Ivor Powell It was one of those acts of Sod, the unavoidable pitfalls of journalistic deadlines: the day that everything changed in South Africa fell on a Friday, the day of the then Weekly Mail’s publication. So we had to wait another week before The Weekly Mail could respond to the drama that unfolded as […]

Channel vision Last week I was harping on about how television delivers up its little shock tactics. Some crafty incubus waits until the audience is deep in mindless acceptance mode, then slips in a dart so sharp as to horrify. Last Saturday this happened in the middle of an SABC3 news bulletin. The effect was […]

Lucretia Stewart Body Language `Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” was Professor Higgins’s bewildered complaint in My Fair Lady, as Eliza Doolittle led him a merry dance. How times have changed. Now men want to be more like women, sometimes even to be women. Failing that, the question today seems to be: […]

SPORT and Recreation Minister Ngconde Balfour wants greyhound racing legalised. Briefing the national Assembly’s sport and recreation committee on Tuesday, Balfour said greyhound racing is legal in most developed countries. He asked the committee to start investigating the possibility of legalising the sport. Balfour said his office had received a flood of correspondance on the […]

Gregory Mthembu-Salter United Nations Security Council members are currently adding the finishing touches to a resolution on the deployment of a UN force in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This follows a request for troops from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and an impassioned appeal for assistance from African heads of state and government representatives, […]

I am snowed-in in the United States, and although it is initially quite exciting, the novelty begins to fade as the implications begin to sink in.

Brenda Atkinson Mixed Media A couple of months ago, an excitable tide of telltale rippled through the Johannesburg ad industry. Mike Schalit, creative director at Net#work and outgoing chair of the Creative Directors’ Forum (CDF), had called upon all CDF affiliated agencies to take up the cudgels for creativity in this country by toppling John […]

Howard Barrell CONSOLIDATING DEMOCRACY: SOUTH AFRICA’S SECOND POPULAR ELECTION by Tom Lodge (Witwatersrand University Press) AFRICAN DEMOCRACY IN THE ERA OF GLOBALISATION by Jonathan Hyslop (Witwatersrand University Press) When people start talking of “miracles” to explain unexpected political developments, one can usually smell intellectual surrender. For, if they are anything, miracles are supposed to be […]

What’s new? The lovely Ananova will soon be reading the news on the Press Association’s website – and working 24 hours a day without any breaks for eating or sleeping or visiting the bathroom. She is a vactor (virtual actor) or “synthespian” created by Digital Animations, and she uses text-to-speech software from Lernout & Hauspie. […]

Telford Vice looks at the shenanigans behind the resignation of United Cricket Board president Ray White The covers were peeled off South African cricket at the weekend, and the cracks in the exposed surface were more than superficial. On Saturday, Ray White bowed to pressure from within and resigned as president of the United Cricket […]