In the style of the mystery novel penned via the Internet by John Updike et al, a new competition has been launched with the involvement of South African writer Jann Turner, author of Heartland. At the M-Web site http://www. mweb.co.za/valentine/, Turner has written the opening segment of a Valentine’s Day romance. Web-surfers can add the […]

Ferial Haffajee ‘It’s difficult getting the message through by committee,” says Dominic Ntsele, managing director of ad agency Young & Rubicam. Last year, Ntsele headed a creative team working to highlight the endemic levels of child abuse, rape and battery in the country, ahead of the Men’s March in November, through a high-profile media campaign. […]

Nicky Barker Induna Jonathan Buthelezi lives with a small community in the tribal lands of the Buthelezi next to the Ngome Forest in KwaZulu-Natal. The clan occupies a piece of land on two timber farms adjacent to the Sapekoe Tea Plantation, where they all work. The farms run steeply down a mountain, with 80ha of […]

Janet Smith Down the tube Robert Powell’s haunted face is our most abiding cinematic image of Jesus, thanks to Franco Zeffirelli, the same director who said all those disgustingly true things about the public response to Princess Diana’s death last year. Zeffirelli would never perform a vulgar deed, which is why the spare, exquisite features […]

Neil Manthorpe : Cricket He was desperately keen to tour England again, to finish his remarkable career in the land where the game of cricket began and where he would have time to ease an understudy into the job. But now Dave Richardson has gone, just like that. No fuss, no fanfare, no tears. None […]

James Wood Underworld seems to me an achieved failure, of a kind any novelist might have been proud to produce. It is so often well- written, so punctually intelligent, so serious and ambitious, that it almost produces its own antibodies and makes criticism a small germ. One faults this novel warily, because DeLillo is an […]

IN BRIEF SA’S FIRST INTERACTIVE NOVEL ACCLAIMED South African author Jann Turner made literary history in South Africa when she launched the first local interactive Internet novel on Thursday. Turner — author of Heartland– will write the opening scene of a romance called Take Mine Valentine, and visitors will be asked to continue the book, […]

Before you invest offshore, ensure that your tax records are in order or the taxman could come knocking at your door, warns Belinda Beresford You’re considering emigrating, you want to diversify your investment portfolio, or perhaps you just want to bet on the continual fall of the rand. But the time has come to invest […]

More needs to be done to help local governments overcome their financial crises, writes Caroline Kihato The financial crisis that afflicts local government needs to be resolved. Local government is regarded as pivotal to development in South Africa as the majority of the population depend on it for the delivery of much-needed social services. By […]

Andrew Worsdale Domestic war film of the week In 1973 director Ang Lee (The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility) hadn’t set foot in the United States and couldn’t speak English. So it’s deeply paradoxical that he has directed a perceptive, poignant and sharp movie about the US during the era […]