Matthew Krouse On the air in Johannesburg In the 1920s, when radio transmitters were switched on for the first time all over the world, live music was the main attraction. The immediacy of the medium made people feel so modern, so in-with-the-times. Suddenly, you didn’t actually have to be there, to be part of what […]

machine Andy Capostagno Golf It might be unkind to a fine tournament, but this week’s United States PGA Championship is likely to suffer by comparison. The PGA is older than the Masters and both Jack Nicklaus and Walter Hagen won it five times, so it comes highly recommended. But because the wise men of the […]

Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week Shushin-koyou-sei – “to be employed until you die” – is a Japanese expression for what is the life of the “salaryman”. For decades Japanese graduates joined companies and never left. Instead of firing employees who did not make the grade, businesses transferred them to subsidiaries or changed their job […]

Many of our readers will find the pictures of famine in southern Sudan which we have published deeply distressing. Some may feel that this is a visual invasion of privacy which should not be allowed. Others may wonder whether such appeals to our consciences are not just a short-term palliative: is there not a better […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN, Nelspruit | Friday 11.00pm. MPUMALANGA’S sacked deputy speaker, Cynthia Maropeng, was found guilty of self-enrichment and of bringing the African National Congress into disrepute by the party’s provincial disciplinary committee in Nelspruit on Friday. The three-man committee, headed by provincial finance MEC Jacques Modipane, tried Maropeng in her absence after she kept it […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Ginger Mahlamvu (22) was released from jail in May after spending two years behind bars for robbery. But unlike many former prisoners, he is hopeful about his future. “I felt like a useless person, and that I wouldn’t regain my dignity and trust from my family and the community because of […]

Howard Barrell More National Party MPs are expected to follow the party’s Gauteng leader, Sam de Beer, who defected to the United Democratic Movement on Thursday. De Beer’s defection is further evidence of the disintegration of the once powerful NP and is a hammer blow to the fragile leadership of Marthinus van Schalkwyk. De Beer […]

fraud Godfrey Thabo Makhubedu The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union (Nehawu) has asked that criminal charges be laid against staff members of Technikon South Africa accused of corruption and fraud. This follows a series of internal disciplinary hearings against senior staff. In one of the worst instances, Herman Putter, employed at the centre […]

up Howard Barrell Over a Barrel While in exile with the African National Congress in Zimbabwe in the mid-1980s, I had a simple test to decide who I felt comfortable with. It was: can this person appreciate a good anti-ANC joke? If yes, the likelihood was we could work together. If not, co-operation was doubtful. […]

Elizabeth Wurtzel First Person In late June, Time magazine ran a story illustrated with the faces of Susan B Anthony, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, pictured in grave black and white. Next to the likeness of this righteous triumvirate was a colour photograph of Calista Flockhart aka Ally McBeal, above the red-lettered, alarmist question: is […]