Grant Shimmin OLYMPICS With many of the athletes who’ll be their national team-mates in Sydney in September already named, the battle to get to this year’s Olympics is just beginning for most of the country’s finest track and field exponents as the European season gets into full swing. In fact, the sport’s biggest circuit could […]
On a trip to the Sossusvlei dunes, Kit Peel found a spot of luxury in the harsh desert Guidebooks are misleading. There’s nothing new in that. You go to England but don’t really expect, as part of your itinerary, to have tea with the queen or hang out with Damien Hirst in his latest eatery. […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION Even though it was two weeks ago, I feel I should respond in kind to the good- natured invective from Roberta Durrant which was published while I was taking a break from this column. Roberta was complaining about a critical notice I gave to two of her searing new local tragedies, Big […]
Barry Streek Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry Ronnie Kasrils has bluntly admitted that the government’s strategy of providing all South Africans with clean water has not been as successful as originally planned. He says the water programme has served more than 5,6-million people with water – 2,6-million to Reconstruction and Development Programme standards – […]
John Young CRICKET Cricket’s transgressors and confessors probably haven’t noticed, but every morning as they pass through the portal of the Centre for the Book at 62 Queen Victoria Street, they are greeted with an impassive stare from one of South African cricket’s original sponsors. A bas-relief bust of Sir Donald Currie, owner of the […]
Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER Just when we feared the 1999-2000 South African soccer season would never end, it did. And what a sad finale it proved to be at a chilly, overcast, near-deserted Johannesburg Stadium. Bowing to long-running pressure, this humble scribe took some young relatives along and helped swell the crowd to 2 000 for […]
Andy Capostagno RUGBY When a great player shows signs of mortality it is a brave coach who tells him to shape up or ship out. Whether it was because of a knee injury that has not properly healed, a paucity of playing time or that most elusive of facets, a lack of ambition, scrumhalf Joost […]
Olympics Mark Ouma Having learned from her mistakes at the Atlanta Olympics four years ago, Gabriela Szabo plans to fulfil her dream of becoming an Olympic champion in Sydney next September. The 1999 World Female Athlete of the Year, Szabo intends to continue her success this year. What has never come to light before is […]
BLOOD ACRE by Peter Landesman (Penguin) There is a sense of inevitability about this elegant noir novel – that awful deeds will out in dark and slimy places, that one cannot run forever from the wreck one has made of people’s lives. Coney Island during a winter storm is the right place for such a […]
hard place Marianne Merten The University of Stellenbosch is fighting a battle on two fronts: not only is it trying to convince black students that it is no longer a Broederbond bastion, but it is also struggling to honour its commitment to remain a centre of the Afrikaans language. After taking office in 1993, rector […]