Angella Johnson : View From a Broad They say that money can’t buy you love. Well, it can at least get you the body and face of your dreams. I had been considering cosmetic surgery for some time – nothing radical, mind you, just a little liposuction on the adipose tissue in my stomach. But […]

a ‘snowplough’ a few millionths of a millimetre wide. Michael Brooks reports As your eyes move across this text, you are performing a task that remains beyond the understanding of modern science. The simple movement in the muscles that control your eyes is still a mystery; inside the muscles, tiny proteins called myosins are doing […]

Review of the week : Miles Keylock There are several reasons why Janet Jackson’s Cape Town performance on her Velvet Rope Tour was the massive success it was. It’s been close on a decade since she emerged from brother Michael’s shadow and the Nineties has seen her constantly re(de)fining her musical and stage personae. In […]

Wally Mbhele Former Transvaal attorney general Jan d’Oliviera – suspected of tampering with new evidence resulting from a trial he prosecuted – has started a battle to defend his reputation. D’Oliveira was the prosecutor in the trial in which three African National Congress members were convicted of the 1993 Eikenhof killings. The Pan Africanist Congress […]

Ferial Haffajee : A Second Look I wrote this while bound in leg braces – so steadfast was the determination not to be knee-jerk. It is, therefore, a much considered and chewed-upon view that the Human Rights Commission’s proposed inquiry into the media is the worst news possible. It is a view not coloured by […]

Maureen Barnes : Down the tube Two of the most entertaining weekday series recently have been screened on e.tv. Dalziel and Pascoe is on Friday night at 9pm – a night which the other channels treat as thugs night in and over-excite their audiences by screening kung fu or Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. It’s a classic […]

Benjamin Pogrund Laurence Gandar, who died in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, on November 14, was an unlikely South African hero. Appointed editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg in October 1957, nothing out of the ordinary was expected of him. Yet he transformed the newspaper into a vehement opponent of apartheid and gave hope of change […]

Sutracide Cameron Duodu : Letter from the North Nigeria’s political lexicography is one of the most colourful in the world. This is because Nigerian politicians delight in showing off during public speeches what they consider to be the English “grammar” they learned at school. But since this grammar was taught to them by people who […]

SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Thursday 5.45pm. THURSDAY brought a pleasant change to the directionless few days on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, with all indices ending in positive territory. Dealers said the market responded well on news of a 0,1 percentage point drop in the Consumer Price Index to 9%, pleasantly surprising the market which had […]

Ferial Haffajee A senior SABC radio executive has resigned from a strategic elections committee amid staff fears of African National Congress interference at the broadcaster. Franz Kruger, the national news and current affairs editor, quit the elections team when a story he wrote which painted a picture of dwindling ANC support provoked a heated response […]