FRIDAY, 11.00AM: AFRICAN WANDERERS and Santos have made it through into next season’s Castle Premier League. The two first division teams lead the log in the national play-offs and are ensured protion status. Santos have five points, and Wanderers have seven, while Black Leopards and Tembisa Classic have no hopes at all — Leopards have […]

Stephen Gray VOICES by Dacia Maraini (Serpent’s Tail, R86) ONE of Italy’s more famous women writers, Dacia Maraini, has now produced this little shocker, Voices, which appears in an English translation three years after it became a Euroseller. Maraini is known in South Africa, for the fine feminist works, The Silent Duchess and Isolina. Although […]

ATHLETICS:Julian Drew LAST Saturday in the Dutch town of Hengelo Haile Gebrselassie missed out by a whisker on a million dollar pay-out for becoming the first man to run under eight minutes for two miles. By comparison, Hendrick Ramaala’s fifth place finish in the 10 000m for a new South African record of 27:36.30 was […]

Ferial Haffajee THERE is good news on the cards for teachers, nurses and police officers in this year’s wage negotiations – they’re likely to get better increases than other public sector employees. And the government has proposed a wage freeze for all public servants from chief director level upwards – these categories comprise 0,2% of […]

ads Angella Johnson WHEN Denise saw the newspaper advertisement offering single ladies a free upmarket dating agency she lost no time in dialling the cellphone number and joining up. The 40-year-old divorced advocate from Johannesburg’s plush northern suburbs was looking for a steady relationship with a tall good-looking, single man. So she was taken aback […]

GLYNISO’HARA speaks to veteran songbird and survivor Tandie Klaasen about the release of her new CD IT’S been years – 24 years, in fact – since Tandie Klaasen’s face was set on fire in a senseless attack. “So don’t call me burnt face,” she says now, “just call me Tandie.” People still remark on it, […]

FRIDAY, 4.00PM A NIGERIAN general on Friday denied that Monday’s failed attack on focres of the Sierra Leone junta by Nigerian-led Ecomog peacekeeping forces was part of an OAU-mandated operation to oust the coup leaders. General Victor Malu, who has been called back from Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown to Nigeria for consultations with military strongman […]

The new Springbok Nude Girls album is being punted as the South African rock release of the year. DROR EYAL attended last week’s launch IT’s late Tuesday, and the Springbok Nude Girls are the biggest rock band in South Africa. They believe it, the fans believe it and, more importantly Sony, their record company, believes […]

Mafaniso Hara WHAT are the prospects for the ban on the trade in ivory from the African elephant being lifted at next month’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species? The prospects would seem to rest on the following possibilities: a majority of African states and other parties to the convention agreeing that the ban […]