Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week Film release patterns are very strange. One week there’s a host of movies and film festivals opening, and the next there’s virtually zip to write about. This week sees only four new movies being released, in comparison to last week’s seven along with the feast of films featured in […]

Chiara Carter The head of the elite presidential task unit charged with investigating Vito Palazzolo is standing by what he told the Mail & Guardian about an alleged photograph of former minister of foreign affairs Pik Botha in a compromising position. Botha was reported on the weekend to have said he intended suing the M&G […]

Alex Sudheim In 1769, at the tender age of 12, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed his first German operetta, Bastien and Bastienne. Although the music is light and fanciful, Mozart’s librettists based their apparently ingenuous tale of pastoral romance on some rather subversive material. FW Weisskern, JH Muller and JA Schachtner retooled the plot of an […]

Virgin South Africa have expressed their desire to sign Fetish. Lauren Shantall charts the band’s rapid rise The first time I saw Fetish, at their second-ever gig, they were decidedly terrible. Now, they’re the first and only local band so far to have been offered a recording contract with the recently formed Virgin South Africa. […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Wednesday 5.00pm. SOUTH African markets bucked an negative day on international markets to end firmer across the board as a long-awaited cut in the repo rate fuelled expectations that an interest rate cut is imminent. Dealers said that although the 25 basis point fall in the repo rate was only a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday 7.30pm. A MEMBER of the group responsible for the Bronkhorstspruit cash-in-transit heist in July last year was given R50000 of the spoils, even though he did not take part in the robbery itself, the Pretoria High Court heard on Thursday. Jerry Mashigo, who has turned state witness, said that while […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 10.15pm. SOUTH Africa’s three-time World Matchplay Championships winner Ernie Els will meet rising European star Lee Westwood in the quarterfinals of this year’s event after Westwood thrashed Australian Stuart Appleby eight and seven on Thursday. Dimunitive Welshman Ian Woosnam, who replaced German Bernhard Langer at the last minute, beat Northern […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Thursday 3.00pm. IN a landslide vote on Thursday, 99,5% of Sanlam policy holders approved the assurance giant’s proposal to demutualise. The demutualisation proposal, which will see Sanlam convert into an ordinary, listed company with shareholders instead of members, required only a 75% approval. Although not required by law to hold a […]

LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Nelspruit | Thursday 10.00pm. THE African National Congress in Mpumalanga on Thursday strongly denied a Nelspruit newspaper report that accused Premier Mathews Phosa of being involved in secret business deals with Alan Gray, suspended chief executive officer of the Mpumalanga Parks Board. It also denied reports in the Mpumalanga News that Phosa was […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.45pm. THE Natal Sharks will be fired-up for their big Currie Cup rugby match against Western Province at Newlands Saturday with the return of Springbok skipper, number eight Gary Teichmann and midfield bonecrusher Pieter Muller returning to the pack. Teichmann replaced Brad MacLeod-Henderson who played a sterling game last Saturday […]