After four years in the wilderness, Damien Hirst, the hooligan genius of the art world, is back Gordon Burn Four years ago, for his last major show, at the Gagosian Gallery in New York, Damien Hirst made a piece featuring a giant beach ball bobbling on a column of air. The ball was multicoloured and […]
Mary Dover South African hotel giant Southern Sun has secured a site for a new hotel in Tanzania as part of the group’s aggressive expansion into Africa. Southern Sun recently purchased the Lusaka Holiday Inn from the owners of the property, Anglo American, and a new hotel is under construction in Maputo, Mozambique. The 159-room […]
Neal Collins in London The venue: Selhurst Park. The date: early autumn 2000. The scene: Wimbledon’s players are gathered in the dressing room to begin their battle for promotion from Division One. Enter the new manager… “Right, lads, not many of you remember me, but here’s a reminder of what I’m all about (head butts […]
Ivor Powell The Office of the State Attorney has stopped providing legal assistance to victims of apartheid atrocities appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) amnesty hearings and is instead funding only the torturers and policemen applying for amnesty. The decision hits victims currently employed by the state – mainly former Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) […]
John Hooper in Berlin The former head of East Germany’s Olympic programme went on trial this week in what will be an unprecedented public examination of the project to produce super women athletes by feeding them steroids without their knowledge. Opening the trial of Manfred Ewald, once head of the Gymnastics and Sports Federation, the […]
Andrew Muchineripi SOCCER It never ceases to amaze me how much hot air is exhaled by Premier Soccer League coaches on the issue of fixture congestion without their offering even one constructive suggestion as to how the problem can be solved. Paul Dolezar says Sundowns face a 13- month season and the reaction of this […]
David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY Do rock climbers have the equivalent of a mile-high club? Do they delight, whether to themselves, or to friends, in the altitude, or the particularly diffficult circumstances in which they have “done it” – clinging to the bottom of an overhang, perhaps, or stretched halfway up a rock “chimney”? The question […]
NET WATCH British director Mike Figgis’s latest film, Time Code, claims to be the first digital film shot in real time. The website at www.time code2000.com gives a demonstration of what downloading short movies is all about. The world’s biggest game of Tetris has been played by a group of Brown University students. They used […]
South African teams might not make the Super 12 semi-finals, but their improved play is a boost for the Boks Andy Capostagno If only the wake-up call had come sooner. For most of the first six weeks of the Super 12, South African teams induced a sense of unremitting gloom with one- dimensional game plans […]
John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF The plane (I know you’re beginning to get bored with this plane, but so am I) is getting ready to take to the skies. This is no ordinary airline. It is part of the infrastructure of what should be Africa’s pre-eminent carrier, Air Afrique, named after the continent itself. […]