OWN CORRESPONDENT, Sardinia | Thursday 7.30pm. A FEISTY Mistral forced the cancellation of the first day of racing at the Sardinia Cup regatta in the Mediterranean this week and South African yachtsman Geoff Meek only managed a fifth place on the second day’s 80-mile offshore race in continuing 35-knot winds. Meek is one of five […]

Andrew Benson : Grand Prix Gustav Brunner quit his job as a designer at Ferrari’s Formula One team this year to become technical director of back-of-the- grid Minardi, but the 47-year-old Austrian still passes the Ferrari factory in Maranello on his way back to his apartment. “They are working very hard at Ferrari these days,” […]

The voyeurist counsel Mail & Guardian reporter There is a certain irony in the fact that the independent prosecutor who reportedly sings hymns on his morning jog and keeps a calendar with daily scripture verses at home should be the author of the United States’s latest publishing sensation. The 440-page report produced by Kenneth Starr […]

Chiara Carter The Pan Africanist Congress is spelt “Pat” in several townships and platteland towns in the Western Cape. PAC MP Patricia de Lille’s involvement in bread-and-butter issues is helping the party make inroads into coloured communities in the Western Cape – and attract a handful of white members. This weekend the PAC will launch […]

There was occasion for thanksgiving this week, on the release from Mozambique’s Machave prison of Robert McBride, although there is something of a puzzle as to who should be thanked. Not the African National Congress, few members of which turned up at Johannesburg International airport to welcome him home and thereby claim the credit. Under […]

David Conn : English Soccer English football has been transformed so rapidly in the last few years, from a game millions paid cheaply to watch on ramshackle terracing, to an activity which can make 100-million for one man like Martin Edwards, that it is difficult at times to make articulate sense of isolated developments. So […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday 3.20pm. A TELEPHONE conversation between apartheid spy Craig Williamson and suspended foreign affairs official Robert McBride on Friday dominated Williamson’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s amnesty hearing in Pretoria. In a bizarre turn of events, a tape submitted by counsel for the Slovo and Schoon families contained, alongside a recording of […]

More disillusioned MPs are expected to defect to the Democratic Party, writes Howard Barrell As the Democratic Party increasingly assumes the mantle of unofficial leader of the opposition in Parliament from the ailing National Party, a number of MPs from other opposition parties are expected to jump ship in coming weeks. Only the timing of […]

A small church is reuniting the uprooted residents of Kofifi, writes Peter Makurube When former residents of Sophiatown talk about their beloved Kofifi, they overdose on nostalgia. They’ve forgotten nothing – the music, the gangsters and the community spirit. However, the story of Sophiatown would not be complete without mentioning the tiny church on Ray […]

ballet It will soon be Brazil’s second most popular sport … and it’s not entirely dissimilar to the first. Alex Bellos heads for Rio’s beaches to uncover the burgeoning cult of futevolei One of the most romantic myths about Rio de Janeiro is that its famous beaches are full of barefoot urchins dazzling passers-by with […]