Kate Turkington INTO AFRICA: A Journey Through The Ancient Empires by Marq de Villiers and Shiela Hirtle (Jonathan Ball, R89,99) Analysing Africa is a bit like facing the many-headed Hydra. Just as you’ve got one section neatly disposed of, another rears up and puts you back where you started. Similarly, any book that attempts “to […]

Janet Smith In your ear I wanted to take a look around. Curiosity had nothing to do with it. Later John Perlman and I spoke about journalists’ need to see inside people’s spaces at interviews. A Tretchikoff can tell you as much about a person as a Tommy Motswai. I thought Perlman’s magnificent wine collection […]

Peter Mabena A middle-aged man who is suspected of being the Orange Farm serial killer has been apprehended by a group of pupils from the Nomini Primary School. The man was seen walking down the street towards the bushes with three children from the school on January 30. The principal became suspicious and ordered other […]

Lizeka Mda : City Limits It’s no Swiss bank account, nor is it a safe full of jewels. But nevertheless, it is an inheritance. A spot under the Anderson Street overpass off the M2 freeway is Ntombeyiningi Zondi’s inheritance from her mother. Every morning she leans a table against a freeway pillar and sets out […]

Several million people and their families will be affected by the listings of South Africa’s two largest life insurance groups on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) within the next 18 months. For more than a year market observers have been expecting Sanlam and Old Mutual to announce their plans to demutualise and list on the […]

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 […]

Wally Lambert As stock markets across the globe continue to react with no apparent logic to troubles in the East, there are few investors who haven’t considered cashing in their unit trusts for a holiday destination where nobody’s heard of “Asian flu”. Others will be looking to their “friendly” financial advisers while scouring the economic […]

Shaun de Waal CD of the week Despite the recent lionisation of (Sir) Paul McCartney, mostly on the back of a bunch of old Beatles leftovers, he is still less interesting than the other half of pop’s most famous songwriting partnership. John Lennon’s post-Beatles output was uneven (blame Yoko!), but at least he kept pushing […]

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 […]

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. […]