Maria McCloy The management of national music chain Musica and the advertising agency Jupiter Drawing Room are surprised by the “extreme” reaction to a Valentine’s Day poster campaign that went up on Friday January 23 and was torn down by Monday January 26. Four naked couples in loving embraces, each accompanied by appropriate words from […]

Iden Wetherell Televised scenes of demonstrators being teargassed and robust editorials in the country’s leading daily have so angered Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe that he has ordered a radical shake-up of the state-owned media that will see his already tight grip reinforced. Traditionally a faithful ally of Zimbabwe’s entrenched political establishment, the government media have […]

Alex Clark The End of Alice by AM Homes (Anchor, R69,95) This novel, an everyday tale of paedophilia and child murder in middle-class America, is published in paperback plastered with the panegyrics of American critics, united mainly by their admiration for AM Homes’s horrifyingly “real” treatment of a taboo subject. At the same time, the […]

morality Sexual scandal in politics has always been attended by hypocrisy, most frequently on the part of the media in their efforts to justify the public ventilation of private activities. When a British minister of defence, John Profumo, bedded a prostitute and was caught, the British press justified its prurient coverage of the scandal on […]

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 […]

Belinda Beresford Guardian of the rand and watchdog of inflation, the Reserve Bank probably has as much impact on every South African’s finances as anything the government does. But, unlike Nelson Mandela, the bank is not national property. Unlike most of its counterparts across the globe, South Africa’s central bank is a private company which […]

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 […]

FRIDAY, 8.00AM: PRETORIA Judge William De Villers on Thursday issued a summons to President Nelson Mandela to appear in court to explain his decision to appoint a commission of inquiry into rugby. The decision has alarmed the government, and Mandela’s legal adviser Nicholas Haysom said it will set a precedent, allowing anyone to challenge the […]

Belinda Beresford Investor or tourist, gift-giver or generous parent bailing out stranded offspring, how can you best get your money out of the country? The quickest way of taking money overseas is to use your credit or debit card, although this can be expensive. Internationally, credit-card transactions are operated in dollars. A withdrawal in yen […]

Lesley Cowling : Material World Jetlag could be cured by shining a light behind your knees, say scientists who have discovered light-detecting equipment there. Experts in circadian rhythms, the daily nature cycles that cause flowers to open during the day, have found what they call “extraocular circadian phototransduction” behind the human knee. They tested 15 […]