Ed Vulliamy Stamp collecting has never been as sizzling a preoccupation as it is now, since drummer and Massachusetts stamp gallery owner Don Palazzo had the idea of raising revenue in Third World countries by issuing entertaining postage paraphernalia. The hobby has suddenly exploded along with the fear of the eruption of the volcano in […]

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 […]

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 […]

PRISON SHIPS ON HOLD EVEN though the correctional services department has decided against buying ships for use as jails, private companies could still be asked to tender for operating floating prisons, correctional services commissioner Khulekani Sitole said on Friday. He said after viewing two hulks for sale in Ukraine and a British floating prison, 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 […]