The competitors may have mixed motives, but the sport’s organisers have Olympic hopes, writes Jonathan Watts WOMEN’S sumo may have been established in Japan last year with the aim of making it an Olympic event, but even the competitors are finding it difficult to take the sport entirely seriously. “I suppose it is still a […]

JOYCE OZYNSKI grieves over the lost architectural opportunities in Johannesburg’s Central Business District THERE is some medicine for Johannesburg’s ugly, neglected Central Business District (CBD) that no one has yet prescribed. It is this: city council architects and town planners should be obliged to live and work in the centre of the CBD vortex before […]

The umpteenth round in the Finance Week versus Times Media wrangle has once again come to naught, writes Jacquie Golding- Duffy FINANCE WEEK made a cheeky attempt to nail Jim Jones, editor of its rival, Business Day, by placing an advertisement in the daily publication which attacked Jones and other Times Media Limited editors but […]

SABC staff make do with veggie burgers as they debate the R450-million question: who is to blame? It’s either the fault of the new management or the old, reports Peta Thornycroft MARTINUS VAN SCHALKWYK pursed his lips and ticked off an exhausted SABC chief executive Zwelakhe Sisulu at a press conference last week. The National […]

Donald W Nauss in Dearborn, Michigan THE Ford Motor Company this week unveiled an advanced mid-sized sedan that is 40% lighter than today’s comparable vehicles and gets up to 30km/l. Prototypes will be produced later this year. The company said the experimental vehicle, the P2000, would use a small, efficient diesel engine. Two versions would […]

THE public backing Minister of Justice Dullah Omar has given to Dr Allan Boesak in advance of his trial on criminal charges is a subject on which it is easy to pontificate. The issue at stake is within the grasp of a schoolchild. The minister of justice, who carries a responsibility for the impartiality of […]

Angella Johnson THE police complaints investigation unit is probing the mysterious disappearance of a man who vanished soon after he was allegedly taken in for questioning by police. Judas Mangolele was allegedly arrested at his home in Protea North, Soweto, on the evening of September 9 last year, after two men – one of whom […]

Rehana Rossouw and Gustav Thiel FEARS are growing within the African National Congress that the National Party is planning a reshuffle to wipe out the ANC’s only representation in the Western Cape provincial Cabinet. Health and Welfare MEC Ebrahim Rasool and Economic Affairs MEC Chris Nissen’s positions have been tipped for change after the provincial […]

HAZEL FRIEDMAN on artists who will be hitting the big time in 1997 SOUTH AFRICAN artists might be composing their own soulful soundtrack to the film To Forget Venice. But 1997 is far from being labelled “The Year of Being Grounded” for South African art. From the beginning of May, thanks to the efforts of […]

Wole Soyinka has been charged with treason by the Nigerian government. From his US exile, the Nobel laureate pours scorn on the accusations WHEN I wrote in my latest book, The Open Sore of the Continent, that “the judicial murder of the Ogoni nine and the continued decimation of Ogoni people was the first Nigerian […]