ball Merryman Kunene Bafana Ngonzwane, a Standard 7 pupil at Malvern High, hails from Dobsonville in Soweto. He and his friends, Gift Sibeko and Vuyo Mrali, have long abandoned playing football in the township using balls made of plastic, bricks for poles and the occasional R5 bet that comes with it. All three have enrolled […]
President Thabo Mbeki has launched a campaign for an international economic system more advantageous to developing countries Howard Barrell President Thabo Mbeki is not given to timidity when it comes to “the vision thing”, as George Bush called it. Having declared his intention as vice president to rouse Africa into renaissance, as president he is […]
The Olympic Games are just two months away and Sydney is gearing up for the big event Grant Shimmin in Sydney I was finding it a little difficult to believe. I mean, here I was in the city where it would soon all be happening and there seemed to be nothing to tell me about […]
Bryan Rostron Consider, in the light of Zimbabwe’s election, this report on the political background to the renaissance: “Now, if the interests of the ruling class are at stake, the Constitution is no longer altered, but simply abused, the ballot boxes are falsified, the officials bribed or intimidated.” The economic consequences, meanwhile, are all too […]
Harry Pearson Last week I attended one of the jewels in the sporting calendar, the village first- school sports day. It was a sunny afternoon, the attendance was good and all the children got a chance to take part. As the afternoon progressed I watched kindly mums wink at six-year-olds who had just finished last […]
Simon Bowers Like one of the young sorcerer’s own spells, Pottermania is producing some unexpected results in bookshops across the globe. While many stores agree that JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – the teenage wizard’s fourth adventure – is the fastest selling book they have seen, the hype and hysteria surrounding […]
Heather Hogan Also known as “Mandela’s children”, the Birth to Ten (BTT) project, a collaboration between several universities and organisations, has studied thousands of children for the past 10 years to gauge the effects of urbanisation and political transformation on their growth and well-being. In 1989 the project began studying 3 275 children from the […]
hopes Neal Collins I have a picture in my head of Oceania’s Fifa delegate Charles Dempsey that I am finding hard to shift. Purely fictional of course, but it could just serve to explain how the Germans managed to grab the World Cup from the dark continent at the last possible moment. Dreamlike, I can […]
Muff Andersson I had to fight for the picture above of former president Nelson Mandela, Johannesburg mayor Isaac Mogase and Professor Lindsay Bremner of the University of the Witwatersrand. Madiba’s protocol person told me to get lost. He will not do it, she said, exiting the council venue that had been hosting her boss. But […]
Angus Begg TRAVEL Simultaneously smiling and serious, the blond forty-something wildlife exec called me over to his stall. It was the Indaba 2000 in Durban, the Southern African tourism industry’s annual showcase to the world. “You’ve got to see this,” he said, with a fair deal of enthusiasm. I already had, or so I thought […]