehow ''better'' than a better-made unbranded purse.

You notice it everywhere in China. What is the car of choice in China if you have some money? Surprisingly, an Audi. Why? Because Audi got here early and did the best job among foreign car manufacturers of persuading the Chinese that an Audi is a symbol that you've made it. Everybody wants an iPhone -- even though they are not even sold yet in China. Stroll down a fancy mall in Shanghai or Beijing and they're all cluttered with the familiar Western brands.

And not a single big Chinese brand. Partly, it is understandable that China would be lacking in brands as big as Toyota or Sony. It took Japan decades of work and innovation for those brands to succeed internationally: China's experiment in capitalism is less than three decades old, and it has grown up around low-cost manufacturing. For a long time, this was a country of scarcity -- it still is in some parts -- so there was no need for anything so high-falutin as branding. Even when that began to change, the primary way Chinese companies competed was on price.

There is another reason, too. There is a powerful sense among Chinese consumers that domestic brands are inferior -- and a distinct lack of confidence among Chinese companies in the allure of their own brands. ''It is very difficult to be a Chinese brand,'' said Feng Jun, the 39-year-old founder of Aigo, a consumer electronics company that also has high hopes of conquering the West with its branded products. (Among other things, it makes the most popular Chinese digital music player.) ''No one in China believes in a Chinese brand.''

The best-known Chinese brand is probably Lenovo's ThinkPad laptop computer. But it was I.B.M. that developed the brand before spinning it off, and even then, Lenovo decided to drop its price when it first became a stand-alone company. Until recently, it didn't even put the word ''Lenovo'' on the front of its computers. (It does so now.)

Why does this matter? Partly it's a matter of pride. Chinese executives want to be able to say that their companies are as well known as the big Western brands; Mr. Feng told me that in five years time, he wanted his company to be as popular as Samsung.

But it is also a matter of necessity. As much as we fear China's manufacturing prowess, Chinese companies fear the marketing abilities of the West. As the government allows more Western brands to break into the Chinese market in a big way, they inevitably take market share away from domestic companies. And if these same companies want to export their own branded goods, which is where the real profits lie, they'll have to learn how to create distinct identities that appeal to consumers -- in other words, brands. ''Everyone in China has religion in branding,'' said Scott Kronick, the president of the Chinese division of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide.

But as the experience of Li-Ning illustrates, it's a real struggle. During the 1990s, the company had the market completely to itself -- but as soon as Nike and Adidas were allowed in more than a half dozen years ago, Li-Ning's market share withered; by 2004, it ranked third. It currently has 18 percent of the market, while its bigger Western competitors have more than 20 percent each. Facing Nike and Adidas, Mr. Guo said, made the company realize it had to become better at branding and marketing.

So a few years ago, the company began bringing in branding experts to advise it, including Mr. Jeongwen, the marketing professor. ''When kids wear Nike shoes, they feel as though they are the cool kids on the block,'' he told me. ''I said to the Li-Ning executives, 'What does it mean when you wear a Li-Ning shoe?' '' He was trying to show them that the point of the exercise wasn't to copy from the Nike playbook, but to create a distinct identity. ''They couldn't define it,'' he said.

His advice to the company was that it should forget about the export market and concentrate instead on the growing domestic market -- especially the many so-called Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, with populations well above one million, that the Nikes and Adidases hadn't yet penetrated. He suggested that Li-Ning try to come up with shoes that have a distinctly Chinese flavor and would appeal, in an almost patriotic way, to Chinese consumers. Sure enough, when I visited Li-Ning I was shown an expensive green shoe that was named for Lei Feng, the famous Chinese soldier whom the government glorified after he died in 1962.

What the company hasn't abandoned, though, is its dream of moving its products to the West. For that, Li Ning is going to need a lot more than simply finding the next Michael Jordan. That's going to take marketing skills its executives don't yet have, and that China itself is still trying to learn.

URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: SPORTS AWARDS (76%); ENTREPRENEURSHIP (76%); ATHLETES (76%); TENNIS (75%); SPORTS (75%); SPORTS & RECREATION FACILITIES & VENUES (71%); RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT (50%); OLYMPICS (90%); SUMMER OLYMPICS (75%); BASKETBALL (73%)
COMPANY: NIKE INC (86%); ADIDAS AG (86%); CNINSURE INC (93%)
TICKER: NKE (NYSE) (86%); ADS (FRA) (86%); CISG (NASDAQ) (93%)
INDUSTRY: NAICS316219 OTHER FOOTWEAR MANUFACTURING (86%); NAICS316211 RUBBER & PLASTICS FOOTWEAR MANUFACTURING (86%); NAICS315239 WOMEN'S & GIRLS' CUT & SEW OTHER OUTERWEAR MANUFACTURING (86%); NAICS315228 MEN'S & BOYS' CUT & SEW OTHER OUTERWEAR MANUFACTURING (86%); SIC3149 FOOTWEAR, EXCEPT RUBBER, NEC (86%); SIC3021 RUBBER & PLASTICS FOOTWEAR (86%); SIC2339 WOMEN'S, MISSES', & JUNIORS' OUTERWEAR, NEC (86%); SIC2329 MEN'S & BOYS' CLOTHING, NEC (86%); NAICS315211 MEN'S & BOYS' CUT & SEW APPAREL CONTRACTORS (86%)
PERSON: SHAQUILLE O'NEAL (82%); MICHAEL JORDAN (52%)
GEOGRAPHIC: BEIJING, CHINA (93%) NORTH CENTRAL CHINA (94%) CHINA (97%); UNITED STATES (79%); EUROPE (51%)
LOAD-DATE: April 12, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
CORRECTION-DATE: April 19, 2008

CORRECTION: The Talking Business column last Saturday, about China's efforts to develop popular brands, referred incorrectly in one instance to Chiang Jeongwen, a marketing professor who commented on the effort. He is Mr. Chiang, not Mr. Jeongwen.
GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: A sneaker from the Chinese maker Li-Ning shows an unmistakable Nike influence. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DU BIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. C1)

A corner of the Li-Ning campus in Beijing. The athletic wear company is trying to compete with better-known global brands. (PHOTOGRAPH BY DU BIN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES) (pg. C8)

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

874 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 11, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

Wiseguys and Fall Guys, Welcome to Globalization
BYLINE: By WILLIAM GRIMES
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Pg. 40
LENGTH: 970 words
McMAFIA

A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld

By Misha Glenny

Illustrated. 375 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. $27.95.

Transnistria does not get much attention in the news, but Misha Glenny makes it a mandatory stop in ''McMafia,'' his wildly ambitious tour of organized crime in the era of globalization. This tiny breakaway republic, formerly part of Moldova, is no bigger than Rhode Island, but it manages to cause a world of trouble, serving as a source of illegal arms from the former Soviet Army and two unmonitored weapons factories. ''These spew out of Transnistria via Odessa and into the world of war -- the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East, western and central Africa,'' Mr. Glenny writes.

There are many such operations around the globe. Mr. Glenny, the former Central Europe correspondent for the BBC World Service and the author of two books on the Balkans, hops from one to the next in a mind-boggling if less than coherent survey of Internet fraud, illegal energy and weapons deals, drug cartels, counterfeiting of consumer goods, prostitution and car-theft rings, immigrant smuggling and sturgeon poaching.

Crime does pay, in a very big way, thanks to several historical developments that have opened up enormous criminal opportunities. The collapse of the Soviet Union, for one thing, disgorged thousands of less than savory state employees onto the labor market.

''All manner of operatives lost their jobs: secret police, counterintelligence officers, special-forces commandos and border guards, as well as homicide detectives and traffic cops,'' Mr. Glenny writes. ''Their skills included surveillance, smuggling, killing people, establishing networks and blackmail.''

At the same time liberalized financial and commodities markets offered wonderful new opportunities for criminal syndicates, enhanced by the wide-open possibilities of the Internet. The growing disparity between rich and poor across the globe has also played a role, pitting the desperate against the affluent. Today, Mr. Glenny writes, the ''shadow economy,'' much of it in the form of transnational criminal conspiracies, accounts for 15 to 20 percent of global economic activity.

Mr. Glenny sets a fast pace as he races from one criminal hot spot to another, riding with marijuana traffickers in British Columbia, walking into pachinko parlors in Tokyo, visiting brothels in Tel Aviv and scoping out the sex clubs in Dubai. For sheer enterprise he is hard to beat, but anything like a clear picture of global crime eludes him.

The facts and figures swirl fast and thick. The schemes are often diabolically complex, the playing field crowded. At one summit meeting, held in Aruba, members of the Medellin and Cali cartels from Colombia meet with representatives from Moscow of the Solntsevo Brotherhood, Bulgarian traffickers and drug dealers from the Caribbean and Central America. Money should be awarded to any reader who can follow the full-page flow chart illustrating an energy scam centering on the Hungarian company Eural Trans Gas.

The gist is there: There is a huge amount of crime out there, committed by organizations small and large. Hats off to the Nigerians, whose exploits Mr. Glenny describes in delicious detail. ''I Go Chop Your Dollar,'' a popular Nigerian song, expresses the nation's entrepreneurial zest in the line ''I go take your money and disappear.''

In one celebrated case a Nigerian mastermind siphoned off a staggering $242 million from Banco Noroeste, a Brazilian private bank. A high-ranking Noroeste officer sat down in London with a man he sincerely believed to be the director of Nigeria's central bank. He wasn't.

''When surveying the undulating landscape of Nigerian crime, it is hard not to develop a sense of admiration for the loving care and creativity with which it is fashioned,'' Mr. Glenny writes.

The tales of purest misery deal with human trafficking, a byproduct, Mr. Glenny argues, of globalization's rigged game. When the advanced economies opened world markets to their goods but retained protectionist subsidies on their own agricultural sectors, they created a vast army of the dispossessed and the desperate, as well as a lucrative market in prostitution and illegal immigration.

The collapse of the Soviet Union also ensured a ready supply of women for Western Europe. Mr. Glenny takes a close look at the Balkan gangs who thrive on the transport of tax-free cigarettes and prostitutes to destinations like the ''Highway of Shame'' connecting Prague and Dresden. Often the women are recruited by other women, some of them buying their way out of sexual slavery by delivering others to their captors.

Oddly enough, Mr. Glenny puts in a good word for snakeheads, the Chinese agents who spirit poor peasants to the West for fees so steep that it often takes the pooled resources of an entire village to send one worker. The Chinese government likes them because they relieve unemployment and, with their remittances, help fuel the Chinese economy. Western employers appreciate the cut-rate labor they provide. The villages that spend to send a worker abroad also like them, because the investment returns dividends.

''The illegality of labor smuggling lies in the illogicality of globalization,'' Mr. Glenny writes. The European Union has a labor shortage and an aging population that is not being replenished because of low birthrates. But restrictive immigration policies remain in force. The result? An open invitation to far-reaching criminal enterprises.

It's a worldwide problem. On one of his visits Mr. Glenny finds that the yakuza, Japan's traditional mafia, faces the problem of an aging membership and a lack of young recruits. Needless to say, there is a solution: outsourcing. They now subcontract murders to Chinese gangs.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
SUBJECT: GLOBALIZATION (90%); ILLEGAL WEAPONS (90%); BOOK REVIEWS (90%); SMUGGLING (89%); CONTROLLED SUBSTANCES CRIME (89%); CARTELS (87%); INTERNET CRIME (78%); CONSPIRACY (78%); FRAUD & FINANCIAL CRIME (78%); LARCENY & THEFT (78%); ORGANIZED CRIME (78%); CANNABIS (75%); MILITARY WEAPONS (75%); ARMS TRADE (75%); VISUAL & PERFORMING ARTS (74%); INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (73%); ENERGY MARKETS (72%); VEHICLE THEFT (72%); PROSTITUTION (71%); UNOFFICIAL ECONOMY (71%); LABOR SECTOR PERFORMANCE (70%); LAYOFFS (70%); WEALTHY PEOPLE (67%); IMMIGRATION (66%); ALIEN SMUGGLING (66%); ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS (66%); DISMISSALS (65%); COMMODITIES TRADING (65%); HOMICIDE (78%); TALKS & MEETINGS (62%); SEPARATISM & SECESSION (56%); COUNTERFEITING (52%); BORDER CONTROL (70%)
COMPANY: BBC WORLD SERVICE TELEVISION LTD (56%)
GEOGRAPHIC: DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); MOSCOW, RUSSIA (77%); TEL AVIV, ISRAEL (76%); TOKYO, JAPAN (68%) DUBAI, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%) MOLDOVA (92%); CAUCASIAN STATES (79%); ARUBA (79%); MIDDLE EAST (79%); EUROPE (79%); CENTRAL AFRICA (79%); COLOMBIA (79%); CENTRAL ASIA (79%); UNITED ARAB EMIRATES (79%); BULGARIA (79%); SOUTH AMERICA (79%); ASIA (79%); CENTRAL AMERICA (78%); CARIBBEAN ISLANDS (77%); RUSSIA (77%); ISRAEL (76%); CENTRAL EUROPE (71%); JAPAN (68%)
TITLE: McMafia (Book)>; McMafia (Book)>
LOAD-DATE: April 11, 2008
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
GRAPHIC: PHOTO (PHOTOGRAPH BY RALPH GLENNY)
DOCUMENT-TYPE: Review
PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

875 of 1231 DOCUMENTS

The New York Times
April 11, 2008 Friday

Late Edition - Final

In South Africa, This Dead Man Does Tell Tales
BYLINE: By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
SECTION: Section E; Column 0; Movies, Performing Arts/Weekend Desk; THEATER REVIEW 'SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD'; Pg. 3
LENGTH: 983 words
A man must die in order to live in ''Sizwe Banzi Is Dead,'' the 1972 play by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona about the dehumanizing treatment of South Africa's black population under apartheid. With Mr. Kani and Mr. Ntshona reprising their original roles in the revival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, this bleak comic story of a man who can keep himself afloat only by putting himself six feet under remains a potent parable of the perverse cruelties of life under the Afrikaner regime.

Mr. Kani and Mr. Ntshona won Tony Awards for their performances in ''Sizwe Banzi'' and ''The Island,'' which they also wrote with Mr. Fugard, when the plays were presented in repertory on Broadway in 1974 and 1975. Mr. Kani and Mr. Ntshona have since pursued distinguished individual careers. They reunited five years ago to revive ''The Island,'' about the relationship between two prisoners, which they also brought to Brooklyn. This valedictory production of ''Sizwe,'' directed by Aubrey Sekhabi, will be the last time they perform the play. It's a moving coda to a remarkable, even historic collaboration.

Three decades is a mighty span in the life of a man, a play and, in the case of South Africa, a country. When ''Sizwe Banzi'' was first devised and performed in Cape Town, and later brought to London and New York, the white government that had imposed apartheid on South Africa remained firmly in control. At one point Mr. Kani and Mr. Ntshona were jailed for performing it. The racist policies that Mr. Fugard, Mr. Kani and Mr. Ntshona were vigorously denouncing through their art were rescinded more than a decade ago. But the damage they caused, of course, can never be fully rectified.

In any case, ''Sizwe Banzi'' was always more than agitprop. Developed through improvisation, its structure is loose and offhanded. Pointed observations about the treatment of blacks in South Africa come only as the meaningful climax of an evening that begins genially and informally, like a cozy chat between intimates, and then develops into a comedy about two men who stumble across a corpse during a boozy evening. Sobering up at home, they decide to turn the dead man into an unwitting tool of rebellion against crippling government regulations.

Mr. Kani bustles onstage in the role of Styles, an enthusiastic fellow who runs his own photography studio, taking formal portraits for special occasions -- weddings, funerals, birthday parties. He greets the audience almost like a tummler or talk show host, telling little jokes, inviting people up to see his handiwork, sharing his pride in his business.

''You must understand one thing,'' he says to us, speaking of the desire to help his fellow blacks that inspired his entrepreneurship: ''This world and its laws allow us nothing except ourselves. There is nothing we can leave behind when we die, except the memory of ourselves.'' His photographs memorialize men and women who would otherwise be lost to history.

But even the intimate possession of the self is shown to be provisional when a dapper gent played by Mr. Ntshona enters Styles's studio to have his portrait taken. Hesitantly calling himself Robert Zwelinzima, he preens for the camera, encouraged by Styles. The flashbulb glows and the play enters a new phase, as this man, whose real name is Sizwe Banzi, reveals his story by reciting a letter he sent to his wife back in King William's Town.

Banzi had come to the city of Port Elizabeth to find desperately needed work but got in trouble with the authorities; the passbook that all black South Africans were required to carry indicated that he was only allowed to live and work in King William's Town. Providence introduced him to Buntu (also Mr. Kani), who becomes his tutor in deception when the men hit upon the scheme of stealing the corpse's passbook and allowing Sizwe Banzi to die so that, under an assumed name, he may live to support his family.

Mr. Kani and Mr. Ntshona, who are now in their 60s, remain vital, energetic and comfortably at ease in roles they created so long ago. Perhaps because the play does not possess the political urgency it once did, the performances have an inviting warmth that draws fully on the comic flavorings of the characters. Mr. Kani's Styles has a beaming smile and muscular laugh that ease us into the play and encourage us to overlook his somewhat diffuse monologue. His Buntu, by contrast, is a solemn taskmaster, at least until alcohol loosens his strictness and inspires a paternal interest in the hapless fellow he finds on his doorstep.

As Sizwe, Mr. Ntshona, swimming in his ivory double-breasted suit, is all syrupy smiles and anxious eyes. Whether posing archly for Styles's camera or woozily wending his way home after a night on the town, his Sizwe has the meticulous physical grace of a classic clown.

But Mr. Ntshona also makes us notice the fiercely won dignity underneath Sizwe's goofy exterior. When Buntu begins his campaign to persuade him to assume a new identity, Sizwe clings with quiet tenaciousness to his own. Is a man without his own name a man at all? ''I'm afraid,'' he confesses. ''How do I live as another man's ghost?''

Buntu, who knows well how the government has mercilessly stripped away from blacks their human rights, has a quick answer. ''Wasn't Sizwe Banzi a ghost?''

SIZWE BANZI IS DEAD

By Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona; directed by Aubrey Sekhabi; lighting by Mannie Manim; stage manager, Mary Susan Gregson. Presented by the Baxter Theater Center and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Alan H. Fishman, chairman; Karen Brooks Hopkins, president; Joseph V. Melillo, executive producer. At the Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; [phone]. Through April 19. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

WITH: John Kani (Styles/Buntu) and Winston Ntshona (Robert Zwelinzima/Sizwe Banzi).