Andy Capostagno Rugby The Super 12 is heading inexorably towards a conclusion and, while the whole country may be looking for scapegoats to explain the dismal efforts of South Africa’s regional selections, the whole country doesn’t have to find a solution. Nick Mallett does. But given the weight upon his coat-hanger shoulders, the big man […]

Greg Bowes Dance music tour In what promises to be one of the dance events of the year, a veritable who’s who of commercial and underground dance musicians and DJs have been assembled for this year’s Camel Experience. The series of parties – this year subtitled, for reasons unknown, Quadropheria – begins in Cape Town […]

They’re a dance band who don’t dance, recording stars who rarely record. Yet their sound is everywhere, writes Lindsay Baker What with one thing and another, Massive Attack have taken their time. Their three albums to date have taken as long to appear as The Beatles’ entire recording career. But, gradually and quietly, their sound […]

Angella Johnson Traditional healers have accused the pharmaceutical industry of trying to muscle in on their lucrative natural herbal market after a company was ordered to stop producing products to be sold over the counter. Pharmacare, a division of South African Druggists, was told by the Medicines Control Council (MCC) to stop making four cure-all […]

Robert Kirby: Loose CannonAmong Africa’s sorest afflictions has been, of course, its missionaries. This pessimistic breed started pouring into those parts of Africa closest to Europe – from where all the best hypocrites emerge – a few hundred years ago and have been here ever since. Not only still here, but still arriving. What is […]

A new treatment for male impotence is taking the world by storm, writes Tim Radford Lewis Carroll should have patented the idea: swallow a little something and feel just swell. “I know something interesting is sure to happen,” said Alice when she found the bottle. “I hope it will make me grow large again, for […]

Andy Duffy The National Party’s new Western Cape leader, Gerald Morkel, played a central role in propelling a convict’s outlandish sex claims against NP chief Marthinus van Schalkwyk into the public domain. Morkel, provincial police MEC and now premier elect, was party to the decision to put senior investigators on to the case. His office […]

Simon Caulkin reports on the bright young masters of the Web universe This year $20-billion of business will be done on the Internet. That’s about the size of the economy of Vietnam or Iraq, and three times the figure for economic commerce, or e-commerce, last year. By 2000 the total may be five or even […]

Philip French Movie of the week The cinema has done quite well by Oscar Wilde’s work. There have been versions of Lady Windermere’s Fan by Ernst Lubitsch and Otto Preminger; a plush Alexander Korda film of An Ideal Husband; a superbly cast The Importance of Being Ernest with Edith Evans’s definitive Lady Bracknell; Albert Lewin’s […]

David Shapshak Press freedom in Africa, where it has traditionally been squashed by the myriad of dictatorships on the continent, has been infinitively enhanced by the growth of the Internet and the resultant access to, and dissemination of, information it brings. While print media may be banned or suppressed for publishing dissenting views about a […]