TUESDAY, 10.30AM: KEITH MEDLYCOTT, Northerns’ senior coach, sprang an unwnated surprise on the team on Monday when he announced he will move to English side Surrey in April. Medlycott said his decision to end his relationship with the Titans after only two seasons was “not an easy one to make”. The 32-year-old former Surrey and […]

If 1997 will be remembered as the year in which broadcasting ruled media’s roost, then radio can crow loudest. Its revolution came in March when the Independent Broadcasting Authority dished out seven licences to the operators of new commercial radio stations: four in Gauteng, three in the Cape and a more recent licence in Durban. […]

Janet Smith There was remarkably little snow and far fewer fat white men in red suits sleighing across the hundreds of Christmas cards that passed through the Mail & Guardian offices this year. It has taken some time for South African Christmas card manufacturers to realise that we’re not in the northern hemisphere, and now […]

Some of the most important figures of our age died in 1997, writes Fumane Diseko This year saw the deaths of three first-generation African leaders who had outlived most of their contemporaries, but not, unfortunately, to the benefit of their people. Dr Walter Hastings Banda (92), president of Malawi from 1964 to 1994, died at […]

Robert Kirby : Loose cannon Last Wednesday my editor at the Mail & Guardian phoned me and asked me to avoid writing about anything serious this week. “Don’t be all preachy and self-righteous for our Christmas issue,” he said eagerly. “I want you to keep the column frothy and optimistic.” “For the Christmas issue?” I […]

Bongani Siqoko : Soccer The World Cup tournament is only six months away and the count-down to the most prestigious soccer extravaganza in the world has begun. Travel agencies, printers and ordinary township people are gearing up for the tournament. It is the first time that ordinary people have had so much interest in this […]

Angella Johnson recalls the sex scandals, crimes of passion and conduct unbecoming that fed the lust-hungry public in 1997 What people are most likely to remember among the memorable stories to come out of 1997 (apart from Princess Diana’s death and Winnie roughing up the truth commission) will probably not be the passing of “rob-em-blind” […]

Desmond Tutu’s concept of a rainbow nation just doesn’t match up to reality, writes Lizeka Mda If ever there was any doubt that the notion of a rainbow nation is unravelling, President Nelson Mandela’s speech at the African National Congress’s 50th conference laid those doubts to rest. For almost four years as the president of […]

The truth commission was confronted this year with bouts of amnesia, half-truths and outright lies — and scenes of humanity * “I am not in possession of any information that might be of use to you.” — Former president FW de Klerk, giving the National Party’s response to questions posed by the truth commission about […]

Hopes are high for a gradual rebirth of a South African film industry, writes Andrew Worsdale ‘Every year I seem to feel the film industry surging with renewed optimism, yet nothing seems to happen. It’s all a state of foreplay with no penetration. well, now I can finally say — or predict — that the […]