SOUTH African pet lovers have started an air bridge for cats and dogs caught up in the violence in neighbouring Zimbabwe. Spurred by television footage in April of farm pets being beaten to death or maimed by war veterans invading white-owned farms, the Johannesburg-based Wet Nose Animal Rescue Centre stepped in. The centre’s spokeswoman, Elmine […]

Valentine Cascarino Iboh ART Painting in watercolour is frowned upon – the victim of a disturbing myth, mostly harboured by critical modernists who believed watercolour is Victorian and amateurish. Those critics don’t even consider the fact that painting in watercolour presents a direct link to the development of romantic painting in the 19th century. Neither […]

Jubie Matlou previews issues to be tabled before the SADC Economic Summit next week If Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries were to go to war, it would be over a piece of a fabric. Belligerents would consist of South Africa and its Southern African Customs Union (SACU) partners of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland […]

Mary Dover LIFESTYLE For all the coffee snobs out there, the latest place to hang out is the Illy Boutique in Sandton Square, a new venture launched by House of Coffees. And no, its not true that House of Coffees is closing down – the group is still going strong with more than 30 stores […]

Thebe Mabanga The British rock guitarist Brian May once noted how “we live in interesting times. But we also live in dangerous times.” He may very well have been talking to South Africa’s youth. For although some of South Africa’s 16- to 30-year-olds are justifiably despondent in the face of rising unemployment, those who have […]

Henry Gee looks at the surprising secrets of one of nature’s stickiest surfaces – the gecko’s atom-powered feet Robert Full’s laboratory is more than usually full of gizmos, even for a modern biologist. Full is a biological engineer. Like an industrial espionage outfit, he and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, look at nature […]

Nigel Fairhead spoke out this week for the first time about the dastardly murder of his wife and young daughter Lin Sampson The early part of this year was marked by a spate of unusual fires that crackled ominously across the Constantia Valley and left a deposit of ash on everything like a veil of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 1.45pm. SACKED South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje told the King Commission into match-fixing that former Indian captain Mohammed Azharuddin introduced him to a bookmaker who offered him money for losing a Test in 1996. Cronje said Azharuddin arranged a meeting with the bookmaker known as MK in at […]

Thebe Mabanga IN YOUR EAR The community radio sector has received an impressive boost with the launch of the Coca-Cola Enjoy hour. The project was started in February as a six-week pilot project on Alex FM. The project then became national, incorporating a selection of drive-time presenters, including Alex FM and Voice of Soweto in […]

Tim Adams ANIL’S GHOST by Michael Ondaatje (Bloomsbury) It has been seven years since Michael Ondaatje published The English Patient. Prior to that book, prior to the Booker Prize and to Ralph Fiennes and the seven Oscars, Ondaatje had written two other novels, as well as a critically successful memoir and 10 volumes of poetry, […]