Ann Eveleth Gauteng residents will have a “legal obligation” to care for their elderly parents, and could face fines of up to R50 000 or up to five years’ imprisonment if they are found to be “negligent”. This is one of the proposals of the Securing the Future for Gauteng’s Elderly Bill – one of […]
Digby Ricci THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION by Gore Vidal (Knopf) One hates to bow to conventional wisdom, but Gore Vidal really is a far better essayist than he is a novelist. In his essays, the erudition is elegantly startling, but never obtrusive, and the much-vaunted “mordant wit” is a rapier, not a bludgeon. Thus, Susan Sontag’s […]
Phillip Kakaza Ella and Louis, Neneh and Youssou, Sam and Dave – today they’re names that go together like bread and butter. New to this territory of legendary musical collaboration comes the one happening here and now between local R&B/hip-hop funkmaster E’Smile, explorative drummer Barry van Zyl and bass guitarist Andre Abrahamse. Under the collective […]
Who is . . . George Soros? Larry Elliott It’s 7.45pm on the evening of September 16 1992. Night is falling and the chancellor of the exchequer, an ashen-faced Norman Lamont, nervously runs his hands through his hair as the flashbulbs pop. After a day of disaster in which the Bank of England’s foreign currency […]
Watching local soccer drama Lisenethini on SABC1, Peter Makurube recalls days when failure to gain entry to a stadium reduced grown men to tears The creation of a soccer drama Lisenethini, starring local heroes, about our own demi-gods of the pigskin, is the best thing to have happened on television since the first screenings of […]
front David Hirst Last month an “important announcement” appeared on a website, , “in the name of God the merciful, the compassionate”. It consisted of a brief interview which the journal al- Murabitoun – mouthpiece of al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, Egypt’s largest underground organisation – had with one of the group’s exiled leaders, Sheikh Abu Yasser Rifai […]
Springboks Andy Capostagno Rugby It is tempting to say what a difference a year makes, but undoubtedly there are a few pedants out there who will point out that when South Africa meet Australia in Saturday’s Tri-Nations decider at Ellis Park, it will actually be only 364 days since the two last met in a […]
queen Michael Knipe Peggy Phango came to Britain from South Africa in 1961 as the female lead in the ground-breaking jazz musical King Kong. She played a glamorous shebeen queen – a role originated by her cousin, Miriam Makeba – in an exuberant show featuring an all-black cast and the jazz-influenced rhythms and harmonies of […]
Robert Kirby: Loose cannon I have it on the best authority that Monica Lewinsky is actually what is known in the espionage business as a “high-grade deep mole”. In truth Monica works for Saddam Hussein who personally coached her in the finer points of presidential seduction. The entire oval office sexual farrago is a brilliantly […]
Andrew Muchineripi English Premiership The English Premiership grows more cosmopolitan by the day with league and cup holders Arsenal among the clubs who bolstered their “foreign legion” during the close season. Defender Nelson Vivas was in the Argentine team that ended the World Cup dreams of England and arrived at Highbury from Swiss club Lugano […]