Andy Capostagno Rugby What do you say about South Africa 96, Wales 13? It’s difficult to get a true sense of perspective when one team has scored 15 tries and yet is disappointed about not cracking the 100 barrier. Perspective comes with distance and on Saturday I was not at Loftus Versfeld, but at the […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi and Rehad Desai The gauntlet thrown down to the South African Communist Party on Wednesday by President Nelson Mandela could be the final bell for the SACP in its battle to re-establish itself as an effective political force on the South African landscape. Mandela’s tough speech to delegates at the SACP’s 10th national […]

Brenda Atkinson I am no fan of sport. I don’t give a toss for its nation-building bumf, I begrudge it its unreserved corporate support, and it brings out the misanthrope in me. But put Bafana Bafana on the box and I’m all patriotic pride and good humour. I get butch and yell things like, “Why […]

South African Airways (SAA) flights on the London route appear to be full of fun. First there was the couple copulating in business class. Now there is the strange story of the berserk poet. A court in the United Kingdom has been hearing evidence of how the poet, one John Bagwell, aged 42, erupted into […]

Suzy Bell On show in Durban Never has Jung been so playful, and yet so arresting. Last Tango in Heaven, produced by Durban’s pioneering Backlash Theatre Company, was written by that most underrated Pretoria playwright, Mario Scheiss. He wrote the play in four days and then, dramatically, on June 2, at the age of 64, […]

Brett Hilton-Barber `I’m an expert in dating early man,” said an American woman. She looked around the conference room where hundreds of scientists were mingling amid fake rocks and designer bushman paintings, and caught the eye of her palaeontologist husband. “That’s my early man,” she smiled. “You could say we’re still dating.” The couple were […]

Andrew Worsdale Marleen Gorris has become a soft feminist. Or at least, softer than before. Her first two movies A Question of Silence and Broken Mirrors were savage indictments of male- dominated society. Born in Holland in 1948, Gorris studied theatre and literature before her stunning film debut with A Question of Silence. It tells […]

Neil Manthorp Cricket The stomach churns, the vision blurs periodically, the fear of a failure so instant, and finite, paralyses the instincts and movements that have been second nature for years. Very few men, at any senior level, have opened the batting without experiencing these emotions. Many have suffered worse. It is quite possible to […]

A new imaging service was launched last week on the Internet, courtesy of American and Russian military satellites. Duncan Campbell takes a peek By the end of this year, the world’s largest online database will be offering browse and click satellite pictures of much of the Earth’s surface and all of its largest towns. The […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD Me, jump out of a plane at 3 000m? You must be joking. No way! Not this side of life. I could not have emphasised the point more strongly when my editor suggested, with an evil grin, that I try skydiving for this column. I gave him one of […]