Duncan Mackay : Athletics When Tegla Loroupe returned to Kenya after winning the New York City Marathon in 1994, a party was organised and the villagers presented her parents with nine cattle, 16 sheep and some land. Yet it was the words of the women in her tribe she still values the most. “You did […]

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 […]

LEWIS MACHIPISA, Harare | Friday 7.30pm. PICKETING Harare city council workers on Friday burnt the Zimbabwean national flag and assaulted the deputy mayor as they vetted their anger over the non-payment of their October salaries. The workers have vowed not to return to work unless they get their wages. They also are calling for the […]

Anthony Browne: SHARE WORLD As the financial whirlwind that started in Thailand 15 months ago engulfs the rest of the world, it is difficult not to be pessimistic. A quarter of the world is in recession, the United States and the United Kingdom may well follow, Brazil and China are struggling, while the Indonesian economy […]

Anthony Egan KING KHAMA, EMPEROR JOE AND THE GREAT WHITE QUEEN: VICTORIAN BRITAIN THROUGH AFRICAN EYES by Neil Parsons (University of Chicago Press) In 1895, three Bechuana chiefs -Khama, Sebele and Bathoen – travelled to Britain to meet Queen Victoria. This was no courtesy visit, but an attempt to protect their communities from the encroachment […]

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. […]

Mark Rozzo THE SURGEON OF CROWTHORNE by Simon Winchester (Viking) In 1879, James Murray, an expert on the dialects of his native Scotland and the recently appointed editor of The New Dictionary on Historical Principles, called for volunteers from Britain, the United States and the colonies to help create the first complete dictionary of the […]

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 […]