Maureen Barnes The prime minister of Malaysia – Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad, to give him his full title – got into a helicopter on one of his frequent inspections of his country and, flying over a remote area of designated protected forest, he saw evidence of illegal logging. In a fury, he flew back […]
Carolize Jansen The Sports Information and Science Agency conducted an extensive and enlightening study on the participation of women in sport last year. The main objectives of the study were to obtain the number of women participating in various sports in South Africa, segment the number of these participants in categories according to, for instance, […]
Stewart Dalby Spending it It used to be said that television would see an end to newspapers, but newspapers are still with us. Similarly, the computer was supposed to herald the paperless society. What use pens, then? In fact, pens are very much with us and vintage fountain pens are now highly valuable and collectable […]
The level of government pension funding may be cause for concern, writes Mike Metelits The level of funding of government employee pensions, along with the method of paying for these obligations, may be distorting how foreign investors look at the level of indebtedness of South Africa, and thus how they rate our future prospects and […]
Robert Kirby ONE MIRACLE IS NOT ENOUGH by Rex van Schalkwyk (Bellwether) About a quarter of the way through Rex van Schalkwyk’s very disquieting book I had moments of a curious temporal shift. So much of what I had been reading could well be the Kafkaesque testimony presented to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of, […]
Neil Finn: Try Whistling This (Parlophone) The erstwhile Crowded House/Split Enz singer-songwriter could, as the clich goes, sing the phone book and sound good. His eternally yearning tones set him apart from other melodic late- thirtysomethings – though he also happens to write lovely, inexplicably underrated songs. His first solo effort brims with the usual […]
It is perhaps not politically correct to draw sustenance from the “poet of Imperialism”. But as one surveys the international and domestic scene at the moment, the famous words from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, spring inevitably to mind: “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs …” We are living […]
One of the best goalscorers the game has produced has quietly joined Wrexham as player/ coach. Ian Ross hears how a Liverpool legend plans to dip his toe in the managerial waters It is generally accepted that anyone who has the misfortune to live out their life in the public eye can judge their continuing […]
Niki Barker The Dukuduku State Forest near the St Lucia estuary in northern KwaZulu- Natal used to be the largest and best- preserved remnant of lowland coastal forest in Southern Africa. It is now an important component of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, a proposed World Heritage site. But it is being cleared and […]
Wally Mbhele The credibility of the police and the prosecution – led by the Transvaal Attorney General, Jan d’Oliviera – has come under heavy assault from lawyers defending three African National Congress members who were convicted for the 1993 Eikenhof massacre. Fresh evidence pointing to prior police knowledge of the identity of the real perpetrators […]