TUESDAY, 1.30PM: A REMARKABLE number of staff of the Safety and Security Ministry — including Minister Sydney Mufamadi, his driver, his private secretary, and the private secretary of his deputy minister — have all been involved in accidents while driving state-owned cars, the ministry revealed on Monday. “Good grief,” was the response of usually outspoken […]

Douglas Rushkoff : ONLINE How could the breakfast readers of Melbourne possibly benefit from the musings of a cyber-writer from the other side of the world? Why should the innocent trees of South Africa be sacrificed to provide printing space for the rantings of a New York-based media theorist? Because, like it or not, thanks […]

Andy Duffy The head of state education in the Northern Cape faces a disciplinary hearing next week on charges of misconduct. Zodwa Dlamini is alleged to have defied MEC for Education, Arts and Culture Tina Joemat and provincial Director General Martin van Zyl in their attempts to manage the embattled provincial education department. The province […]

Barbara Ludman REIGN IN HELL by William Diehl (Heinemann, R99,95) LUCKY YOU by Carl Hiaasen (Macmillan, R84) Thrillers reflect Americans’ concerns more accurately than CNN – and when one has books by two bestselling writers focusing on right-wing militias, it’s a fair bet that that phenomenon figures in American nightmares. Militias rose to general consciousness […]

Alex Sudheim : On show in Durban ‘I am a visual poet,” says Deryck Healey. Trite as it may superficially sound, once immersed in his art and his nature, one realises this brief epithet is really the only one that fits. There is a quality in Healey’s work, and in his approach to making it, […]

Andrew Worsdale : Movie of the week Love and Death on Long Island, a wryly observed romantic comedy, stars John Hurt as fuddy-duddy writer Giles De’ath. He works with a fountain pen; eats his meals at the same time every day; doesn’t have a television; hasn’t seen a movie in 20 years (he calls them […]

WHO IS . . . GERALD MORKEL? Gerald Morkel, the man who will replace Hernus Kriel as premier of the Western Cape on May 11, is best described as a politician who has risen without trace. A stranger to controversy, one could say his very blandness ensured the job would be his. It was a […]

Tom Quoin : Architecture We will soon have a home for our Constitutional Court. If construction proceeds as expected, it should be ready for occupation early in the year 2000. The building will stand on the upper reaches of the newly named Constitution Hill, north of the painfully memorable Fort, Johannesburg. It will overlook the […]

Rastafarians in South Africa want freedom of religion and the right to smoke ganja, writes Zebulon Dread Arthur Molisiwa is doing a masters degree in mathematics and his father is chair of a corporate giant; Moses Mlangeni holds a BSc in economics and is doing a postgraduate training course in business journalism sponsored by New […]

Brenda AtkinsonOn show in Johannesburg South Africa is not known for abundant, or even exciting, public art. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find an inspirational public work were you tracking one down, let alone stumble across a few in the course of your day. Of course, there are those pigeon-perch monuments to political […]