FRIDAY, 10.30AM: ALL-Africa pole vault record holder Okkert Brits has been suspended from competing in Friday night’s European indoor meeting in Germany after Athletics South Africa informed the International Amateur Athletics Federation that he is on SA’s team to take on Russia in a Test match in Pretoria on Saturday and therefore does not have […]

Lizeka Mda : City Limits It’s no Swiss bank account, nor is it a safe full of jewels. But nevertheless, it is an inheritance. A spot under the Anderson Street overpass off the M2 freeway is Ntombeyiningi Zondi’s inheritance from her mother. Every morning she leans a table against a freeway pillar and sets out […]

More needs to be done to help local governments overcome their financial crises, writes Caroline Kihato The financial crisis that afflicts local government needs to be resolved. Local government is regarded as pivotal to development in South Africa as the majority of the population depend on it for the delivery of much-needed social services. By […]

In the style of the mystery novel penned via the Internet by John Updike et al, a new competition has been launched with the involvement of South African writer Jann Turner, author of Heartland. At the M-Web site http://www. mweb.co.za/valentine/, Turner has written the opening segment of a Valentine’s Day romance. Web-surfers can add the […]

Stefaans Brummer Evidence against Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga mounted this week when it emerged that the United States embassy in Pretoria had serious reservations about his administration of donor money in 1989. The Mail & Guardian earlier reported that the Irish organisation Trocaire, a conduit for European Union donor money, severed links with Motshekga’s National […]

Ferial Haffajee ‘It’s difficult getting the message through by committee,” says Dominic Ntsele, managing director of ad agency Young & Rubicam. Last year, Ntsele headed a creative team working to highlight the endemic levels of child abuse, rape and battery in the country, ahead of the Men’s March in November, through a high-profile media campaign. […]

IN BRIEF SA’S FIRST INTERACTIVE NOVEL ACCLAIMED South African author Jann Turner made literary history in South Africa when she launched the first local interactive Internet novel on Thursday. Turner — author of Heartland– will write the opening scene of a romance called Take Mine Valentine, and visitors will be asked to continue the book, […]

Janet Smith Down the tube Robert Powell’s haunted face is our most abiding cinematic image of Jesus, thanks to Franco Zeffirelli, the same director who said all those disgustingly true things about the public response to Princess Diana’s death last year. Zeffirelli would never perform a vulgar deed, which is why the spare, exquisite features […]

Michael Nurok It is 3am on Sunday and “Dr Davis”, an intern at a Western Cape hospital, has not stopped working since 8am the previous day. He is trying to resuscitate a child who has lost so much blood from an open fracture he is unconscious. Save the overburdened nursing staff, there is no one […]

Dan Glaister in London All in all, Elton John should be feeling quite pleased. After all, just 250 for some curtains is not bad by any standards. But unfortunately the other items on his 280 050 weekly spending list are causing concern. Accountants have warned of a cashflow crisis for the singer whose Candle in […]