American literary heavyweights trashed the bestselling novels of Tom Wolfe … but now he’s fighting back with gusto Julian Borger T he literary world loves a good punch- up, and as feuds go, this is the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila all rolled into one. The feud has brought together John […]

Heather Hogan The South African Police Service’s fraud unit is investigating an empowerment company that promised entrepreneurs their own bread distribution businesses, accepted their investments and then went into liquidation. Despite assurances from police that the investigation will commence this week, disgruntled investors, believing police are taking too long, staged a demonstration outside the Germiston […]

Time is running out for a group of farmworkers who are waiting for state assistance to build new homes Marianne Merten A group of 14 Stellenbosch farm workers and their children may soon find themselves homeless following the Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs’s failure to provide them with grants for the construction of new […]

Government plans to stiffen immigration legislation follow warnings by Western intelligence services that illegal immigrants have turned South Africa into a top drug conduit Paul Kirk The British intelligence service, MI5, has singled out South Africa as one of the “most important” conduits for South American drugs into Western Europe in a confidential report submitted […]

SARAH BULLEN, Cape Town | Friday 5.30pm THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange ran out of steam on Friday afternoon, after climbing marginally higher earlier in a day dominated by futures trade. The major indices closed mixed, with only the industrial and IT counters ending in positive territory. Boosting the IT sector was news that Prism rose […]

Paul Kirk Smuggling. The very word conjures images of drug dealers and hardened criminals. But in the United States, a special squad of dogs is trained to separate South African travellers from their smuggled biltong. Owing to restrictions on uncooked meat and vegetables the US does not allow biltong to be imported. That means South […]

Howard Barrell The government is seeking to avoid a political train smash with public service unions by overhauling the civil service pay structure that would automatically fix most annual increases at about the rate of inflation. But these government proposals – at the centre of its plans to improve the civil service while halting the […]

David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY In view of the rivalry between the old Transvaal and the Cape, the fact that they hosted competing disasters in a matter of days – the Cape burning and now the Transvaal almost washed away in floods – offers further grounds for suspicion that You-Know-Who is playing silly buggers upstairs again. […]

A chronology of the long and fragmented history of South African football. 1892: Birth of Football in South Africa, Natal Football Association and later Football Association of South Africa (Fasa). Fasa caters for white footballers only. 1951: Coloured, Black and Indian federations unite to form South African Soccer Federation (Sasf). 1952-1964: Fasa becomes member of […]

Shaun de Waal MOVIE OFTHEWEEK Inevitably, once Leonardo DiCaprio got involved, the making of The Beach became a major gossip-fest. Allegations flew about the film-makers’ ecological destruction of the beach where it was being filmed in Thailand; and Leo had allegedly hired an entire island nearby to house his current girlfriend. The rumours that impinge […]