Ann Eveleth A WOODEN ladder fashioned from tree branches leans across the trunk of the old gum tree where the lifeless bodies of Vitalis Mthembu and Muzikawubanga Sitholi dangled until the police arrived on Wednesday last The branch above bears no scars from the ordeal, but three rivulets of dried blood down a rock shaded […]

Evita Bezuidenhout Appearance: Marike de Klerk on speed. Dress sense: Barbara Cartland on safari. All faux leopard-skin tights, diamonds and furs. Obviously a woman’s woman. Who are her role models? Sophia Loren, Joan Collins, Mimi Coertse and Dame Edna Anything that makes her special? She has the best legs. What’s she up to now? Burying […]

Rowan Callaghan Negotiations between the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Small Business Development Corporation (SBDC) have gone largely unnoticed until a deadlock in talks caused the corporation’s annual general meeting (AGM) to be re-scheduled last week. The SBDC has long been a target of criticism by particularly small black business, who have […]

FINE ART: Hazel Friedman IN his lyrical essay accompanying Jane Alexander’s exhibition (now at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg), Ivor Powell writes about the way technology has transformed life into an enhanced virtual-reality show. This has served, on the one hand, to blur the boundaries between self and simulated experience, evoking a more immediate, […]

The sound of poetry rocked gently against the walls of Pretoria Central Prison last weekend. Hugh Lewin, a political inmate of Central in the 60s, reports on a day with LKJ and eight South African poets Ask any prison graduate: there’s one fear greater than the fear of going to prison. It’s the fear of […]

Rehana Rossouw NEIGHBOURS of Cape Town gangster killer Harry Joshua believe his crime was not that heinous: he was only cleaning up a little. “He was just ridding the area of some of the vermin,” was one of the descriptions of Joshua’s shooting spree last May which left five young men dead and two wounded, […]

Meshack Mabogoane The National African Federated Chambers of Commerce (Nafcoc), the main black business organisation, which formed the African Bank and has been its main supporter, has spoken out on the bank’s difficulties. Nafcoc president Joe Hlongwane this week announced his organisation, whose members hold 35,3 percent of Afbank’s equity, is determined to get involved […]

President Mandela receives so many gifts that his staff cannot cope and he may have to build on to his house to accommodate the regular truckloads. Hazel Friedman peered into the treasure chest

ATHLETICS: Jon Swift THERE are times in South African sport when you wonder whether the word “development” does not have the Orwellian connotation of separate but equal. The All African Invitational athletic meeting to open the magnificently appointed new Johannesburg Stad-ium last weekend was just such an occasion. A surprisingly sparse crowd had come on […]

Cutting the costs of bad debt is high on the agenda of the telecommunication giant Telkom, reports Karen Telecommunications giant Telkom plans to implement a new strategy to stem the millions of rands lost each year through bad debt. Last year, the company wrote off 2,1 percent of its R9,6-billion turnover to bad debt — […]