Philippa Garson Elmo should expand his cookie-baking skills to include detective work and do some off-set sniffing around, given the brewing controversy around Sesame Street, the pre-school television production in which he stars. Questions are being raised in the United States Congress about whether the R25-million granted by USAid to the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW) […]

Belinda Beresford The government is continuing its campaign to ensure that taxes become as unavoidable as death for South Africans with the latest budget, which reduced the overall income tax burden while attacking fringe benefits such as car allowances. The budget saw about R3,7-billion knocked off the income tax burden for South Africans, with the […]

Jeremy Cronin: CROSSFIRE Isn’t it time to get Crossfire cross-firing? I am going to take a few pot shots at my friend and comrade, Pallo Jordan – with whom, on most things, I mostly agree. But first some anecdotal background. At the gold summit at the end of February, I was sitting in a Braamfontein […]

Sharon Hammond The mangled skeleton of a young woman who died 1 500 years ago could settle a 20-year argument about when the practice of bartering cattle for women first started in southern Africa. The woman’s remains were discovered outside Nelspruit, in Mpumalanga, after bulldozers excavating a site for the Lowveld’s first large-scale shopping mall […]

Philippa Garson Thanks to technological innovation, distance education is now the most viable way of extending the reach of education to the country’s forgotten corners – and people. Ambitious initiatives like the Technology Enhanced Learning Initiative in Southern Africa (Telisa) and the SABC’s educational broadcasting venture may be the saving grace for a government thus […]

Robert McBride was allegedly investigating the highway heists when he was arrested in Mozambique this week. Wally Mbhele and Stefaans Br?mmer report Robert McBride, who was arrested in Mozambique this week for alleged gunrunning, was apparently on a special undercover mission to investigate supply routes feeding the highway heists. Senior African National Congress and government […]

Tony Twine A wise woman once told a class of students attending their first lecture on the subject that economics was nothing more than common sense made difficult. With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, her students can now vouch for this rule, which has turned out to be far more immutable than the […]

Mandy Collins There’s something a little sordid about admitting you’ve used a pawnshop, isn’t there? Desperate people use pawnshops as a last resort. But Andy Schwenk, who owns Andy’s Swop Shop in Bellevue, Johannesburg, says there’s a common misconception that only a certain kind of person uses pawnshops. ”I’ve had Mercs, Jags and Rolls Royces […]

It wasn’t only the South African duo, Ian Woodall and Kathy O’Dowd, who came home to controversy after climbing Everest. Now the horror of the storms of May 1996 has been captured on the giant Imax screen, writes Ed Douglas Even though it fills only a fraction of the gigantic screen, the huge image of […]

Andy Capostagno: Cricket I first saw him bowl at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury, England. He ran in like a boulder rolling down a mountainside and bowled too short. He was cut and pulled to all parts and retired to the outfield, visibly frustrated. A year later I was on tour with the Durham […]