Evidence wa ka Ngobeni An independent mediator is to be appointed to intervene in the ongoing conflict at the troubled University of the Western Cape (UWC), amid fears that final examinations may not take place. Final examinations have already been postponed for two weeks, and the administration has not yet set a new date for […]

Sex is a growing global industry and South Africa is no exception. It’s just the tax collector who is missing out, write Ferial Haffajee and Tangeni Amupadhi At the Caligula nightclub near the bottom end of Hillbrow, where seedy gives way to slightly more respectable, the stripper lays out her props on the mirrored catwalk. […]

Adam Mars-Jones FREEDOM SONG by Amit Chaudhuri (Picador) Amit Chaudhuri’s writing comes as a mild therapeutic shock to those who visualise India as either benightedly rural or bustlingly urban: his characters may live in Calcutta, but they live at a private angle to their city. The cast of Freedom Song is large and tenuously related. […]

A new film on Cape Town’s homeless people takes the viewer on ‘a moral obstacle race’. Lauren Shantal reports ‘My name is Yvonne and I drink wine. And I like to smoke dagga.” When the mic is wrested from the compere and the evening begins with an assertion like this, you know that decorum and […]

Mike Metelits ING Barings analyst Phumzile Mamjezi identifies the major black chip groups in terms of market capitalisation as the Theta Group, Metropolitan Life (Metlife), New Africa Investments Limited (Nail), Real Africa Investments Limited (Rail) and the African Merchant Bank (AMB). These groups are often interconnected with cross holdings. Nail is owned 54,7% by Corporate […]

Alan Gray has spilled the beans on Mpumalanga’s elaborate network of shady empowerment companies. Justin Arenstein reports Political infighting in Mpumalanga has revealed a shadowy network of black empowerment companies set up in 1996 to channel funds into the African National Congress’s election coffers. The “empowerment” network includes casino ventures, security, aviation, medical rescue, travel, […]

Keith Devlin For about R5-million you can buy the earliest known account of the idea that inspired Archimedes to run naked down the street shouting “Eureka”. On October 29, Christie’s New York auction house will sell the manuscript that is the only source for Archimedes’s treatise, On the Method of Mechanical Theorems, and the only […]

identity Our audencies are yes men and our media are filled with nepotism, favour and laziness, argues Nathan Zeno I was at a Honeymoon Suites gig recently and the strangest thing happened. This guy asked me if I could “please not dance so much – you’re stepping on my feet all the time”. I looked […]

Andy Capostagno : Rugby Spring has always been a time of celebration. The time when John Barleycorn, cut down in the summer, returns to the fields with renewed vigour. But Gawain didn’t think much of spring, since it signalled the return of the Green Knight, who had a licence to chop off his head. And […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 10.30am. PRESIDENT of the World Boxing Council Dr Jose Sulaiman said on Wednesday that he will ask boxing promoter Don King to stage the heavyweight unification title bout between Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield in South Africa. Sulaiman said on his arrival in Johannesburg ahead of the world sanctioning body’s […]