The first week of the Olympics has thrown up some pleasant surprises to counter the disappointments Grant Shimmin As I looked down from the media centre overlooking the Sydney International Aquatic Centre’s warm-up pool early on Wednesday evening, Graham Hill walked by, clad in his South African shirt and with a tattoo of the national […]

Cape Town’s hidden jazz history is coming alive due to research undertaken at the District Six Museum Helene Dancer Jazz vocalist Maxine Tyler left Cape Town’s ill-fated District Six in 1963. Before she moved, she made a recording that she never heard. Last year, on her return to Cape Town, Tyler listened to her own […]

EMELIA SITHOLE AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Friday MAPUTO Mining and metals group Billiton plc says it needs to spend an extra $1.5bn to $2bn to expand its Hillside aluminium plant in South Africa and the Mozal aluminium smelter in Mozambique. ”The investment needed will be large … Billiton is now engaged in feasibility studies […]

DARREN SCHUETTLER AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday FINANCE Minister Trevor Manuel has summarily blocked a $3.7bn merger between Gold Fields Ltd and Canada’s Franco-Nevada that would have created the world’s third biggest gold miner, leaving both parties stunned by the surprise ruling. ”We don’t understand the reasoning yet. Hopefully we will be able to […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe spent more than US $500000 (R3,5m) of his struggling country’s cash by taking a delegation of 47, including his wife and three children, on a trip to the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York earlier this month, according to reports. Quoting from official correspondence the […]

STEVEN MANN AND REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday DOES President Thabo Mbeki believe that HIV causes Aids? Quizzed about the issue for the umpteenth time in Parliament, Mbeki has again resorted to verbal gymnastics to avoid giving a definitive answer to the question. “The programme of the government in this country is based on the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday GOVERNMENT has created three home-grown mutant superheroes as the stars of a campaign to raise awareness of the effects of alien vegetation, which drain billions of litres of water from South Africa’s reserves each year. Bionic Bug, Mechanical Man and Chemical Can will be the heroes of AlienBuster Week, which […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Cape Town | Thursday DEFENCE Minister Mosiuoa Lekota is to forward Auditor-General Shauket Fakie’s special report on South Africa’s controversial R30-billion arms deal to Cabinet for further action after Fakie recommended a probe into alleged irregularities in the deal. Lekota gave no indication whether he would personally support Fakie’s recommendation that […]

TWO men in balaclavas have held up a police station in the Northern Cape, getting away with R370000, embarrassed police have reported. The robbers held up the lone policeman at the Groblershoop station, waited till his colleague returned from investigating a case, then locked them both in a strongroom. They took the money – intended […]

A UNITED States-based company which produces equipment for reducing harmful vehicle omissions like carbon monoxide is to increase its investment in the Eastern Cape by more than R700m, premier Makhenkesi Stofile has announced. The announcement was made jointly with Engelhard Corporation vice president Edmund Stanczak, who is also general manager of the Environmental Technologies Group. […]