Soap opera sub-plots means more attention on the women’s game at the Australian Open Jon Henderson At the end of last year, the Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, wrote cloying appreciations of one another for an American magazine. At about the same time, only child Martina Hingis went off to South America and, according to […]

Andy Capostagno golf The annual return of the European Tour to South Africa usually presages two things; big money and heavy rain. And the signs are that this year will be no different. The recent performance of the rand has already ensured that in local terms this week’s Alfred Dunhill Championship at the Houghton Golf […]

Guy Willoughby review OFTHEWEEK Othello does Maynardville, Maynardville does Othello … intriguing resonances are set up on this millennial cusp down at the fusty-touristy Cape, where the Bard’s most racially charged tragedy finally makes it on to the South African stage with, goodness, a black actor in the title role. Shakespeare, global export and citizen […]

Look beyond the wigs and waistline Dolly is still queen of country, says Maddy Costa There’s something about Dolly Parton that other old-time country stars don’t have: a very particular ability to make people wrinkle their noses.? She represents a specific, perhaps unrivalled grade of Nashville bad taste,?which is quite an achievement considering that city’s […]

David Le Page Takeuchi was a tiny robot built from two cockroach legs and a silicon chip. An innocuous cyborg, he toddled for up to an hour at a time across flat surfaces at the University of Tokyo, where researchers built him in 1996. The little machine had a conventional silicon chip micro-controller, an artificial […]

Gavin Foster rallying With just a couple of days to go before the end in Senegal, it’s clear that South African Alfie Cox has no chance of winning the 2001 Paris-Dakar rally, and the “almost” man can blame it all on BMW. If the German manufacturer hadn’t ditched its highly successful 650cc single-cylinder machines in […]

Merryman Kunene soccer The highest recognition any professional can get comes from fellow professionals, who understand better what it takes to get to the top. It is for this reason that Nastasia Tsichlas, the MD of Sundowns, beams with pride when she looks at her success in football, which culminated in her appointment to one […]

Adam Sweeting CD OFTHEWEEK Prising themselves free from their mid-Nineties fixations with irony and Las Vegas glitz, U2 have circled back to what they’ve always done best on All That You Can’t Leave Behind (Universal-Island). That means big tunes, thumping beats and soaring guitars, while Bono pins his heart on his sleeve and sings as […]

PIET GREYLING (rugby): Is it important how one feels if someone puts in that much money to have his name on it? I don’t have a helluva view I liked the old names but things have changed. To be honest I don’t know what Loftus is called any more. As you get older all that […]

DUMISANE LUBISI, Belfast | Friday A WIDOW who allegedly forced her young children to perform sexual acts with two men in return for payment appeared briefly in the Belfast Magistrate’s Court this week. The unidentified mother of the two children, a 13-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl, was unable to raise R 1_000 bail and has […]