July 20 is the 75th anniversary of his birth. Richard Pithouse reflects, from Durban, on the unusually heroic life of a brilliant intellectual When McDonald’s opened their first branch in Durban a local business columnist read the landing of the empty smile and iconic arches in Old Fort Road as an advance blessing from the […]

Edward de Bono is a leading authority on communication. So why is he so bad at conversation? Emma Brockes Edward de Bono, inventor of lateral thinking and a man who regards himself as a more powerful visionary than Plato, is outlining his plans for our interview. We are in his ground-floor flat in Albany, the […]

The Tiger Woods star treatment extends even to the entourage Jamie Wilson There was only one show in town last weekend and everybody wanted a piece of Team Tiger. Even the autograph of the world number one’s caddie, Steve Williams, reputed to be the highest-paid New Zealand sports star through his association with Woods, was […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.00am. SHAREHOLDERS in Nando’s, the fast food chain, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a controversial merger between Nando’s Group Holdings and its loss recording offshore operations, controlled by Nando’s chairperson Robbie Brozin. Critics including some Nando’s shareholders said that the deal was designed to salvage Brozin’s interests and protect them […]

Riaan Wolmarans The massive Oppikoppi August music festival is this year expanding more than just the size of the stages – a separate festival is taking place near Worcester and an exchange programme is bringing Belgian musicians to this country. The arrangement between Oppikoppi and the organisers of the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium, which attracts […]

against cancer Julian Borger in Havana Clinical trials of a cancer therapy genetically engineered by the Cuban biotechnology industry are due to begin in London next month. It may prove to be a landmark both for medicine’s struggle with the disease and Fidel Castro’s attempts to break out of Cuba’s United States-imposed isolation. Despite a […]

Sean Cohen is urging the diamond industry to clean up its act, but has himself had dubious Angolan dealings David Le Page A leading South African figure in the international campaign to ban conflict diamonds himself smuggled diamonds out of Angola as recently as three years ago. At the time the source of such diamonds […]

Victoria Brittain ME AGAINST MY BROTHER: AT WAR IN SOMALIA, SUDAN, AND RWANDA by Scott Peterson (Routledge) ACROSS THE RED RIVER: RWANDA, BURUNDI AND THE HEART OF DARKNESS by Christian Jennings (Orion) T he United Nations’s recent humiliation in Sierra Leone was a disaster almost as inevitable as the UN experience in Somalia a decade […]

Duncan Mackay ATHLETICS Though officials must fear having to act as peacemakers to Maurice Greene and Michael Johnson in the United States Olympic squad for Sydney, at least they should not have any problems from their runners for the women’s 800m, where for the first time in history one family will fill all three places. […]

Barry Streek A Caledon church’s decision to gamble with the odds and invest in a new casino has paid off, with the church’s empowerment trust having just bagged its first substantial pay-out of R1-million. And when the Caledon Casino, Hotel and Spa opens its doors on October 1, the Overberg Community Trust will receive 10% […]