A STONE-age site about 10000 years old has been discovered in Midrand near the Jukskei Valley, the Midrand Metropolitan Local Council announced on Thursday. The discovery was made with the help of Professor Revil Mason, retired head of the archaeology research unit at the Witwatersrand University. “This is the first time ever that a constructed […]

On the second Saturday of each month, starting on February 13, Shirley Kossick -emeritus professor of English literature, Unisa, and Mail & Guardian book critic – will give a series of talks on fiction and biography at the Natal Labia Museum in Muizenberg, Cape Town. On February 13, the subject is Canadian fiction; on March […]

Howard Barrell Over a Barrel An anarchic British pop group of the 1970s – called, I think, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Daa Band – used to play a time-travel trick on commuters on the London Tube. It involved the band getting hold of the newspapers from a particular day, say 20 years earlier, and then stepping […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Rome | Friday 12.30pm. THE Sierra Leone capital was calm on Thursday night, according to the Catholic Misna news agency, which reported a halt in fighting in Freetown’s eastern Kissy district. “The night seems to be calm,” a Sierra Leonean priest in the city told the Rome-based agency late last night. “On the […]

Just a week ago economists were hailing the rand’s recovery. Brazil this week dashed their hopes, writes Donna Block The nightmare scenario world economic leaders have struggled to avoid has begun. Brazil has hit the slippery slopes of destitution. China, Mexico, Venezuela, Chile and South Korea may follow. The world economy looks set to head […]

lap of agony Andy Capostagno Cricket For Brian Lara and his beleaguered team, the agony is almost over. The fifth Test, which begins on Friday at SuperSport Centurion, is the last proper cricket that the West Indies will have to play on this tour of South Africa. From next week on Philo Wallace will be […]

Edmund White THE SPELL by Alan Hollinghurst (Chatto & Windus) This is a thoroughly English novel in one way and totally exotic in another. What is undeniably English about the writing is the delicate sense of social comedy, the oblique silliness, all insinuation and suspension points, and the zanily camp humour, not to mention the […]

Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week `God, yet another pooftah movie,” groaned a fellow critic at the preview of Turkish Bath last week. Well, yeah, gay and lesbian cinema is booming – even the studios are making films with homosexual themes. Universal Pictures made To Wong Foo, an inferior drag queen movie with Wesley Snipes […]

Marianne Merten Non-governmental agencies in Cape Town are growing increasingly sceptical of the police’s ability to end the violence in the Cape and many are formulating new plans to stop the conflict. Several observers said that at the heart of the problem was the increasing politicisation of policing in the Western Cape. In the run-up […]