Financial planning can be a minefield for the unaware. Ferial Haffajee looks at the basics WITH new products appearing on the market almost daily, the potential investor is easily overwhelmed. Between the bulls and bears, trusts, equities, money market funds, and now offshore options, personal financial planning can become a minefield for the unaware. So, […]

Wally Mbhele GENERAL Bantu Holomisa this week blasted the African National Congress’s “witch- hunt” of its Womens’ League leader, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, and its silence on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s investigation into her. His attack followed what seems to be an increasingly futile search by the commission for a key witness, Katiza Cebekhulu, who can […]

Shirley Kossick LOVE INVENTS US by Amy Bloom (Picador, R118,00) THE American writer Amy Bloom’s fine collection of interconnecting short stories, Come to Me (1994), often read like a novel. Love Invents Us, her first novel, often seems like several short stories strung together around the central character, Elizabeth Taube. This impression is strengthened by […]

Stand-up comedian John Vlismas is heading for the international stage. ALEXANDER SUDHEIM laughs along HE skids on to stage, a lunatic druid on bad speed. Collides with the microphone. Glares at the audience with gargoyle eyes; shaven head; undertaker’s suit. Weird beard; hideous raptor leer. Explodes into bursts of language like a runaway catherine wheel […]

Ferial Haffajee `NOW my friends it is time for you to come to your friend in order to understand. The cattle have udders, come and milk them!” It is 1899, and around the reef which was to become Johannesburg touts put up notices like this one to entice black labourers on to the mines. At […]

The plot to overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko originated not in the Congo but in Rwanda, before the campaign actually began. John Pomfret reports from Kigali, Rwanda RWANDA’S powerful Defence Minister Paul Kagame has acknowledged for the first time his country’s key role in the overthrow of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo, […]

FRIDAY, 10.00AM: MICHAU WARRIORS’ hopes of staying on for yet another year in the elite Premier Soccer League were dashed on Thursday, when the South African Football Association (Safa) appeal board dismissed Warriors’ appeal against a disciplinary commitee’s decision to award two league points to rivals AmaZulu. The disciplinary committee last month ruled that AmaZulu […]

Mungo Soggot and Christian Figenschou SOUTH AFRICA’S main nuclear waste dump has been leaking radioactive material for years. Metal drums filled with radioactive waste and buried at the Atomic Energy Corporation’s (AEC) Vaalputs site in the Northern Cape have leaked, while concrete blocks used to contain more dangerous waste have also failed. Documents in the […]

With a Test against the awesome All Blacks next weekend there doesn’t seem to be enough time to solve the Springbok problems or enough talent to plug the gaping holes left by injuries RUGBY:Steve Morris DESPITE the assurances of as respected a voice as the great Pinetree, Colin Meads, that Springbok rugby is at a […]

THURSDAY, 10.00AM: FOUR of the country’s provincial rugby clubs want a special meeting with the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) to object to a proposal by the Sarfu chief executive last Friday. The union presidents of Natal, Free State and Western Province met in Durban on Wednesday to discuss Rian Oberholzer’s proposal that next […]