wife on Women’s Day’ Tangeni Amupadhi A well-known Johannesburg psychiatrist is to appear in court next week on charges of battering his wife on National Women’s Day. According to Yeoville police, where the woman laid charges of common assault, the psychiatrist – who cannot be named for professional reasons – attacked his wife twice on […]

Suzy Bell attends the annual celebrations of the appearance or birth of Lord Krishna, the supreme deity who revealed the Bhagavad Gita Steeped in sacred ceremony and ritual, over 50 000 Hare Krishna devotees, some from as far afield as Poland and Australia, immersed themselves in the three-day festival of Sri Krishna Janmastami last weekend. […]

Neil Manthorp in Birmingham Cricket At last, some justice. The final moment of any significance, the last memory of the tour of England, was positive. Not just the victory, but the catch by Jonty Rhodes in the covers. So often we see great feats of athleticism diminished by the television replay. Occasionally they remain untarnished, […]

Jon Qwelane Right to Reply The trouble with the Mail & Guardian’s editor and his small coterie of executives is their apparent obsession with the fallacy that they hold copyright on what is true and correct. Pontificating from their lofty ivory tower, they seem to have forgotten (or actually never even knew) two simple points: […]

Springboks Andy Capostagno Rugby It is tempting to say what a difference a year makes, but undoubtedly there are a few pedants out there who will point out that when South Africa meet Australia in Saturday’s Tri-Nations decider at Ellis Park, it will actually be only 364 days since the two last met in a […]

Stewart Dalby Spending it Travel literature is a field in which the collector would seem spoilt for choice. The variety is vast: exploration, seafaring, biology, outer space, anthropology, derring-do, geography, geology and meteorology. Some people collect modern tourist guides while others collect rare 16th- century books about how the world was first circumnavigated. What would […]

Sandra Spavins EMILY-KATE by Meg Jordan (Iris) This is a story about a little girl who temporarily goes missing on a farm in KwaZulu-Natal. It is a large-format picture book, but has more text than most books of this type. The average eight or nine year old should be able to read it, yet the […]

Howard Barrell Over a Barrel Thabo Mbeki, eloquent wielder of words though he is, has given himself a nigh impossible task: talking up an African revival. How the hell can the deputy president talk of an “African renaissance” when this continent is maimed by murder and misery? Look at Algeria, Angola, Burundi, Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, […]

Simone de Beauvoir described her companion and fellow philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, as her `greatest achievement’. But it was the American writer Nelson Algren who was the great love of her life. They began a passionate affair just as she was embarking on her landmark feminist text, The Second Sex. In her letters, she tells of […]