On the World Day of the Book, April 23, readers, authors, publishers, librarians and booksellers all over the world will pay tribute to the most successful artefact ever invented -the book. This year, Exclusive Books is providing two opportunities for the public to participate in the book day act of giving. Firstly, you are invited […]

Last week, Matthew van der Want argued that we should be ashamed of the success of `clichd’ band Just Jinger. Diane Coetzer disagrees At least Matthew van der Want has the one characteristic always admired in the surfers who took to Umhlanga’s most lethal waves: pluck. But, in this case, the word applies less to […]

Andy Duffy The group behind the controversial Aids drug, Virodene PO58, has so far spent around R1- million on the drug, including paying its manager roughly R150 000 for three months’ part- time work. Cryopreservation Technologies (CPT) refuses to divulge its funding sources, beyond its 10 feuding shareholders. But the extent of the expenditure, which […]

A paediatrician’s love of orchids led to the discovery that big doses of garlic could triumph over infection, writes Michael Nurok The Roman statesman Cicero advised that one should eat to live, not live to eat. Little did he know that more than 2 000 years later, gravely ill patients at Cape Town hospitals might […]

Shot dead at a taxi rank this week, James Zulu is more likely to be remembered as an Inkatha warlord than the great leader he could have been, writes Jesper Strudsholm The South Coast Herald once branded James Zulu “a warlord”. Zulu threatened to take the editor to court for defamation, but the paper was […]

FRIDAY, 4.00PM: FORMER Sarfu vice-president Brian van Rooyen, author of the dossier that spurred a commission of inquiry into the South African Rugby Football Association’s affairs, said he will urge the government to appeal the Pretoria High Court’s decision to set the commission aside. “This decision doesn’t vindicate Sarfu by any means,” he said, and […]

Education’s financial crisis is having a devastating impact on South Africa’s publishers of textbooks, writes Swapna Prabhakaran South African educational publishers face lean times as the Department of Education shifts gears, changing its approach to implementation of the new outcomes-based Curriculum 2005. While the new curriculum does require new textbooks, the department has sidestepped its […]

Tangeni Amupadhi South Africa’s police watchdog is probing the handling of the slaying of six-month old Angelina Zwane on a Benoni plot this week. Advocate Neville Melville, the executive director of the Independent Complaints Directorate, has dispatched a team of two to investigate why the farmer involved in the shooting was not arrested immediately after […]

Gareth Patterson: A SECOND LOOK The hunting fraternity initially blamed the animal rights lobby for the expos of “canned” lion hunting last year. They said it was a means of tarring South Africa’s conservation image just prior to the June meeting of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species and of dampening the Southern […]

Keith Henderson Fire, fire and more fire would be an easy way to describe this year’s Rustlers Easter Festival. It became quite clear by the end of the four-day festival that tricks involving paraffin, chains, sticks and clubs with burning ends are in vogue, so to speak, as well as a healthy dose of juggling. […]