The Festival of Living Treasures is set to take over from Womad, writes Alex Sudheim A warm wave of sensuous sound from the four corners of the earth engulfs South Africa this month in the form of the Festival of Living Treasures. Held in KwaZulu-Natal over five days from December 15 to 19, the festival […]

Deon Potgieter Boxing As the millennium is counted out amid an ignored controversy – most pundits agree that the next millennium starts on January 1 2001 – so too any selection of a top 10 has its controversies. Historically significant bouts of the millennium speak for themselves. James Couper vs Woolf Bendoff: July 26 1889 […]

SOUTH Africa’s seven-a-side rugby team kick off their challenge for the Stellenbosch Sevens title on Friday with a match against Kenya at the Danie Craven Stadium. The team, led by former Bok winger Jacques Olivier, will be hoping to improve on their recent showing at the Dubai Sevens where they were beaten 31-0 in the […]

Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH They’ve started it already. According to a Jazz-FM station DJ, who maddens me daily by playing pop instead of jazz, and who interrupts good jazz with idle chatter – I get particularly mad when a guitar solo is truncated – the “product of the century” is the paper clip. […]

David Le Page Your cellphone calls are probably still safe from eavesdroppers. But now Israeli researchers have discovered how to crack Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) cellular encryption, it’s probably just a matter of time before they will become vulnerable to the listening capabilities of everyone from tabloid journalists to would-be blackmailers. The National […]

CD of the week Okay, Orbital have sampled Dollar on In the Middle of Nowhere (ffrr). It shows an admirable open-mindedness, if you ask me. Not that you’d expect anything less. My favourite Orbital moment is when they whack the chorus of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth through the speakers at their […]

Adam Mars-Jones BODY LANGUAGE Mrs Patrick Campbell once famously said that she didn’t care what people did in the bedroom as long as they didn’t frighten the horses. Now it turns out that no human sexual act has much prospect of startling our animal cousins. In his astounding book, Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural […]

Adam Haupt spoke to the mystical Bansuri flautist Deepak Ram about his new release, Searching for Satyam It is ironic that Deepak Ram’s new album, Searching for Satyam, is being released when it seems that music stores have only just recently started to promote Flute for Thought, Ram’s previous release. Tananas fans might remember Deepak […]

up? Radicals, revolutionaries and Tony Blair all lay claim to Christ. Peter Stanford asks who’s right Seated before a stage built to resemble a giant Christmas crib, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Saturday December 4 opened the millennium celebrations in the town of Bethlehem, where tradition has it that Christ was born. A band played […]

EMMA THOMASSON, Pretoria | Friday 8.30am THE government warned on Thursday that unless the European Union ratifies a long-awaited free trade deal soon, its implementation could not take place as planned next month. Trade and Industry Minister Alec Irwin said, however, that a short delay will not be a major tragedy. ”The EU must make […]