Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Today is D-day for the Bafana Bafana World Cup hopefuls as national coach Philippe Troussier trims his squad to 26 footballers with four more to drop out before the tournament begins. The squad faces friendlies against Zambia at FNB Stadium on May 20 and twice world champions Argentina in Buenos Aires five […]

Tony Mechin As the leaders of the Zimbabwean Internet industry entered the Harare International conference centre in January for the opening of Internet@frica98, the country’s first Internet show, looming in their minds was the thought that the show billed as the “biggest Internet, intranet, cyber conference and exhibition in Southern Africa” was going to be […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Labour and business are becoming increasingly impatient with the government’s reluctance to set a date for the long- awaited presidential jobs summit between the government, organised labour and business. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and Business South Africa (BSA) are ready and waiting for the summit, but say they are […]

David Beresford The master planner in the African National Congress’s liberation war came out from the shadows this week to defend his role in the most deadly phase of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle. Aboobaker Ismail, the ANC’s head of “special operations”, appeared before Desmond Tutu’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to ask for amnesty for a […]

Penny Siopis’s new show enacts a dialogue between beauty and cruelty, between private and public, writes Tracy Murinik Quietly, to Chopin, two breasts bathed in blood-red paint dip and resurface as if by lunar pull. Beautiful, and slightly comical, this video seems to engage in ambivalent dialogue with Queen Cakes, a pair of “cup-cake” breasts […]

The black don of South African advertising has clinched one of the biggest empowerment transactions, writes Ferial Haffajee It’s been a buoyant year for advertising guru Peter Vundla, who has sealed a R1,8-billion deal for a top food company in the third-largest transfer of wealth from white to black hands in South Africa’s history. His […]

Wally Mbhele Despite the succession of adventurous military operations he has been associated with, Aboobaker Ismail is an intensely private person – so private that he is still more commonly known by his nom de guerre, Rasheed. It was during his tenure as an Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) commander that he became one of the previous […]

John SeilerSOUTH AFRICA, LIMITS TO CHANGE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF TRANSITION by Hein Marais (Zed/UCT Press, R150) Hein Marais is not the first observer of post-apartheid South Africa to point to the burgeoning African professional and entrepreneurial classes and their conspicuous consumption patterns. The recent book Comrades in Business captures this dynamic pithily in its […]

Angella Johnson There is much less of Louis Luyt these days – 18kg to be precise. The beleaguered rugby boss was in defiant, if slightly subdued mood, as he confessed to a room of Johannesburg businessmen that the pressures facing him had led to rapid weight loss. Just hours before he was expected to face […]

Loet Douwes Dekker Celebrations in recent weeks commemorating the democratic elections and Workers’ Day highlighted South Africa’s work to ensure new constitutional rights take effect in practice. In the workplace, this means defining new priorities and guidelines, while taking cognisance of the implications of South Africa having rejoined the International Labour Organisation and the World […]