recognise it Nawaal Deane Ecstasy: “E”, or the “love drug”, costs between R50 and R80, depending on the dealer. A person on E will display affectionate behaviour, wanting to massage (non-sexually), hug or touch anyone for hours. To spot a person on E, look for someone with dilated pupils and a tense jaw, someone who […]
Jaspreet Kindra and Glenda Daniels Politics within the tripartite African National Congress-led alliance entered a particularly contradictory phase this week when branches of the union movement effectively threatened to withdraw their support from the ruling party in the run-up to the local government elections. Two major unions, which are affiliates of the alliance partner the […]
Fiona Macleod Insurance tycoon and sometimes funder of the African National Congress leadership Douw Steyn is spending millions of rands on putting down roots in a private game reserve in the Northern Province. Steyn, founder of Auto & General Insurance, was friendly with the ruling party’s top leaders in the early 1990s before he moved […]
Julie Burchill Body Language Until very recently, no matter how liberal he was, a man could argue himself blue in the face that he was in favour of all possible equalities between men and women, and then at the last moment slip the stiletto between the ribs: “Ah, but nature, you see – nature’s different. […]
South African Music Week: A CDreview special African Jazz Pioneers: Afrika Vukani (Gallo) The Pioneers haul out their old-style South African jazz stuff one more time, but it really is all wearing a bit thin now. Leader Ntemi Piliso, probably the last remaining member of the original Pioneers, groans his way through a song or […]
Martin Kettle For nearly a century, human visitors to the North Pole have found a frozen, featureless scene covered in thick ice. Until now. Earlier this month, a group of international scientists aboard a Russian ice-breaker arrived at the pole to find not ice but a stretch of open water at least 1km wide, with […]
blind Anthea Jeffery Crossfire To most South Africans, the word “racism” probably has its conventional meaning – connoting intentionally disparate treatment founded on race. Given our apartheid history, it refers to laws that deprive black people of the vote, or bar them from owning land, or exclude them from “white” schools and hospitals. It also […]
Steven Friedman worm’s eye view We continue to mention race in public, but not to talk about it. For those of us who have argued that we do not acknowledge race publicly as much as we should, the clash between President Thabo Mbeki and opposition leader Tony Leon should, in theory, be a breath of […]
Matthew Simpson LIFESTYLE Frankly flea markets have begun to bore me. The first one I ever went to was the mass of stalls which squatted outside the Market Theatre in the early 1980s when I was all of eight or nine years old. The place seemed to stretch for miles and was a treasure trove […]
In October the Internet will host its first election, with registered voters deciding who will regulate this medium Lauren Shantall Only 200 South Africans will be voting for one of two African candidates for Icann, the Internet “traffic authority” – despite there being nearly two million local users. The Icann election, from October 1 to […]