Gwen Ansell : In your ear There’s probably now more jazz available on Gauteng radio than ever before. The community radio stations (Alex FM, Voice of Soweto) used to provide generous helpings – particularly of African jazz – until their managements went into advertiser-directed playlist mode and imported pop started squeezing it out. Some survive; […]

The timing of Kenya’s elections, called this week, says much about Daniel arap Moi’s intent. Kenya’s aging president has left the ballot until the last minute, December 29, just two days before the constitutional deadline for an election. It will be held during the Christmas holidays when large numbers of city dwellers, who tend to […]

FRIDAY, 1.30PM: The tax blitz by the South African Revenue Services last month revealed 26% of the businesses they visited were not registered to pay tax. The blitz, carried out on Tax Awareness day last month, targeted 42 114 businesses countrywide. Northern Province and Mpumalanga were found to be the worst offenders, with 53% of […]

Chris McGreal The United Nations has accused the new government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) of showing little more respect for human rights and democratisation than Mobutu Sese Seko’s dictatorship. A report was released as UN investigators returned to Kinshasa to probe massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees in the east of the […]

South African photography has reframed itself in the Nineties, writes Charl Blignaut Had you taken a stroll through Johannesburg’s art galleries five years ago you would most likely have come across precious few shows devoted to photography. And those that were would almost certainly have comprised the kind of slick, dangerous, Pulitzer Prize-winning news photographs […]

From Collins Dictionaries: 1896 Radioactivity 1897 Aspirin 1898 Krypton 1899 gamine 1900 Labour Party 1901 Fingerprint 1902 Teddy bear 1903 Tarmac 1904 Fifa 1905 Sinn Fein 1906 Suffragette 1907 Allergy 1908 Borstal 1909 Jazz 1910 Girl Guide 1911 Air raid 1912 Schizophrenia 1913 Isotope 1914 Vorticism 1915 tank 1916 Dada 1917 Cheka 1918 Bolshie/Bolshy 1919 […]

A dictionary says it has found a new word to represent each of the past 102 years. As if English were so limited. David Rowan and John Ezard report One of Western youth culture’s handiest, most lethal and (till recently) most universal devices of insult happens to be dropping out of the English language. The […]

Admitted to a clinic with a broken nose, Minas Michael left `a vegetable’. His parents, however, refused to give up hope. Angella Johnson reports A neglected basketball net hangs forlornly over the garage door of Minas Michael’s home. It was here that the teenager practised the shots which made him a Transvaal provincial player. Today […]

Bongani Siqoko Boxing Legendary champion Roberto Duran knows very well that if he is to get another crack at a world title, he has to win his fight on Saturday. Duran meets Englishman David Radford in a 10-round light-heavyweight non-title fight, in the Jumbo Cash & Carry “Amabutho Empi” boxing extravanganza at the Carousel on […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer The Rothmans Cup temperature could reach boiling point in more ways than one when Sundowns host Orlando Pirates at Odi Stadium on Sunday in the second leg of a semi-final showdown. It reached 40 degrees north of Pretoria last weekend when Sundowns struck five goals past Santos, a club so used to […]