Janyne Simon-Meyer Heavy booking has already taken up many of the special deals, but you may still get lucky with these packages: l Beachcombers is offering seven nights in in Grand Baie, Mauritius, for R3 990 per person. Call Sure Travel Agents for details. l Flight Centre has a five-night stay in Langkawi for R4940. […]

Review of the week: Matthew Krouse Classical music always garnered a heap of bad press in the old South Africa. Great works of Western music were, we were informed, part of a Eurocentric dominance – an unnecessary aberration in the lives of poor Africans. Apparently, so we’re told, times have changed. Today, a generation of […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Manning Rangers’s coach Gordon Igesund is a born optimist, who refuses to accept that his club cannot book a place in the African Champions League final on Sunday. The Mighty Maulers from Durban share first place in Group B with Asec of Cte d’Ivoire on 10 points and have a marginally better […]

John Crace It goes without saying that your choice of holiday destination is a statement of your aesthetics. After all, there’s precious little point in going to Ibiza if it’s peace and quiet and a few old masters you’re after. And an eco-tour to the Amazonian rain forest immediately identifies you as the caring, thoughtful […]

Not CDs of the week: Shaun de Waal It was reported a while ago that David Bowie had declined to be involved in Todd Haynes’s new glam rock movie, Velvet Goldmine. The reason given was Bowie’s desire to hang on to his seminal Seventies creation, Ziggy Stardust, for future exploitation by himself. I suspect, however, […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube One of the advantages of being a TV critic is being able to watch television at odd times and since Oprah left SABC3, I’ve been tuning in at 5pm. I rather liked the Canadian series, Side Effects, set in an urban clinic, but that ended after a couple of weeks […]

Kate Herbert Imagine a room with two views: one a dusty, arid moonscape; the other lush, green and wet. This is the luxury “home from home” set- up at the Savuti Elephant Camp and Xaxaba in the Chobe Game Reserve in Botswana. The room at Savuti is too opulent for its “tent camp” status. It […]

the racing world An often dogged and sometimes disheartening slog from the ranks of the Formula One has paid off for 1998 world champion Mika Hakkinen. Alan Henry reports Mika Hakkinen of Finland clinched the 1998 Formula One world championship with a flawless flag-to-flag victory in the Japanese Grand Prix, a success which also gave […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.00am. SACKED West Indian cricket skipper Brian Lara said in London on Thursday that he is confident the crisis-hit tour of South Africa will go ahead, but added that he is not sure whether he will play. Lara, who flew to London with eight other players because of a pay […]

Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week Ever since the release of Ozzie director Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975) and, perhaps more significantly, Bruce Beresford’s `Breaker’ Morant (1979), South African film-makers have been notoriously envious of the Australian film industry, and with good reason. `Breaker’ Morant, which tells the story of three Australian soldiers […]