Shirley Kossick THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO WOMEN’S WRITING IN ENGLISH edited by Lorna Sage (Cambridge University Press) The material in this guide consists of over 2 500 entries – from a 300-strong panel of contributors – simply set out in alphabetical order under each author’s name. Key titles (such as Jane Eyre, To the Lighthouse […]

John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF So my friend and colleague Phillip van Niekerk might find himself in jail in the next few weeks, if he isn’t careful. I have been telling him that if it does come to the worst-case scenario, and he defies the Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) summons to appear before it […]

Howard Barrell President Thabo Mbeki and Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel have thrust aside last-minute resistance from Cabinet colleagues and decided to launch on time what is likely to prove a silent revolution in the control of the state’s finances and its delivery of services. Manuel told Parliament in his budget speech on Wednesday that […]

Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER If the South African under-23 side defeat Cameroon in Yaounde on Saturday and Ghana at Vosloorus Stadium next month, cries of siyaya e Sydney will reverberate around our beautiful land. It is a big if, with the first hurdle particularly difficult, but what a prize lies in wait should we succeed. A […]

THE SA Revenue Service plans to recruit about 100 additional full-timeauditors and about 30 forensic auditors in the coming months in order to deliver on its undertaking to collect R210,4billion in taxes in 2000-2001. Business Day reports that this would be 7,2% higher than this year’s achievement. It reports that SARS commissioner Pravin Gordhan said […]

Last week in this column, bell hooks made a distinction between romantic love and true love. The former, she told us, quoting from Toni Morrison, is “one of the most destructive ideas in the history of modern thought”. She may be right, but then hooks goes on to define “true love” in terms that don’t […]

It wasn’t that long ago that patrons of bars and restuarants were requested to “please refrain from the smoking of pipes and cigars”. The traditional image of a cigar smoker was a leisurely fat cat in his fifties. A man with both time and money on his hands. Now it seems that most establishments carry […]

This was not the week to be jobless, poor and a sinner. In the moral schema that underlay Minister of Fiance Trevor Manuel’s budget, little charity was on offer for this category among us. It was those of us in work who got the tax breaks, the rich can afford to pay cunning accountants to […]

THE Transvaal Agricultural Union has warned that many of the estimated 4000 farm schools in South Africa may be forced to close down because of government negligence. TAU Mpumalanga spokesman, Theo Wassenaar, said many farm schools lack infrastructure like electricity and sewage systems and the department also fails to maintain them. “Farmers and government differ […]

Polly Pattullo Visitors look at new places with eyes that are loaded with their perceptions about the world and where they come from. Depending on the “view”, we can be fascinated, bored or anguished. It can be unforgettable or mundane. Our hosts, who look at that same view every day, see things differently. Such confusion […]