Ferial Haffajee Deputy president Thabo Mbeki and Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Jay Naidoo have been drawn into the e.tv fray. Warring factions in the Midi consortium – which owns e.tv – have reportedly approached their offices to seek intervention in the new channel’s internal and external battles. The approaches to government have provoked […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Athol Fugard may have been writing about inhabitants of the electricity department’s disused building in downtown Johannesburg had the characters of his People are living there not been too few and employed. The inhabitants of the building belonging to the Market Theatre Company – where Fugard’s play premiered in March 1977 – […]

no African renaissance’ Despite its limited resources, South Africa stands to gain by developing its own HIV vaccine, instead of waiting for the West to provide, writes Lesley Cowling More than 25 clinical trials of different types of vaccines against HIV – the virus that causes Aids – are under way all over the world. […]

The David Gleason Column The arrival in South Africa of a major North American gold company gives further emphasis to the extraordinary changes which have taken place in this country’s mining industry in the past five years. After months of negotiation, it was announced this week that Vancouver- based Placer Dome, already among the world’s […]

Gail Smith Akosua Busia does not understand the meaning of the word “no”. The multi- talented actress and writer freely admits: “I come from privelege, and my sense of entitlement is the greatest thing in my life.” This unshakable sense of rightness has enabled Busia to capitalise on every opportunity and setback in the pursuit […]

rewards 30 years on David Gough from Nairobi As Kenya prepares to celebrate 35 years of independence next week, veterans of the guerrilla army who fought a brutal campaign against British colonial rule say that they have been rewarded with nothing but poverty and hardship, and have nothing to celebrate. Hundreds of survivors of the […]

Jane Rosenthal VERLIESFONTEIN by Karel Schoeman (Human & Rousseau) The grave of a young war hero killed in an Anglo-Boer War skirmish is what the narrator of this novel, an historian, is looking for. He and his photographer are heading for a cemetery in a Northern Cape dorp. Although the narrator dismisses as limited the […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube There is no crisis. That’s what Dr Khulu Mbatho from the Department of Home Affairs said to Chris Gibbons about our electoral . if you’ll pardon the expression . arrangements. Well it depends, of course, on your definition of crisis. Compared to the San Franscisco earthquake, the bubonic plague and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 11.45am. BORDER’s opening batting pair of Brad White and Craig Sugden put their team in the healthy position of 103 without loss at lunch on the opening day of their three day fixture against the West Indies at Buffalo Park in East London. Border earlier won the toss and elected […]

Donna Block: SHARE WORLD When the parties stop and the champagne haze wears off, 1998 will be a year that many of us would love to forget – at least from a financial point of view. Anything that could go wrong did. The mighty Asian tigers transformed into pussycats. The Russian bear got stuffed. Japan’s […]