Johannesburg A decade after the removal of restrictions Soweto remains a ghetto but a development plan is on the cards, writes Charlene Smith In the 1980s, when the vision of the creation of a black middle class became fashionable, businesspeople almost salivated at the tremendous opportunities they saw opening up with the removal of apartheid […]

Alex Duval Smith in Paris Do you have nightmares in which you are walking down a crowded street wearing nothing but a shower cap or a bra, and you are powerless to do anything about it? Susanna Hailstone, an executive with the LSD advertising agency, does. “I think it is quite a common dream among […]

While the Fed chief sought to calm the world’s stock markets, Hong Kong took another drubbing, pointing to more turbulence ahead, write Madeleine Wackernagel, Mark Tran in New York and Paul Murphy in London Asian stock markets took little comfort from the soothing words of Alan Greenspan, chair of the United States Federal Reserve Board […]

Madeleine Wackernagel : TAKING STOCK The economist John Maynard Keynes referred to the “animal spirits” of financial markets. This week they demonstrated a wild streak as one after another, world stock markets plunged. After months of conjecture, predictions of a repeat of October 1987 became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was an accident waiting to happen: […]

Charl Blignaut Due to its logistic challenges and high cost, South Africa’s highly succesful “3D” Wonderbra advert has only appeared once in a limited run in Elle magazine. But that certainly hasn’t prevented the campaign from gaining the Johannesburg branch of ad vertising agency Hunt Lascaris TBWA multiple awards around the globe. So successful has […]

FRIDAY, 11.00AM: EDUCATION Minister Sibusiso Bengu won the right on Thursday to determine requirements for the appointment, transfer and promotion of teachers in government schools. With the passage of the Education Laws Amendment Bill, the minister made good on his threat to introduce legislation overturning the court victory of a Cape Town primary school, which […]

Angella Johnson The Commonwealth has endorsed its first economic charter committing the 54-nation body to free market principles, though its poorer members thwarted a call by richer countries for a full round of new world trade negotiations. President Nelson Mandela warned fellow heads of government at the four-day Edinburgh summit that stable democracies could not […]

Standing in the MuseumAfrica in Newtown, gazing at an extraordinary floor-plan built of bricks, I was briefly distracted by two authentic, dyed-in-the-tie hippies. Walking in their wake, my friends and I saw something on the floor. We picked it up. It was the biggest, fattest, most artfully rolled joint we had ever seen. We had […]

FRIDAY, 9.25AM: NATAL Rugby Union president Keith Pakinson believes he is the right man to step into Louis Luyt’s shoes as the next South African Ruby Football Union (Sarfu) president. Pakinson made a public statement ahead of Tuesday’s Sarfu election. saying: “We deparately need a national controlling body that serves in a fair and equitable […]