Chris Taylor THERE was a time when clubs in Rio de Janeiro needed look no further than the nearest side street, car park, beach or backyard for the next crop of football talent. Young players seemed to sprout like the weeds in the wasteground where they would hone their skills until it was too dark […]

Would this year’s Bandslam follow the triumphs of last year? MALU VAN LEEUWEN was at the River Club concert APOLOGISTS for the so-called South African Music Explosion are probably going to hate me for this, but it’s so corny it’s worthy of a Leon Shuster gag – except the man has more taste than to […]

Hazel Friedman A MILESTONE in educational programming on television and radio has been reached with the SABC’s new Learn `N Live initiative, giving independent producers an unprecendented opportunity to make their mark by replacing the SABC’s traditionally stodgy fare. Learn `N Live, a joint initiative between the SABC and the Department of Education, not only […]

LESLEY MARX revisits The Space theatre and some of its stalwarts and memories in time for the 25th anniversary celebrations ARTHUR BENJAMIN has a huge warm wicked generous laugh. It erupts as he tries to explain why Brian Astbury was, for him, an inspirational figure at The Space Theatre: “He got you to do things […]

Education gets more money but too late to prevent stringent cost-cutting and student unrest, report Tangeni Amupadhi and Carien du Plessis THE Ministry of Education may have succeeded in securing more money for tertiary education, but it has come too late to prevent stringent cost-cutting on campuses across the country. Several universities and technikons contacted […]

Letsholo THE Botswana government has dismissed as “lies” reports from Bushmen in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve that they are being pressured to leave their ancestral lands with verbal promises of hard cash. The permanent secretary in the Ministry of Lands, Elridge Mhlauli, said this week that he was still in the process of answering […]

Stephanie Pain in London SCIENTISTS are increasingly being forced to get into bed with big business. The change is partly out of necessity: government funding for research is dropping and scientists have to finance their work. But it means that where research was once mostly neutral, it now has an array of paymasters to please. […]

Enriched uranium once intended for South Africa’s nuclear weapons is now helping medical science, writes Lesley Cowling THE Atomic Energy Corporation (AEC) is using enriched uranium to fuel a research reactor that now produces medical isotopes for international export and local use. But the uranium was enriched in a process designed by AEC scientists in […]

The Bushmen of 31 Battalion fought on the losing side and now they are paying the ultimate price, writes Adam Alexander IN the Karoo desert, the sun is setting over an army camp unlike any other in the world. This is the time when the sea of mudbrown tents called Schmidtsdrif springs to life. The […]

Madeleine Wackernagel HOW to keep spending under control without dramatically raising taxes? Trevor Manuel seems to have managed to walk the Budget tightrope with relative ease, although next year’s revisions may tell a different story. Expenditure in the 1997/98 Budget increases by 6,1% over last year’s revised spending total to R186 747-billion, while revenue is […]