Joan Smith:FIRST PERSON Bob Dole is too old to run for president in the year 2000, but his wife is not, Elizabeth Dole has stepped down as president of the American Red Cross, encouraging speculation that she intends to declare herself as a contender for the White House. Elizabeth Dole, who was transport secretary in […]

SOUTH Africans tuned in to watch the launch of South Africa’s first satellite from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA, were disappointed on Friday when controllers ruled the launch a “no-go” at the last minute. This was the second attempt to launch the satellite named Sunsat, which was built by the engineering faculty […]

SOUTH African boxer Soon Botes is angry after being notified from Germany that WBU super middleweight champion Norbert Noriega has refused to meet him in a return bout. Botes lost a disputed decision against the German with the vacant WBU title at stake in Dortmund last year, and was assured by WBU president Jon Robinson […]

Peter Conrad A MAN IN FULL by Tom Wolfe (Jonathan Cape) The brash, skyscraping egos of America love to build monuments to themselves. In his second novel, Tom Wolfe surveys the skyline of Atlanta, the country’s latest mushroom metropolis, and notes that those spires of ghostly, uninhabited glass are sustained by nothing more than speculative […]

CD of the week: Dave Chislett The recent vast successes of the Springbok Nude Girls, best exemplified by the track Blue Eyes, has tended to overshadow the roots of the band, and the fact that, without a doubt, they are really an alternative act. At Nude Girls shows at the moment, you will find trendies, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi This is Sisi Modise (not her real name). She is four years old and lives in Mapetla, Soweto. In April last year, she became a statistic in the growing list of children sexually abused by adults in South Africa. But in Sisi’s case, the man charged with indecently assaulting her, Leqhoba Tsotetsi, was […]

ANGOLAN President Eduardo dos Santos sacked his health minister on Thursday at the request of dissident members of the Unita rebel movement. Ruben Sikato had refused to join the dissidents, who in September disavowed Unita leader Jonas Savimbi, splitting the movement. The Luanda regime has broken off relations with Savimbi and now says it recognises […]