The sixth Spier Summer Arts Festival starts this week. Paul Boekkooi gives an overview of this unique event The Spier Estate setting just outside Stellenbosch certainly is breathtakingly beautiful. While all the major arts festivals run by the Rainbow Nation are compressed events lasting a maximum of some seven or eight days, Spier’s is in […]

analysis Nigel Bruce Whatever “good news” might have been announced under the three-year budget plan, it is certainly not being reflected in that most sensitive of economic barometers, the value of the currency. Nor does it seem to have occurred to those who echo this sentiment that there are reasons for the rand continuing to […]

Mungo Soggot and Barry Streek The Department of Defence’s chief of acquisitions, Chippy Shaik, has been blasted by the arms deal probe for his notorious conflict of interest and for possibly favouring his brother’s company over a more eligible bidder. Presenting the report to Parliament on Thursday, National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka signalled […]

SOCCER Ngwako Madjadji High-riding Kaizer Chiefs are expected to continue their clean sweep of trophies when they grapple with Inter Luanda in Angola in the first leg of the final of the African Cup Winners’ Cup, also known as the Mandela Cup, this weekend. Muhsin Ertugral’s side trekked to Angola with just a 16-man squad […]

Jaspreet Kindra Senior Democratic Alliance leader Dan Maluleke has conceded there are “cultural” differences between white and black members of the DA, and that the two groups perceive South African politics differently. Maluleke, a Democratic Party MP, said he is planning a workshop to provide a “chance for Tony Leon and others to acclimatise” themselves […]

South Africa has taken praiseworthy steps to ensure that business monopolies do not abuse their dominant position. Two events in Parliament this week the tabling of floor-crossing legislation and Winnie Mandela’s farcical ethics hearing underscore the danger of the same kind of abuse on the political front. President Thabo Mbeki and other African National Congress […]

REVIEW Gavin Foster Audi A4 2.4 manual, R226 810 Audi Quattro, R280 460 The second half of Audi’s new A4 range has arrived. In addition to four cylinder petrol and diesel versions there are now 2.4 and three litre V6 versions. All front wheel drive Audis with the exception, for now, of the 1.9 TDi […]

to tow? The limitations of the current minimum car licence may come as a surprise if you are about to hitch that caravan Gavin Foster Thousands of South Africans who passed driving tests in the past three years are unaware that they are not eligible to tow caravans, speedboats or trailers licensed to carry a […]

I have questions about your motivation in publishing the truly madly explicit copulation photograph (Friday, November 9). I don’t know why we don’t copulate openly in public, but we don’t. All the other animals, as far as I know, copulate anywhere, anytime. We do it in private. Why? It seems so odd. Can you tell […]

Charlene Smith In a sharp turn from current government policy, the parliamentary Committee on the Status of Women has recommended that anti-retroviral drugs be given to protect rape survivors and to stop mother-to-child transmission of HIV. The African National Congress-dominated committee issued its recommendations after two months of hearings into women and HIV, and found […]