THE Virginia Regional Court on Wednesday imposed a R500000 fine on the management of Rovic diamond mine after 20 people were killed in a mudslide in November 1996, SABC radio news reported on Thursday. On December 1, the manager of the mine near Dealesville in the Free pleaded guilty to charges of manslaughter. Pieter Smith […]

Ruben Mowszowski The rift between science and religion and how it might be healed has been one of the hot topics at the Parliament of World Religions. But there is a sense of a discussion taking place too late. A marriage of a kind – one between spirituality and technology – has already taken place […]

Will the current fixation on Mediterranean cuisine be replaced by something from deeper south? Probably not. The myth that Africans love their red meat swimming in an ocean of oil has not done much to promote local flavours in a world that is obsessed with cholesterol cutting. And the myth that Africans like their vegetables […]

SOUTH Africa will meet Zambia in the Cosafa Cup under-20 final at Vosloorus Stadium in Johannesburg on Friday after beating Zimbabwe 4-1 in Thursday’s semi-final. Zambia pipped Lesotho 2-0 to gain entrance to the final. The South Africans were too strong on Thursday, and scored three goals within five minutes in the second half. Benedict […]

Local documentaries are getting more creative, more reflective – the days of talking heads are over, writes Andrew Worsdale Post-1976 the surge of mass opposition to the state in South Africa led to the establishment of setups like the Community Video Resource Association and a Super- Eight co-op under the Community Arts Project in Cape […]

Howard Barrell OVER A BARREL What a relief to discover that the Democratic Party may also be led by a bunch of venal, ambitious, self-serving bastards; that, in the very best traditions of politicians the world over, some of its leaders may also now know how to waken the dead when they need a few […]

Paul Trueman Arthur C Clarke may have correctly predicted the uses of orbiting satellites and artificial intelligence, but boy did he come a cropper with his notion of a video phone. In 2001: A Space Odyssey a character makes a video call home from a space station, and chats to his daughter on a huge […]

Robert Kirby THE MIRACLE RIVERS by Peter and Beverly Pickford (Southern) Any new book by Peter and Beverly Pickford raises expectations. The work of these two gifted wildlife photographers has always been of almost solitary excellence. In a market these days far more than adequately served, the Pickfords’ work remains individual and always surprising. Their […]

Fiona Macleod Aaron Mmako (39) used to sell his sculptures for a pittance on the side of the road. He knows how hard it is to flag down a tourist, and how easy it is to sell a lovingly crafted piece for a song because it is the only cash he will see for a […]

MSI Cellular, an international operator in the Khuluma 084 consortium bidding for the third cellular licence, announced on Thursday that it has won the GSM cellular licence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, now its 10th GSM licence in Africa. The DR Congo was the first African country to install a cellular network in 1986. […]