Michael Metelits Futures and options have a bad name in many circles. These financial “derivatives”, so-called because their price is derived from the price of another security, can make sensational amounts of money for the smart and lucky and lose equally spectacular amounts for the smart and unlucky. Crashes of traditional equity markets get blamed […]
Sherilee Bridge and Ferial Haffajee The stronger gold price is no guarantee the haemorrhaging of jobs in the mining industry will cease, although trade unions are likely to use it as a bargaining tool. The National Union of Mineworkers said this week it will begin to negotiate the recall of thousands of retrenched workers and […]
Mungo Soggot Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna has hit back after his embarrassing concession that the auditor general was not party to the theft of R170-million worth of oil by releasing documents to help explain his attack on the finance watchdog. Maduna’s office handed out the documents at the inquiry into the Strategic […]
Andrew Muchineripi World Cup The sparring sessions are over. The skirmishes have been completed. The time for war is at hand. If you have been holidaying on Mars, fret not. The real World Cup begins on Friday. With the greatest respect to all those noble qualifiers who have been eliminated, including our beloved Bafana Bafana, […]
Ed O’Loughlin The Pretoria grave of Anglo-Boer War soldier and poet Harry “Breaker” Morant has been taken under the care of the Australian government, 96 years after he was court-martialled and executed for alleged atrocities against Boer prisoners and civilians. The grave, which had suffered from neglect and vandalism, stands in a quiet civilian section […]
Paul Martin Wimbledon The weight of Wimbledon has, literally, frustrated Wayne Ferreira’s quest for glory on what should be his best surface – grass. He is complaining not so much about the weight of his own expectations, but rather about the heaviness of the tennis balls now being used in the men’s game. This is […]
Stephen Bierley Tennis The warning from Russia’s Yevgeny Kafelnikov is brutally blunt: “Tennis has a big problem and is slowly going downhill. We definitely need to make some changes.” Nobody in their right mind would ever pretend that tennis, an essentially middle- class game, could ever rival football or any other of the world’s major […]
Sechaba ka’Nkosi and Rehad Desai The gauntlet thrown down to the South African Communist Party on Wednesday by President Nelson Mandela could be the final bell for the SACP in its battle to re-establish itself as an effective political force on the South African landscape. Mandela’s tough speech to delegates at the SACP’s 10th national […]
say hemp farmers Ferial Haffajee Major South African companies, in conjunction with the government, are funding research into hemp production at the country’s first experimental cannabis farms. Among them are Mercedes Benz South Africa, PG Bison and Masonite Africa. The farms, around the country, are controlled by the Agricultural Research Council and supported by the […]
Elaine Showalter This year a television cartoon character named Stressed Eric has been appealing to the modern psyche as the new Everyman. Hamlet had melancholy, Jimmy Porter was an angry young man and Eric has stress. From the time he gets up in the morning till he collapses in bed at night, Eric is pressured, […]