Krisjan Lemmer With less than a year to go before the centenary of the Anglo-Boer War, there has been muttering in the Dorsbult Bar about the belated discovery by the Brits that Lord Herbert Kitchener, the war hero, was a bit of a cad. The BBC’s Reputations series appears to have stumbled upon the fact […]
Shaun de Waal CD of the week In the early Sixties, Ornette Coleman spearheaded a revolution in jazz, and this is the album that gave that new movement its name. Free Jazz is one of a handful of works re- released in deluxe (that is, fiddly sleeve-within- sleeve) packaging to celebrate the 50th birthday of […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Superintendent Jan Brink religiously abides by the proverb that the early bird catches the worm. He says it is the only way he can catch crooked cops napping. So he was up before the crack of dawn on Wednesday morning, travelling to Soweto, Roodepoort and Krugersdorp. His team arrested police in a surprise […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby When Geoff Cooke was England’s coach in the glory days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he had a phrase that used to come out whenever journalists believed that a player had been unfairly discarded. “The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” he would say. It is interesting to speculate whether […]
unrest Mail & Guardian reporters The army weapon and ammunition heists in Bloemfontein may have been intended to fuel instability in Lesotho. This scenario was flighted by security experts this week as police made their first arrests. Lesotho has been racked by protests since claims by opposition parties that the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy […]
Xolela Mangcu: CROSSFIRE South Africa’s transition to democracy has been framed almost exclusively in political and economic terms. The formal transition to a constitutional democracy has been followed by an even greater focus on economic growth. While all of this is understandable and desirable, relatively little attention has been given to our public values. And […]
As Wall Street pats itself on the back, trouble lurks behind the boom, warn Joel Kotkin and David Friedman With the Asian dragons vanquished, Wall Street soaring to new heights and United States unemployment rates at modern lows, American elites are indulging in an orgy of self- congratulation unmatched since the Roaring Twenties. “France had […]
Douglas Rushkoff: ONLINE `They’ll come at night – especially if you’ve got an electric lamp glowing somewhere, a dead giveaway,” warned one member of an online survivalist conference. I had intended to spend the week doing extensive research for a column about the millennium bug (Y2K) – the software and hardware glitch that will prevent […]
warfare Stewart Dalby It is my wife’s birthday soon, and going through a catalogue from the London auctioneers, Bonham’s, has given me an original idea for a present. I work at home and look after the children. My wife goes to the office. In the evenings I moan about bringing up children without help and […]
Suzy Bell Should South African fashion be fun, or should it reflect urban decline? Debbie Reynolds, producer of the glamorous annual fashion event, the Durban Designer Collection (DDC) and lifestyle editor of the Independent on Saturday said of this year’s contest: “The brief to the designers and the judges was directional fashion. They were looking […]