The Zairean rebels’ decision to jettison De Beers has placed the diamond cartel on an even shakier footing, reports Chris Gordon from London LAURENT KABILA’s Zairean Rebel Alliance for Democratic Forces has terminated De Beers’s contract to buy the output of the country’s diamond parastatal Miba (Socit Minire de Bakwanga). This blow to De Beers’s […]

COLOMBIAN PRES DROPS IN COLOMBIAN president and chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement Ernesto Samper Pizano arrived at Johannesburg International Airport on Friday morning. Pizano was met at the airport by Foreign Affairs Minister Alfred Nzo, who later left for Pointe-Noire, Congo, to be with President Nelson Mandela to meet Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko. A […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN reports on ‘wunderkind’ artist Alexandra Nechita, due to show in SA She has been described as Mozart with a paintbrush and a potential Picasso. Her paintings go for as much as $125 000. And at the rate they’re selling, Alexandra Nechita will be a multi-millionaire before the age of 12. The most recognised […]

Jacquie Golding-Duffy British Telecommunications (BT) took up the ultimate marketing challenge when it chose to be the title sponsor of the BT Global Challenge – a 10-month journey by 14 identical 20m steel yachts around four continents. Seen by many media observers and industry players as the most ambitious “relationship marketing” programme in the world, […]

Bringing back Neil Tovey is the obvious answer to South Africa’s defensive problems, but it may not be the best solution SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi THE person who coined the well-worn phrase that football is a funny game was actually being quite serious as anyone who watched South Africa defeat Zaire in the World Cup would […]

Glynis O’Hara on the Sama Awards THE FNB/Sama (South African Music Awards) may have opened well with a gracefully orchestrated medley representing different South African music forms, but by the time it was nearly over and Dr Victor led a line-up in a sentimental anthem about not doing crime, a lot of that promise had […]

DJ Taylor BABEL TOWER by AS Byatt (Vintage, R57,95) AS BYATT’S novel The Virgin in the Garden (1978), a chronicle of the self-absorbed Potter family and its two contending sisters, Stephanie and Frederica, showed every sign of turning into a kind of symbolist masque. Still Life (1985), its successor, was less experimental but still managed […]

University teachers face more challenges in the lecture halls now, but they are better for them, writes Eddie Webster I often meet students I have taught over the years who ask me nervously: “how are things at wits?” I am always cautiously upbeat. I realise, of course, that for some of us it was more […]

A British TV documentary is about to lift the lid on the sordid ‘canned’ lion hunting industry in South Africa. Gareth Patterson, who was involved in the investigations, reports THE bullet slammed into the lioness and she spun in the air, falling against the electric fence behind which she was confined. Standing on the other […]

MOTORRACING:Alan Henry FERRARI’S Michael Schumacher was not sure what had happened to his younger brother, Ralf. All he knew was that the 21-year-old Jordan driver was running fourth in the opening stages of Sunday’s San Marino Grand Prix, on the tail of the eventual winner, Heinz-Harald Frentzen. “If Ralf had finished,” Schumacher said, “there might […]