Jos Havermans Despite the turmoil in the world’s stock markets, it seems almost every country in the world — even the poorest — wants to have its own stock exchange. And Malawi, one of the world’s 15 least developed countries, is no exception. After a three-year apprenticeship period, the Malawi Stock Exchange is poised to […]

Journalists frequently fall into the trap of writing too much about their own profession. It is, therefore, with some reluctance that we return to the subject, specifically by drawing attention to a column written in the latest edition of the Financial Mail by Joe Thloloe, headed “Motshekga and the media” — referring to the Mail […]

Madeleine Wackernagel He’s not exactly Ted Turner or Rupert Murdoch, but William Kirsh (36) is certainly following the global trend. This week’s announcement that Primedia, a listed company worth R2,5-billion, is forming separate music and film divisions is another step to realising his ambition of becoming South Africa’s own media mogul. The rationale is simple: […]

Zimbabweans have come to learn that mass action counts for more than policy. Iden Wetherell reports Zimbabwe’s beleaguered government this week responded to the crisis engulfing it by a familiar mix of bravado and brute force. But the steps it has belatedly taken only serve to expose a pattern of misrule where populist impulses substitute […]

Ann Eveleth Aruling by a Pretoria judge last week effectively makes University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Mamphela Ramphele’s old school imaginary. Judge Ben du Plessis decided that Stephanus Hofmeyer Farm School near Kranspoort in Northern Province did not exist as a legal entity at the time its staff and pupils were evicted because its governing […]

set It took 15 minutes to expose a wannabe legend of her time as merely a legend in her own mind, reports Hazel Friedman A pseudo-American accent, liberal dropping of Hollywood’s hottest names, a surplus of arrogance and extreme delusions of grandeur. That was all it took for con- artist Tracey Morrison to infiltrate the […]

Lynda Gledhill At times this week it seemed as though the paint peeling off the walls was moving faster than justice inside the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court. There was nothing that could be done to stop the additional delays in court processes brought on by prosecutors’ refusal to work overtime. Defence attorneys, who at the beginning […]

Martin Kettle in New York When a songwriter is as good and as famous as Paul Simon then, from one way of looking at it, he has nothing left to prove for the rest of his life. But when, like Simon, you cut your first record at 16, are a superstar at 26, and have […]

Martin Walker in Brussels A surreal war has broken out in Belgium as veterans of a revolutionary art movement rally against an arts festival in honour of the surrealist master René Magritte. The retrospective, to mark his centenary, is being billed by others as the biggest cultural event in Europe this year. The Belgian state […]

The 100-year-old Pretoria News is still learning new tricks. Janet Smith reports Gauteng Newspapers managing director Deon du Plessis, editor of The Star Peter Sullivan, the late editor of The Sunday Times Tertius Myburgh, Reuters’ Africa desk chief Lesley Wroughton and former press photographer of the year Nicky de Blois all have one thing in […]