The first Ashes Test begins this Friday. Former England captain Mike Brearley recalls this specific kind of cricket animal Vulture Street, Brisbane: an aptly-named location for the start of an England tour. Wherever one finds it, a hostile sporting crowd embodies the stuff of nightmares. Batting or bowling, the player does his best. And what […]

The Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) announcement that it would not proceed with its investigation into complaints of alleged racism at the Mail & Guardian and the Sunday Times – but was instead expanding the inquiry into racism in the media as a whole – was made as we were going to the printers last week. […]

Wonder Hlongwa A Jewish extremist group has threatened to “take action” against a Johannesburg Muslim family because of what a 14-year-old wrote in a history assignment. Last week, the Jewish Defence League (JDL) wrote a letter to Hassan Cassim, father of Layla, a grade eight pupil at Crawford College, demanding that she retract the contents […]

Ferial Haffajee The Independent Newspaper group’s golden boy, Shaun Johnson, has stepped down from his executive position to become a specialist writer for its 14 newspaper titles. Johnson’s move has come at the same time as unprecedented trouble at the Irish-owned media group, but he swears that the timing is coincidental. “There are some people […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Thursday 8.00pm. A BILL that will allow Namibian President Sam Nujoma to stand for a third term was approved by the second house of parliament on Thursday, and now only needs Nujoma’s own signature to become law. The controversial Namibian Constitution First Amendment Bill, passed in the National Council by 19 […]

She writes textbooks for a living and composes poems about Sea Point. Karen Press speaks to Jane Rosenthal Poet Karen Press, who currently writes science and maths textbooks for a living, has lived in Sea Point for much of her life. Characteristically, she has had some dialogue with herself on what most folk would just […]

Wally Mbhele Former Transvaal attorney general Jan d’Oliviera – suspected of tampering with new evidence resulting from a trial he prosecuted – has started a battle to defend his reputation. D’Oliveira was the prosecutor in the trial in which three African National Congress members were convicted of the 1993 Eikenhof killings. The Pan Africanist Congress […]

Maureen Barnes : Down the tube Two of the most entertaining weekday series recently have been screened on e.tv. Dalziel and Pascoe is on Friday night at 9pm – a night which the other channels treat as thugs night in and over-excite their audiences by screening kung fu or Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. It’s a classic […]

Angella Johnson : View From a Broad They say that money can’t buy you love. Well, it can at least get you the body and face of your dreams. I had been considering cosmetic surgery for some time – nothing radical, mind you, just a little liposuction on the adipose tissue in my stomach. But […]

They belong to women, but everywhere they are annexed – as a symbol of strength, as a symbol of weakness, by the artist, by the pornographer, by the advertiser, for sex, for nourishment. What is the significance of breasts? Libby Brooks reclaims the personal and the tactile from the political and the commercial At the […]