Staff Reporter
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/ 9 April 1998

Is the Easter bunny a fake?

Charlene Smith As if the truth about Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy wasn’t devastating enough, now comes the news that not all chocolate Easter bunnies are chocolate – certainly not the cheap imported ones. Pity the Easter bunny that used to enjoy a tranquil life on supermarket shelves before being hidden under bushes for […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Property in the doldrums

Charlene Smith Despite a recent drop in interest rates, and a further 1% to 2% drop expected later this year, property markets remain in the doldrums. Banks are under pressure too as defaults on mortgage bond payments increase. Housing sales are weak and industrial, commercial and retail rentals are stagnant or declining. The only city […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Sex, age and underpants

John Updike’s new novel is dividing the critics. He spoke to Joanna Coles Waiting for the lift with John Updike at his Park Avenue hotel, he catches sight of himself in the chrome doors, his face a beige pancake from an earlier television appearance. “Oh dear,” he giggles brightly, his jaunty green eyes staring back […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Ad campaign to get SA youth smoking

Ralph Borland A division of a major advertising agency has been contracted by cigarette giant Rothmans to create a brand aimed at a new generation of smokers: 18 to 24-year-olds. Insiders at Ogilvy & Mather Rightford Searle-Tripp Makin say the Cape Town- based advertising agency took up a multi- million contract to market brands owned […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Putting words into action

Adam Haupt The South African Screenwriters’ Laboratory (Scrawl) is one of those laboratories which South Africa’s Oh Schucks … society would never have imagined possible during the crocodile years. In fact, many film makers (and those trying to break into the predominantly white male industry) still whinge quite tearfully that the future of filmmaking is […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Suite things

Cape Town appears to be the new crucible of white South African rock. Here we take a look at three top Capetonian bands Janet Smith The point is that none of them would fit in a beige hotel room where the gold paint is peeling off the fake rococo vases. The mini-bar would be cleaned […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Heralding the master’s truth

Mercedes Sayagues It used to be that every morning when Zimbabwe’s only English-language daily, The Herald, was delivered to my home, I would read it at leisure over coffee, or take it to the office for a mid-morning perusal. A quick read was enough, since the government-owned Herald served a bland porridge of watered-down local […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Unita rift could ignite Angolan war

Tangeni Amupadhi The civil war in Angola could resume as early as this month despite recent concessions by the rebel Unita movement to the terms of the Lusaka peace accord, a report by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) says. According to the ISS, a rift has emerged within Unita between those opposed to war […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Call for probe into Mbeki’s Aventura links

Ann Eveleth United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa said this week he would ask Judge Willem Heath’s corruption watchdog to probe the involvement of close associates of Thabo Mbeki in the privatisation of tourism parastatal Aventura. Holomisa said Deputy President Mbeki and his entire office “should have recused itself” from a Cabinet committee set up […]

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/ 9 April 1998

Damn the change rooms

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer Another Sunday, another hot Highveld afternoon, another match in the seemingly endless Castle Premiership programme. Fixture number 270 to be precise. Mid-table Moroka Swallows versus relegation candidates African Wanderers. The setting last weekend was George Goch Stadium, a modest, homely stadium one long goal kick from the M1 highway that, like so […]