Max Hamata and Thokozani Mtshali The flesh trade has found a niche on campuses across South Africa, but not because students are impoverished and battling to pay fees. Peer pressure to wear the latest brand of clothing and carry the smallest cellphone has prompted many young women into selling their bodies. A 23-year-old third-year business […]

RobertKirby : Loosecannon I would like to express my gratitude to Kader Asmal for his good-natured response (“Kirby should look before he leaps”, September 11 to 17) to a column of mine in which I suggested he needed a wake-up call on the matter of the Dukuduku forest – or what is left of the […]

It’s written in the stars, but only the experts can read it, and not everybody believes it. Jane Rosenthal visited astrologer Rod Suskin The day I made an appointment with Rod Suskin, I did not know that my father would die (I knew he was sick) and nor did I know that a devastating forest […]

Brenda Atkinson : On show in Johannesburg Looking at two Johannesburg exhibitions recently, it occurred to me that the position of the art critic – and of some artists – is increasingly one of impossibility. This is because one of the ironies of globalisation, transnationalism, and all those other terms that would suggest the dissolution […]

After hundreds of years of research, the molecular spark that triggered life still puzzles scientists, writes Paul Davies In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the monster is brought to life by a bolt of electricity. This procedure fitted in with the 19th-century view that living matter is somehow distinct from non-living matter, and that an organism […]

James Rupert in Kinshasa Three generations of Andre Miku’s family live in the concrete-block compound they have built over decades around a dirt yard and a mango tree. Of 11 people who live here, none has a formal job. Miku (70), a retired mechanic, receives a government pension of $7 a month. The family rents […]

Howard Barrell : Over a Barrel One of our stranger habits as South Africans is to imagine the rest of the world owes us a living. It is not a feeling many readily admit to. It is more an underlying conviction which governs much of our political and economic behaviour. We did once represent a […]

David Shapshak Kabuki theatre, one of Japan’s most ancient and revered art forms, comes to South Africa for the first time this weekend. Renowned Kabuki actor Satojiro Wakayagi will perform the famed kagamijishi dance (the lion of new year’s banquet) at Sandton’s Theatre on the Square on Sunday night. Kabuki is quintessentially Japanese. A highly-stylised […]

Julienne du Toit There are few things that strike fear into the heart of an environmentalist faster than high-speed industrialisation in remote, beautiful areas. Spatial Development Initiatives (SDIs) have been planned on and near some of the finest beauty spots. So the response of many environmentalists and environmental organisations has ranged between outrage and mistrust, […]

David Hirst in Beirut President Liamine Zeroual’s decision to step down before the end of his five-year term looks likely to weaken Algeria’s military-based regime and further erode domestic and international confidence in its ability to end the gruesome civil war. The shock decision, announced last weekend, has plunged the country into new confusion and […]