THE black empowerment Uthingo consortium will operate South Africa’s state lottery, Trade and Industry Minister Alec Erwin announced on Friday. The lottery should be up and running in six months, Uthingo chief executive officer Humphrey Khoza said at a Johannesburg news conference where the announcement was made. The lottery is expected to contribute R100 million […]

Of the half-a-million `convicts’ shipped to Siberia to fuel the engines of the Stalinist regime, only a few survived. Eventually, they were given their freedom, and a paper to say they had not committed any crime. Yet 50 years on, many are still living in their icy prison. James Meek reports On a winter’s day […]

Shaun de Waal Pop movie of the week Stephen Somers’s film, The Mummy, updates the 1932 original via Indiana Jones, making of it an adventure romp rather than a mere horror flick, though the monster still takes centre stage in this hugely enjoyable creature feature. He is not the somewhat sad figure provided by Boris […]

Net users used to say that “information wants to be free”, but the new trend is for websites that will pay you to read them. Frequent surfers can collect cash in the form of “ipoints” or beenz the way frequent flyers collect air miles, as website owners sign up for rewards schemes that encourage customers […]

Jack Schofield & Sean Dodson What’s New Apple is expected to unveil a portable and probably colourful Macintosh computer aimed at consumers at the MacWorld show in New York later this month (July 20 to 23). The P1, which may be called the WebMate, is being made in Taiwan by Alpha Top, and is expected […]

THURSDAY, 12.30PM: THE South African Under-21 team beat their English counterparts by 41-12 in their Sanzar/UAR U21 Tournament match in the second round of the event at the UWC Stadium in Bellville on Wednesday night. The South Africans, who lost 41-6 to Argentina in their tournament opener, blitzed the English with a five-try strike in […]

Tangeni Amupadhi IN CONFLICT by Anthony Feinstein (David Philip) In Conflict is one man’s account of how he compromised his own beliefs to fight in defence of apartheid. Anthony Feinstein put off national service in the then South African Defence Force (SADF) by going straight from school to university, where he became increasingly convinced that […]

Heather Hogan Potchefstroom police have launched an intensive search for missing Witrand hospital patient John Walgenbach. This is the 10th time Walgenbach has escaped from the dismal institution. Walgenbach (43) – who has the mental capacity of a five-year-old – escaped from Witrand on Friday, June 18. Many other patients walk out of the institution […]

Shaun de Waal Art movie of the week South African writer Damon Galgut’s novel, on which Belgian director Marion Hnsel’s film The Quarry is based, is a spare, hauntingly oblique work. The main character is known simply as ”the man”: as the film begins, he is on the run, but why, and from what, we […]