Janet Smith Oscar-winners Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline, musician Peter Gabriel, film-maker Richard Attenborough, novelist Ken Follett, businessman Richard Branson and crusading journalist Donald Woods are the dazzling reasons why East London will finally be able to stage a celebration fit for the life of activist Steve Biko. Rallied by Woods, this illustrious collection has […]

I have always considered (and still do) the Mail & Guardian to be among the best newspapers – not just in Africa, but in the world. I was thus disappointed in the manner that the newspaper handled the issue around the late Professor Sam Nolutshungu. At first, like everybody else who had read the articles […]

Cape Talk is more than 702-speak, says the programme manager in an interview with Hazel Friedman Radio 702 – South Africa’s most successful commercial broadcaster – has spread its proverbial wings to the land of the mountain, sea and celebritydom in the form of Cape Talk Radio. And spearheading the launch which takes place on […]

Swapna Prabhakaran Mysterious men flashing police badges and driving police vans have ambushed S Nkosi twice in four months, taking his money before setting him free. He has fallen victim to a widening extortion racket that sources say is sweeping through South African cities. Last Tuesday was payday for Nkosi. He was stopped by two […]

Grard Sekoto belongs to that pantheon of artists who have received too little too late. Today he is regarded – whether accurately or not – as the father of South African painting. Yet his life epitomised the contradictory standards applied to black and white artists during apartheid. Although the source of his art-making was derived […]

murder Peta Thornycroft The shotgun allegedly used to kill David Webster was thrown into a Nylstroom dam by former policeman Ferdi Barnard. This information will be used against Barnard when he goes on trial charged with a clutch of crimes, including the 1989 murder of Webster, an activist and anthropologist at the University of the […]

Ferial Haffajee and Mukoni T Ratshitanga The African National Congress appears set to take a whopping loss on its Shell House headquarters, which it will vacate at the end of September. In a depressed property market, brokers suggest the 22-floor building could go for half of the R20-million the ANC paid for it in 1990. […]

FRIDAY, 10.30AM: TRADE on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was subdued on Thursday amid caution following a weak opening on Wall Street. Traders mostly selectively picked up blue chips, pushing the industrial index up, while financials continued their recent recovery. The industrial index recorded a 14-point rise to 9 032, helped by renewed expectations of an […]

John Ezard Frailty, the apparent brave frailty of a candle in the wind, was always Diana’s supreme public quality in life. In death it will combine with her other merits and faults – her genius for intimacy, her great persisting beauty and her turbulent spirit maimed in childhood – to perfect her legend. That legend […]

Nobody much likes the paparazzi, perhaps for understandable reasons. They make their living out of intrusion into people’s private lives and, in some cases – as when they flashed away at the terrible scene in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel early last Sunday morning – out of tragedy. So when the world was stunned this […]