As health budgets are cut to the bone, a hospital in KwaZulu-Natal is pioneering community-based care for people with HIV/Aids Khadija Magardie An unzipped first-aid kit lies on an empty table in the Community Outreach Centre at St Mary’s Hospital in Marianhill, KwaZulu-Natal. The kit comprises some bleached, carefully packaged sterile instruments, a pair of […]
Anthropolgists looking at the dawn of the 21st century may surmise that we were schizophrenic: a society that idealised childhood, but demonised problematic, sexualised adolescents. New research suggests that the first dark signs of adolescence – menstrual blood and pubic hair – are now often occurring in children as young as eight or nine. Whither […]
It would take decades and cost billions to map the human genome, they said. Tim Radford tells how it was done Scientists have just finished deciphering the genome – the book of human life. Their DNAblueprint will change everything. The once undreamed-of knowledge has already begun to alter agriculture, forensic science, archaeology, biology and medicine. […]
Peter Eaton NOT THE ART MOVIE OFTHEWEEK ‘It’s an epic. It’s a big, big movie,” claims writer and director Tim Robbins of his Cradle Will Rock. Actually, it’s so huge that it hurts and just doesn’t to know what to do with itself for a its 132-minute length. Purporting to be “a (mostly) true story”, […]
Riaan Wolmarans CD OFTHEWEEK ‘You know I’m not dead,” sings Billy Corgan confidently on Everlasting Gaze, the hit opening track of The Smashing Pumpkins’ latest CD, Machina:The Machines of God (Virgin). But on the track Heavy Metal Machine, he wonders:”If I were dead, would my records sell?” And the Pumpkins are dead, for all purposes, […]
INNOVATIONS Got a gold card burning a hole in your wallet? Shame. Head on over to www.eluxury.com, which is filled with the outrageously expensive commodities peddled by LVMH: Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton. If you’re not intimidated by names like Dior, Salvatore Ferragamo, Celine, Bottega Veneta, or you just don’t know why they could be intimidating, […]
The illness is closely linked to the explosion of the Nigerian drug trade in South Africa Paul Kirk The Lonsdale hotel has seen better days. The air conditioners rarely function, the lights do not work, the swimming pool is empty and full of garbage, and rooms can be rented by the hour. Visitors are greeted […]
A 16-year-old boy from Soweto has been widely praised for his sketches of township life Greg Marinovich Nkululeko Jenetwa, like many teenage boys, has a fascination with cartoons. Instead of joining his friends playing soccer and whistling at girls on the streets of Mapetla, Soweto, he spends his time indoors, inventing a world of cartoons […]
Euan Ferguson TENNIS Let’s put our hands right up here at the beginning and admit it: grass can, at times, be a little boring. I don’t mean “grass” grass, dope grass, the stuff that just makes boring people more boring; though that’s certainly pretty boring. I mean real grass, the green stuff, cow food, the […]
The ‘countertrade’ component of South Africa’s weapons package is in danger of falling through Ivor Powell Promises by foreign companies and governments to organise substantial investments in the South African economy in exchange for weapons contracts are going sour – before the government’s controversial R32-billion arms deal is even finalised. Government sources defending the weapons […]