real deal The bout between Mike Tyson and Andrew Golota could be more mayhem than Marquess of Queensbury Harry Pearson A century-and-a-half ago the great English showman Wombwell organised a fight between a pack of English mastiffs and one of the lions from his travelling menagerie. Ticket sales were brisk. On the night of the […]

Steven Friedman worm’s eye view Redistribution is not only a matter of what you do, but how you do it. Until this week, anyone who suggested that we could find a way of getting the affluent to contribute to the needs of the poor that would attract support from the government and official opposition would […]

Stuart Jeffries T he surprise winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature sat on the edge of a friend’s bed in Paris and reflected on the journey that had brought him from China to France, from the obscurity of being a playwright and novelist known only to a small number of critics and intellectuals to […]

sunday, 1.15pm I’m at my mom’s house, enjoying a traditional Cape Flats lunch: yellow rice, beetroot, sweetcorn, overcooked carrots, roast potatoes, roast chicken, roast lamb – you know, the usual. I hungrily stare at the prepared feast and momentarily experience feelings of guilt about the fact that I’m not vegetarian, thinking how devastated some of […]

If Palestinians were black, Israel would now be a pariah state subject to economic sanctions led by the United States. Its development and settlement of the West Bank would be seen as a system of apartheid, in which the indigenous population was allowed to live in a tiny fraction of its own country, in self-administered […]

ALGERIA has set out a punishing timetable for its first-ever public oil and gas exploration licensing tender but foreign firms are sceptical that sweeter terms and efficiency will reign. Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil last week said six oil and gas blocks would be put on offer later this month in an international tender where […]

STEVEN SWINDELLS AND OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday SOUTH African diamond giant De Beers has ruled itself out of a bid for Canada’s Dia Met Minerals Ltd, which put itself up for sale earlier this week. De Beers had been mentioned as a likely suitor for the Canadian miner after its purchases this year of […]

SOUTH Africa’s Digicore Holdings Ltd is on track to achieve its forecast turnover of R300m by June 2001 on the back of a number of large orders, including a R150m order from Debis Fleet Management. In August Digicore had reported poor earnings for the year to June 30, 2000, blaming restructuring costs and tough trading […]

SOUTH Africa’s Impala Platinum (Implats) has recovered a R22m, 30-tonne shipment of platinum group metals matte, which was stolen by hijackers, at a scrapyard warehouse in Alberton. The matte – an intermediate form of metal which has the appearance of granulated, heavy black powder – was being shipped to the company’s Springs refinery from its […]

ALISTAIR THOMSON, Abidjan | Friday IVORY Coast’s army ruler General Robert Guei has vowed to stand down if he loses Sunday’s presidential election – but claims have already been levelled that soldiers loyal to Guei are trying to rig the poll. Guei, who is running against four other hopefuls, appealed to the people to ignore […]