International literary celebrities select their favourite reads of 1995 John Updike Shaken and enlightened by Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers (to be published in 1996 by Abacus), starring a computer that holds within its circuits a little girl as tear-wrenching as any orphan in Dickens. While winging my way to England, I kept myself calm […]

Moveable Feast Humphrey Tyler THERE just has to be a rather special atmosphere about a really good curry restaurant. No, no — not sleazy. But often fairly ordinary chairs, for example, and generally inexpensive tables. Like the sort you find in cafes. Hopefully you will also see determined women in saris striding out of the […]

Welcome Msomi, creator of Umabatha, in The Mark Gevisser Profile The divine justice of it all. When Welcome Msomi took his “Zulu Macbeth” to New York in 1979, he found it boycotted by the African National Congress and its supporters, who claimed that because it was “ethnic” (Zulu costumes, Zulu language, Zulu dancing), it had […]

‘You need to know what they are feeding on and how they=20 are behaving, then decide on a strategy.’ This is=20 Cyril Ramaphosa speaking not about his tactics in=20 parliament, but about one of his greatest passions:=20 trout fishing. Lesley Cowling reports There is an urban legend which gives the trout a broker’s=20 role in […]

SAILING: Jonathan Spencer Jones WITH little more than two weeks to go before the start of the next Rothmans Cape to Rio race, preparations are gathering pace for this, one of the foremost southern hemisphere yachting events. Yet it has not proved as popular as had been expected with the final total of 59 entries […]

SOCCER: Gerald Combrink THE Coca Cola Cup has since its inception in 1992 become the property of the minnows of South African soccer. It is a competition that, like the sponsor’s logo, seems to “add life” to the lesser knowns of the local game. In fact, the only giant to do anything significant in the […]

PUBLIC comment is urgently being sought — by June 25 –=20 on a bold new land policy framework that promises sweeping=20 reforms for the poor and dispossessed. The Department of Land Affairs recently published a Land=20 Policy Framework Document which covers crucial land reform=20 issues including restitution, security of tenure and=20 sustainable land use. The […]

Angeline Oyog in Paris Industrialised nations may in the long term have more to=20 gain than lose from the rapid expansion of emerging=20 economies in certain developing countries, says the=20 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development=20 (OECD) in a new report. Looking at long-term economic interests, the report said=20 the industrialised OECD members should be […]

Shaun de Waal=20 CHEAP LIVES by Antony Sher (Little, Brown, R79,99)=20 SOME years ago, as the first buds of a new South African=20 dispensation began to open, much ink was expended in=20 speculation about what new forms our literature would now=20 take. It was assumed that the exigencies that drove the=20 apartheid-era novels of such […]