Owen Bowcott Detectives in Sydney this week ruled out auto-erotic sex games as the cause of rock star Michael Hutchence’s death, but said they were awaiting toxicology tests to determine whether he had taken drugs or alcohol. As the INXS lead singer’s distraught British fiance, Paula Yates, flew to Australia with their 16-month-old daughter, the […]

processors Steve Shipside It’s a depressingly familiar scenario. Your film comes back with 10 underdeveloped pictures, 10 overdeveloped, three shots of your thumb, and four cases of red-eye that make close family members look like Zoltan, Hound of Dracula. Precisely that disappointment is driving the digital photography market, says Steve Hoffenberg, director of the Digital […]

Neil Manthorp : Cricket South Africa’s cricketers have both endured and enjoyed a very, very long week in Perth since their arrival last Friday. The veterans of the 1994 tour, and the 1992 World Cup, wasted little time in reacquainting themselves with the delights of southern hemisphere hospitality while the Oz rookies discovered just what […]

Closing Valkenberg hospital would involve a sacrifice by the people least able to bear it, writes Lin Sampson Valkenberg: one alights rather than arrives on its pulsating terrain, as if on another planet. It is an eccentric place, a hovering satellite of hope and despair, dishevelled in part, but with pretty gardens that stretch down […]

Drum magazine agony aunt and executive editor, Liz Khumalo, aka Sis Dolly, in the 15-minute interview. By Charl Blignaut Charl Blignaut: You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to interview you for. I read Dear Dolly every single week. Liz Khumalo: Oh, that’s so good to hear. CB: For how long have you been Sis […]

In a discussion paper for the ANC conference, Pallo Jordan advocates greater involvement with the black bourgeoisie, writes Charlene Smith `No serious person could pretend that South Africa today is not a country of far greater opportunity than it was 10 years ago” – but should the African National Congress deliberately foster the emergence of […]

Alex Brummer As we know from the dramas at Barings and Bank of Credit and Commerce International, financial collapses in globalised financial markets are no longer national affairs. The collapse of Japan’s Yamaichi, one of the world’s top 10 investment houses, is a problem for the whole global financial system. It could not have come […]

infections `One of the tragedies of life, sir, is that it’s possible to become like that which we hate most,” Bishop Peter Storey said in powerful testimony to the truth commission’s hearing into Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and her football team this week. The primary cancer, he owned, was the oppression of apartheid, but “secondary infections have […]

Andy Duffy Universities and technikons are bracing for the worst as they await news of how the government plans to spend its money on campuses next year. Several institutions warned this week that they expect a cut in their government funding, and are already making plans to axe staff, scrap courses, and hike student fees. […]