The idea of a poetry festival in Timbuktu has been wandering since 1992 in the mind of Breyten Breytenbach, poet, painter and member of the board of trustees of the Gore Institute. This has been shared with other poets and kept alive throughout several years. It finally took place before the start of the new […]

Ellen Bartlett There has been a lot of speculation lately about what the Mail & Guardian plans to do regarding its tradition of designating a Bug of the Year – that is, naming the bug that has had the greatest impact in the last 12 months. The question, in short, has been: will the M&G […]

Christian Figenschou They’re the stuff of dreams, nightmares, aspirations and obsessions, freedom and empowerment; of all the inventions of the past 100 years, the motor car best captures the essence of the 20th century. The first self-propelled wagons were described as long ago as the 17th century, and the 19th century saw steam-powered carriages, but […]

Andrew Muchineripi looks at how 1999 treated local soccer It was a year that began with newly appointed Premier Soccer League (PSL) CEO Joe Ndhlela talking of a domestic set-up that would rival the best in Europe. It was a year that ended with Ndhlela suspended for bringing the game into disrepute after charges of […]

William Safire Bliss on bem cumendum fiusende geara, Eallum! That’s “Happy New Millennium, everybody!” in the language that the residents of England were speaking in AD 1000. For this back-translation, which I have jazzed up only a little, I am indebted to Antonette diPaolo Healey of the Dictionary of Old English Project at the University […]

stay the same Neil Manthorp flicks through the past century of cricket as we head into the next The day the famous Dr WG Grace, in the autumn of his career, replaced the bails after being bowled and said to the startled bowler: “The people have come to see me bat, not you bowl, sonnyE…” […]

SOMALI gunmen last week captured 33 foreign fishermen said to have been fishing illegally in Somali waters and vowed to punish them under Somali law, according to local elders on Wednesday. The fishermen, who were captured off the the Somali Ayl coast in the region of Garowe, along with their 1000-ton fishing trawler, include two […]

THE death toll in the ongoing carnage on South African roads since December 1 had reached the 500 mark by Wednesday afternoon, Arrive Alive said. In a statement it said 500 people have died in 335 accidents. Of those killed 229 were passengers, 136 were drivers and 135 pedestrians. KwaZulu-Natal still has the highest death […]

At the bloody dawn of a new millennium, Jonathan Steele foresees no escape for the world from warfare and suffering that branded the 20th century an Age of Barbarism This has been, as Eric Hobsbawm put it, ”without doubt the most murderous century of which we have record by the scale, frequency and length of […]

1 Babylon 2 The dragon (Satan) 3 One third 4 Twelve foundation stones and 12 gates representing ”the 12 apostles of the lamb” 5 One thousand years; after which he will be ”loosed a little season” 6 ”The first creature was like a lion, the second like an ox, the third had a human face, […]