Mashupye Ratale Kgaphola and Annette Lansink Kirk-Cohen on the Unisa squabble Newspaper readers and news followers in general in recent weeks may be forgiven for confusing the unfortunate squabble between the council of Unisa and the Minister of Education, Kader Asmal, with the real debate in respect of the changing landscape of higher education in […]

The surprise of the Spier Opera Season has been an Africanised adaptation of a Purcell opera with Amampondo and the Free Flight Dance Company Guy Willoughby The Spier Arts Trust set up in the mid-Nineties at this magnificently appointed estate in the choicest part of the Stellenbosch valley resembles its companion wine industry more and […]

TENNIS Mail & Guardian reporter Martina Hingis and Jennifer Capriati are to meet again in the final of the Australian Open. For Hingis it will be her sixth consecutive Melbourne final, and for Capriati a chance to retain her women’s singles crown. But to predict a winner from the pair will be more tricky, after […]

BODY LANGUAGE Ellen Goodman To be frank, I had nearly given up on scientific research as the road to health. I had almost abandoned the last hope that medicine would come up with a user-friendly formula for longevity. First there was the bad news about cloning, the genetic path to immortality. Dolly the clone has […]

BOXING Deon Potgieter Three South African boxers are featured in world-title action on Saturday and all three face a testing time. Jan Bergman makes the first defence of the World Boxing Union (WBU) welterweight world title he won in June against Colombian Guilermo Mosquero. Although Bergman still possesses one of the most awesome left hooks […]

SOCCER Ntuthuko Maphumulo The second half of the Premier Soccer League (PSL) season looks to be tightly contested, although the gap between log leaders Moroka Swallows (39) and bottom of the log Classic (13) is 26 points. The title race is likely to throw up a new champion as some of the perennially strong teams […]

BOXING John Rawling As the dust settled in New York’s Millennium hotel, after a press conference to showcase the richest fight in history had disintegrated into mayhem, one overriding conclusion was clear: Mike Tyson is patently unfit to be taking his place in a boxing ring. This was no stage-managed World Wrestling Federation-style knockabout hype, […]

David Macfarlane Months of hostilities between Unisa and the Ministry of Education reached boiling point this week when they faced each other in court on Thursday after negotiations to reach a settlement failed. There is now mounting alarm within the university that the turmoil Unisa’s court application has generated is obscuring, and worsening, a long-standing […]

theatre GuyWilloughby Cape Comedy Collective, Armchair Theatre, Observatory. Every Sunday giggle at a line-up of comics at their home venue. On Sunday January 27 guffaw at the first of a new Month That Was series, a monthly comic look at current events (and non-events) with Stuart Taylor, Petra Sheiber, Nik Rabinowitz, Melanie Jones, Warren Harding […]

Drew Forrest The recent pow-wow between the top brass of the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)was “one of the most constructive since 1994”, National Union of Mineworkers’ general secretary Gwede Mantashe insisted this week. Mantashe was among the union chiefs who met President Thabo Mbeki and a team […]