Director Gregory Doran has produced a travesty of=20 Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy in his attempt to root the=20 play in South African militarism, argues Digby Ricci=20 FIRST acted and printed in 1594, Titus Andronicus is=20 regarded as Shakespeare’s earliest and bloodiest=20 tragedy, and, although immensely popular with=20 Elizabethan and Jacobean audiences, it has subsequently=20 been savaged […]

The Mandela daughters have sided firmly with their mother after her sacking, writes Justin Pearce Winnie Mandela may have suffered the most devastating defeat of her political career this week. Yet she has won the battle for the loyalty of the Mandela children, leaving her estranged husband — one of the world’s best-loved national leaders […]

Nicholas Lezard=20 CIGARETTES ARE SUBLIME by Richard Klein (Picador,=20 R39,99) =20 AN academic of Richard Klein’s — middlingish — age=20 would normally by now have published three or four=20 unreadable books. This is his first, and it’s excellent.=20 A valedictory hymn to the poetry of cigarettes, as well=20 as a thrilling work of literart criticism […]

Jan Taljaard THE first salvoes in the battle for the rightwing vote in November’s local government elections have been fired by two big rightwing guns, Ferdi Hartzenberg and Constand Viljoen. Competing against the rain, rugby and Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the capital last week, neither the Freedom Front’s (FF) Viljoen nor Conservative Party (CP) leader […]

Reg Rumney=20 The listing of black-controlled Real Africa Investments=20 last week made instant paper millionaires of three of=20 the directors.=20 According to the RAI pre-listing statement, executive=20 chairman Don Ncube held 1 472 230 shares indirectly in=20 RAI. At a closing price on the Johannesburg Stock=20 Exchange mid-week of around R2,50, Ncube is worth R3,7- […]

Jane Rosenthal=20 EXIT INTO HISTORY: A JOURNEY THROUGH THE NEW EASTERN=20 EUROPE by Eva Hoffman (Minerva, R48,99)=20 IN Exit into History, Eva Hoffman invites us to=20 accompany her on a thoughtful meander through Eastern=20 Europe. As readers of her first book, Lost in=20 Translation, will know, she was born in Poland in 1946=20 and emigrated […]

Clive Simpkins=20 True marketing expertise takes years to develop.=20 Academic theory is often very different from the reality=20 of business. =20 Astonishingly, almost as soon as a superb base of such=20 expertise is in place in a corporation, the pool of=20 talent or the individual talented marketer is retired.=20 In some regions of South Africa […]

Zimbabwe’s farmers are suffering under punishing=20 interest rates. Lewis Machipisa in Harare reports=20 Two years ago it was drought, a freak of nature, that=20 crippled Zimbabwe’s agricultural sector. Now the=20 problems besetting the industry’s recovery are entirely=20 man-made. =20 At 32 percent, the country’s interest rates are=20 punishingly high, undermining efforts to resuscitate=20 farming, the […]

Jacques Magliolo reports on Pepgro’s moves to improve=20 its competitiveness both locally and internationally=20 Pepgro’s R208-million rights issue came as no surprise=20 to market analysts. The move is yet another strategic,=20 well-planned step to make the group stronger and better=20 prepared for local and international competition, says=20 Mathison & Hollidge industrial analyst John Thompson.=20 Market […]

Eddie Webster suggests that Wits University academics would do well to look at other African universities for some hints on how to handle change IN his insightful article on his alma mater (“Wits — Barometer of Change”, Weekly Mail & Guardian 24-30), Anton Harber concludes that Wits “has become a model of poor change management”. […]