Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week The 16th century is back in vogue, what with Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth being released within weeks of each other and both up for loads of Oscars. Both are independent films and boast amazing production design, great performances and assured direction. Shakespeare in Love is the comedy, while […]

DOUBLE Olympic champion Michael Johnson and world 100m gold medallist Marion Jones are confirmed to compete at two international athletics meetings in South Africa next month. Johnson, who set the world 200m record at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and Jones will compete at a meeting in Roodepoort near Johannesburg on March 13 and then in […]

Why is it so difficult for racists to admit that they are racist? This question is currently exercising the minds of the British establishment, for it affects one of the most powerful institutions in the land, the Metropolitan Police Force of London. The issue arose over the way the Metropolitan Police investigated – or rather […]

THREE main opposition parties in Tanzania have supported a proposal for a single candidate in the presidential election next year. Opposition heavyweights from Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo, NCCR-Mageuzi and the Civic United Front said on Thursday they are in full support of the proposal to field one presidential candidate from their camp to oppose […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon Call me old-fashioned, call me uptight, out of touch, pompous, of lofty personal conceit, call me anything you like, but please do not call me by my first name. Not until you have either been invited to do so, or you have asked me politely whether you may. My preference for […]

If the first duty of an opposition party is to oppose, or at least test, government policy at every turn, its second is presumably to try to become the ruling party. The problem in South Africa is that none of the opposition parties appears to have even a chance of becoming the government in this […]

000 Ellen Elmendorp Television news viewers were charmed last week by the story about Tammy, the Western Cape police’s perlemoen-sniffing dog. But Tammy’s fame has taken an ugly turn with the news that perlemoen poachers would like to see her knocked off, and have taken out a R50 000 contract on the lively Border collie’s […]

worse Charlene Smith In November last year, doctors and hospital superintendents in Gauteng presented a memorandum to the province, warning that ”patients will die” if staff and budgetary cutbacks at hospitals were not halted. The memo read: ”We cannot in good conscience accept that financial constraints will mandate the collapse of health services in Gauteng. […]

Larry Flynt’s drive to loosen the puritan grip on the US has taken a new turn with his upmarket sex shops. Frances Anderton meets the porn king It is midday in a sunny, spacious coffee bar on Sunset Strip. Enthroned in a gold- plated wheelchair, munching a bagel, sits the man considered a shameless smut […]

entertainment My favourite website is my own, of course. I’ve never managed to get into anyone else’s. 2KY, or whatever you call it, has hit Darling, darling. I just go there to check it for facts and change it all the time. You change the cat’s sandbox every day, but you should also change the […]