curious tale of three schools Bengu’s school falls on hard times Andy Duffy The school Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu established and ran before he went into politics has been hit by funding cuts, forcing it to close its doors to hundreds of schoolchildren. The KwaZulu-Natal provincial education department has told Dlangezwa High School that […]

Ferial Haffajee South African advertising agencies are hot- footing it into the rest of Africa, often learning as much as they are teaching. Local agencies have partners in agencies in most African countries. Eastern and southern Africa is covered best, although some agencies work in west and north Africa, as well as Mauritius. South Africa’s […]

Just the suggestion of producing an Afrikaans film with an all-white cast in South Africa in 1998 is enough to make a boardroom of grown businessmen burst into uncontollable laughter. “Nee hartjie,” said the men in suits to film-maker Katinka Heyns when she was doing the circuit to find financial backers for her latest project, […]

Brenda Atkinson wonders whether Kendell Geers’s recent show was a success. Was it a punchline without a joke? An olive without a Martini? A vetkoek without filling? Was it an ingeniously constructed art event, an accurate barometer of cultural neurosis, or a distorted painting of political intervention gone horribly wrong? It was an exhibition by […]

Ann Eveleth Aruling by a Pretoria judge last week effectively makes University of Cape Town vice-chancellor Mamphela Ramphele’s old school imaginary. Judge Ben du Plessis decided that Stephanus Hofmeyer Farm School near Kranspoort in Northern Province did not exist as a legal entity at the time its staff and pupils were evicted because its governing […]

Ann Eveleth A South African parachute manufacturer has threatened an irate consumer with extortion charges after the skydiver demanded his money back for faulty equipment that could have cost him his life. The Durban-based Chute Shop told Witbank skydiver Paul Ikin it would lay a criminal charge against him if he persisted with his threats […]

Mungo Soggot The Department of Justice is targeting prosecutors and other justice officials who quit for private practice during trials and are then rehired in the same capacity for the same trials at far more expensive private-sector rates. In a nationwide circular, the department has threatened already overstretched attorneys general that they could have to […]

The 100-year-old Pretoria News is still learning new tricks. Janet Smith reports Gauteng Newspapers managing director Deon du Plessis, editor of The Star Peter Sullivan, the late editor of The Sunday Times Tertius Myburgh, Reuters’ Africa desk chief Lesley Wroughton and former press photographer of the year Nicky de Blois all have one thing in […]

Inga Latham : In your ear What fresh aural hell is this? Subjected on Cape Talk to talk show host Sister and comedian Mark Banks’s infantile derision of callers, I began to question my conversion to talk radio. To the best of my knowledge the imperatives of talk radio are to inform and to discuss, […]

THURSDAY, 4.00PM: SRI Lankan leg spinner Upul Chandana took four wickets in an innings that saw Zimbabwe dismissed for 207 in the first of three one-day internationals in Colombo on Thursday. Guy Whittal was Zimbabwe’s top-scorer, with 52 off 70 balls, doubtless a relief after they had managed just seven runs for the first two […]