IAN SANSOM takes a look at the Christmas blockbuster crop, and finds Frederick Forsyth the best of a bad lot HAVING thoroughly pursued my researches, I can report that the hyped-up, hard-sell hardback tends to have a funny smell. It’s not the smell of the boards and glue, it’s the smell of mediocrity. This despite […]

Marion Edmunds THE Minister of Public Service, Zola Skweyiya, acknowledged this week he was in trouble. At a meeting held behind closed doors in Parliament, he bluntly sketched the serious problems undermining transformation in the public service and appealed to parliamentarians, officials and international development experts for help. It is expected that the Parliamentary Portfolio […]

Short of funds to fight his court battle, Bantu Holomisa has asked the president for his Transkei military pension, reports Stefaans Brmmer BANTU HOLOMISA, gearing up for a bruising and expensive court battle to be reinstated as an African National Congress member, this week asked President Nelson Mandela to give him his Transkei military pension. […]

BOOKS: The latest from the literary world Courageous anti-apartheid publisher Ravan is no more. TONYMORPHET pays tribute to those who first published JM Coetzee and others RAVAN Press has finally closed its doors. Not even the name could be saved as it was swallowed by Hodder &Stoughton Educational. It’s no use mourning the loss – […]

Matric exam leaks have resulted in large- scale reshuffling within the Gauteng Department of Education, report Joshua Amupadhi, Stuart Hess and David Shapshak SECURITY for the matric exams was so lax and the loopholes so many that the Gauteng Department of Education this week replaced many of the 700 officials of its examinations unit. This, […]

FILM: Derek Malcolm IT IS difficult to imagine a sillier film than From Dusk Till Dawn, but the fact that it was written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Robert Rodriguez, supposedly two of the most talented tyros Hollywood wants so badly to make its own, renders the enterprise the more absurd. Is this schizophrenic […]

HUBBLE’S Universe: ANew Picture of Space (published by Constable), at first sight, looks like a coffee-table book on space, with bright dramatic pictures that suggest sci-fi book jackets or New Age tie-dyed shirts. But the pictures, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, are not simply beautiful – they are a way of understanding how the […]

Funding of the arts will soon rest in the hands of a National Arts Council. We look at the cultural politicking ahead. Katy Bauer MORE than a year after the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology commissioned the independent Arts and Culture Task Group (Actag) to compile an extensive report on how the arts […]

THERE can surely be no more glaring example of the bully-boy nature of South African rugby administration than the defeat of Brian van Rooyen in his bid to oust Louis Luyt as president of the Transvaal Rugby Football Union (TRFU). For what Luyt managed to do was turn the issue from one of what Van […]

Marion Edmunds THE Home Affairs Department has quietly dropped the fee charged to foreigners to marry South African citizens. In July this year, Home Affairs introduced regulations which made it obligatory for foreigners to pay a set charge of almost R7 000 should they wish to marry South African citizens. At the time, the department […]