Once upon a time, long before the heady days of El Nino, South African TV drama was as soft as an English muffin and as wet as English weather. The Importance of Being Earnest and Charlie’s Aunt were the primary ingredients of our homemade white bread in the 1970s and 1980s — and you may […]

Maria McCloy The management of national music chain Musica and the advertising agency Jupiter Drawing Room are surprised by the “extreme” reaction to a Valentine’s Day poster campaign that went up on Friday January 23 and was torn down by Monday January 26. Four naked couples in loving embraces, each accompanied by appropriate words from […]

Andrew Muchineripi : Soccer No footballer will be more closely followed, on and off the pitch, during the African Nations Cup in Burkina Faso this month than Abedi Ayew, the veteran Ghana midfielder popularly known as Pele. To be named after the Brazilian who played in a World Cup final at 17 and is arguably […]

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 […]

Eddie Butler : Rugby For all its reputation of being the dearest, dearest institution never to have been added to the government’s sacred “listed events”, the Five Nations Championship has a decidedly murky history. There may not have been much that even the home unions committee could do about the world wars that interrupted the […]

Iden Wetherell Televised scenes of demonstrators being teargassed and robust editorials in the country’s leading daily have so angered Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe that he has ordered a radical shake-up of the state-owned media that will see his already tight grip reinforced. Traditionally a faithful ally of Zimbabwe’s entrenched political establishment, the government media have […]

Mungo Soggot and Wonder Hlongwa The man who is likely to become deputy president of South Africa has been taken to court for not repaying his R120 000 overdraft and for failing to honour payments on a R400 000 home loan. Standard Bank confirmed this week that it successfully obtained judgment against Jacob Zuma — […]

Andy Duffy More than 530 people died at the hands of the police in the last nine months of 1997. Early investigations pinpoint police negligence as a main cause of the deaths, though the police watchdog, the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), has also found evidence of murder and culpable homicide. The ICD’s figures show that […]

John Seiler Important questions have been asked about the still-unresolved collapse of most major Pacific Rim financial markets and economies, but the common conclusion is flawed: that the Asian governments involved, and by extension this and other African governments, have a minimal role to play in dealing with the complex mix of economic and political […]

morality Sexual scandal in politics has always been attended by hypocrisy, most frequently on the part of the media in their efforts to justify the public ventilation of private activities. When a British minister of defence, John Profumo, bedded a prostitute and was caught, the British press justified its prurient coverage of the scandal on […]