Ferial Haffajee The SABC board chair, Professor Paulus Zulu, may have acted unilaterally in sacking deputy chief executive Govin Reddy. Some board members sought a negotiated parting of the ways instead of the immediate termination of employment which Zulu penned in his July letter to Reddy. His action has exposed the SABC to a very […]

Sarah Penny INTO THE HOUSE OF THE ANCESTORS by Karl Maier (John Wiley & Sons) EATING THE FLOWERS OF PARADISE by Kevin Rushby (Constable) Last year Nelson Mandela made the following statement: “The time has come for Africa to take full responsibility for her woes and use the immense collective wisdom it possesses to make […]

Andrew Worsdale The first movie I ever saw was Swiss Family Robinson at the Greenway cinema in Greenside and I vividly remember sleeping most of the way through it, waking up for an instant to see a giant python slithering down a tree, and then I burst into tears. Thirty-something years later I feel like […]

possessions Peter Dickson How the mighty have fallen. Once he was a president who ruled with an iron finger. Today PW Botha is a pitiful old man, forced to pawn his prized trinkets in order to pay for his stubbornness. A week before his sentencing in the George Magistrates Court for refusing to testify before […]

Carolize Jansen The Sports Information and Science Agency conducted an extensive and enlightening study on the participation of women in sport last year. The main objectives of the study were to obtain the number of women participating in various sports in South Africa, segment the number of these participants in categories according to, for instance, […]

Wally Mbhele The credibility of the police and the prosecution – led by the Transvaal Attorney General, Jan d’Oliviera – has come under heavy assault from lawyers defending three African National Congress members who were convicted for the 1993 Eikenhof massacre. Fresh evidence pointing to prior police knowledge of the identity of the real perpetrators […]

It is perhaps not politically correct to draw sustenance from the “poet of Imperialism”. But as one surveys the international and domestic scene at the moment, the famous words from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, spring inevitably to mind: “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs …” We are living […]

Charlotte Raven First Person Another day, another report confirming men’s supposed oppression. This time, the global crisis as men across four continents confess to being annoyed that they’re not getting enough attention. According to a study by Research International, men are feeling unappreciated. Women hardly acknowledge them, except to laugh and point. On the odd […]

Matthew Krouse Johannesburg’s Newtown cultural precinct’s rather tarnished image as the social hub of the great African city has been amply lambasted. Suburbanites now bypass the city centre, believing it has fallen apart – especially Newtown, with its derelict buildings crowded with squatters, revelling township drunkards and stoned teenage ravers. So a visionary new scheme, […]

I was at cocktail party last week when I heard the terrifying news. A notice in Scientific American reported that video games change brain chemistry. In a study conducted at the Cyclotron Unit of Hammersmith Hospital in London, Dr Paul Grasby and his fellow researchers determined that playing video games triggers the release of dopamine […]