Nigeria 99? Chris McGreal in Lagos Soccer Nigeria’s military ruler, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, last week kicked off a campaign to proclaim the World Under-20 Championship a success before a goal is scored. Football chiefs and military men were treated to a spectacle of dancers and speeches about the wonders of “Nigeria 99”. And then the […]
Charlene Smith In 10 years, the average life expectancy of South Africans may be 40 years, there will be fewer children and many will be in orphanages. Prison populations will be mostly sick and dying, there will be greater absenteeism in the workplace, and farmers will battle to find enough well people to harvest crops […]
gets the monkey off his back Neil Manthorp in Auckland Cricket The heaviest burden in sport is the weight of expectation, and the heaviest burden of all is the one you place on yourself. Sons of great sportsmen are understood to suffer in the shadow of their fathers, but the truth is different. They place […]
Adam Haupt It’s Sunday afternoon at Making Music Productions and I’m hanging out with Cape hip- hop crew Black Noise and some Swedish hip-hop heads, who are participated in the recent Heal the Hood anti-racism, anti-crime campaign in the Western Cape. It’s been a long and hard two weeks for the Swedes and things are […]
These are the bulk of the questions faxed to Magnus Heystek, at his request, before publication. He declined to make any comment. 1. How do you reconcile the fact that your company, Cream Publishing, bought stand 1 with the house for R650 000 while the trust bought stand 2 for R850 000? 2. At the […]
Alex Dodd With South African music getting slicker and slicker by the minute, the competition’s been stiff. Which local band would get the gig? Which group would be selected to support two of the biggest party bands in the world on their upcoming tour to South Africa? The promoters are still not coming clean, but […]
Loose cannon:Robert Kirby Like so many I find myself touched by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s now routine meditations on national virtue. His sense of right and wrong becomes more acute by the day, his recent utterances seldom lack florid moral embellishment. Homilies about truth and probity fair tumble from his lips. His speeches have that […]
Two views of a new book that looks at the legacy of the mythical first woman – and what men have made of her FOR Natasha Fairweather THE STORY OF EVE by Pamela Norris (Picador) The history of human society might have followed a rather different course if the theologians of both the Jewish and […]
Howard Barrell Opposition leaders have united in a bitter row with the African National Congress over a government publicity campaign which they say is promoting the ANC and threatening to undermine the integrity of the coming elections. The heads of the opposition parties – the New National Party, Democratic Party, Pan Africanist Congress, African Christian […]
Rupert Jones A cellular phone which thinks it is a cash machine is about to go on trial in Britain. The hybrid handset brings the dream of access to one’s cash any time, any place, anywhere a big step closer. Cellphone banking is not new, but the customer is unable to do much more than […]