Thebe Mabanga theatre The name Fong Kong was made popular by a kwaito hit. It refers to the counterfeit merchandise sold by immigrants on the city’s pavements. It is also the name of an upbeat, interesting production that looks at the daily struggles of African illegal immigrants in South Africa. The piece, which was featured […]

While the west is taking its first tentative steps towards Web-enabled cellphones, i-mode is walking tall in the east, writes Jonathan Watts There is a new walk on the streets of Tokyo these days. It is too slow to be a stroll and too purposeful to be a wander. In crowds it often results in […]

Peter Dickson >From the foothills of the Drakensberg in the north to Pondoland in the east and the planned new port of Ngqurha in the south, the Eastern Cape was alive with ghosts this week. First, exasperated teachers being redeployed across the region notched up hundreds of kilometres in the north-eastern Cape trying to find […]

Jane Rosenthal Die swye van Mario Salviati by Etienne van Heerden (Tafelberg) A landscape dominated by space and stone provides the setting for this novel – the Moordenaarskaroo and Weemoedvlakte (Melancholy Plains), where the “karoo wind cannot be distinguished from song”, and the past and the present coexist in a reality which is richer, and […]

Rose Deon Potgieter boxing Dingaan “The Rose of Soweto” Thobela, wrote his name in the annals of international boxing history when he stopped Briton Glen Catley for the World Boxing Council (WBC) super-middlweight world title on Friday night at Carnival City. Just three fighters before him have managed to win credible world titles in weight […]

Stefaans Brmmer Rafic Hariri, the controversial Middle East billionaire behind the equally controversial bid by Cell C for South Africa’s third cellphone network licence, is set to re-ascend the prime ministerial throne in his native Lebanon. Hariri and candidates of his Dignity bloc made a clean sweep of seats in the capital, Beirut, in parliamentary […]

innovations Interested in the building blocks of reality, but intimidated by talk of quarks, leptons, charm, flavour and spin? A new website aimed at explaining the whole bang shoot of big bang derivatives is located at www.particle adventure.org. Streetcar.co.za has opened an innovative new e-shopping site that allows you to send gift vouchers to deserving […]

Recommendations on the size and shape of tertiary institutions could spell the end of black universities, writes Dolina Dowling At the beginning of this year the Council on Higher Education (CHE) was asked by Minister of Education Kader Asmal to develop a set of concrete proposals to “ensure that our higher education system is indeed […]

Rupert Neethling In cyberspace privacy equals security. If websites publicly refrain from peeking secretly into their visitors’ computers – or playing hard and fast with their visitors’ personal data – then surfers are more likely to be reassured and thus more willing to supply their data (including their credit-card details) without feeling that they are […]

The new CD by Wyclef Jean, the dreadlocked powerhouse behind The Fugees, features ska, 41 gunshots, Pink Floyd and a rapping Kenny Rogers Dom Phillips Hip-hop makes sense in New York: the town that created it is still enslaved by it. On a muggy afternoon, the street vendors on Broadway blast out rap, selling mix […]