Jazz guitarist Jimmy Dludlu has come a long way since cutting his teeth with groups like Loading Zone and Mack Denite Thebe Mabanga There are many sides to Jimmy Dludlu. There is the stylish, celebrated jazz guitarist who strums his custom-made, semi-acoustic guitar to the delight of audiences on either side of the South African […]

Thebe Mabanga in your ear I recently had the opportunity to listen to scenario planner Wolfgang Grukel give a talk on his book, Ten lessons from the future. Grukel paints an interesting picture of what life will be like in 2020. When one thinks of radio in its capacity as the country’s most accessible medium, […]

Exit management is the government’s latest proposal to reduce the size of the public service.

BRONWEN ROBERTS, Midrand | Friday IN its latest public disagreement with government, powerful labour federation Cosatu has threatened to launch a general nationwide strike if the government goes ahead with key changes to labour laws. The 1.8-million-member federation drew up a programme of action to fight the changes, which it says would undermine workers’ gains […]

PETER DICKSON, Port Elizabeth | Friday HIV causes Aids – but death in most cases is from depression. That’s the opinion of Eastern Cape MEC for Health Dr Bevan Goqwana, who also believes circumcision and single-sex boarding schools to be at the cutting edge of prevention. Goqwana went public on his beliefs in Umtata last […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT AND REUTERS, Paris | Friday THE son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has admitted that Tripoli paid $6m to Muslim rebels on the Philippine island of Jolo to secure the release of South Africans Callie and Monique Strydom and eight European hostages in late August. Seif al-Islam, who was a key figure in […]

Ntuthuko Maphumulo South Africa will be hosting the African Nations Women’s Cup finals on November 11 to 25, with games being played at Makhulong in Tembisa and Orlando stadium in Soweto. The tournament was first scheduled for October 14 to 28, but was changed by the South African Football Association (Safa) due to those dates’ […]

We’ve got the shocking stories to make a mother lode of cop dramas, Charl Blignaut discovered at a recent TV scriptwriting workshop It’s his third day in town and David Simons is still trying to get a handle on the newspaper headlines. “I look at your papers and see your crime stories …” says the […]

Andrew McUtchen She’s Benin’s only, and therefore, most successful afro-funk diva ever, an enthusiastic disciple of the Voodoo religion, and she’s not half determined to re-write the lyrics to James Brown’s evergreen soul classic It’s a Man’s World. Why? “Because it’s not. Men pretend to rule the world, but we do”. Meet the co-headline act […]

Simon Kuper For reasons too complex to explain, I have just spent a few weeks in Ghana. It proved an excellent place to watch two other West African countries, Cameroon and Nigeria, reach the quarterfinals of the Olympic tournament, with Cameroon going on to win the event on a penalty shoot-out against Spain. Most Ghanaians […]