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 […]

Eddie Butler : Rugby For all its reputation of being the dearest, dearest institution never to have been added to the government’s sacred “listed events”, the Five Nations Championship has a decidedly murky history. There may not have been much that even the home unions committee could do about the world wars that interrupted the […]

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 […]

Steve Morris : Rugby The acid test for South Africa’s new regionalised Super 12 system does not come on Friday February 27, when the southern hemisphere’s provincial championship kicks off in Cape Town where the Western Stormers face Wellington at Newlands. Neither will it really come should one of the local composite teams make the […]

Nicole Turner For a generation of children opening their first savings accounts, the smell and feel of money will probably be obsolete by the time they take out their first housing loan. The term ”flipping a coin” will be a quaint reference to an era when people actually carried paper and metal currency in their […]

Afrikaner patriarchy gave men a ‘God-given’ right to abuse children as well as women and black people. Glynis O’Hara speaks to Diana Russell about her book on the subject You’re four years old, lying in bed dreaming about Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet, when suddenly you’re awakened by the hot breath and fumblings of your father. Or […]

Adam Haupt On stage in Cape Town The Buwa Theatre Company is currently hosting the FNB Vita/ City of Cape Town/ Ikhwezi Community Theatre Festival at the Baxter Theatre until February 7. This festival is singular because community theatre seldom finds its way into mainstream theatre spaces such as the Baxter. Apart from the fact […]

Andrew Worsdale and Janet Smith Realised on an amazingly tight budget of less than R11 000 per minute, Natural Rhythm came cheap. Yet it could also inadvertently be the first trickle in a stream of new local soaps on public service TV. Waspish, high-class, politically pungent, carcinoma-induced soap opera, it introduces us to white women […]

Alex Brummer and Larry Elliott Radical changes in the operations of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are to be proposed by finance ministers at a meeting in London later this month in response to the Asian crisis. The plans for adjusting the role of the IMF and the World Bank, to put […]