Shyam Bhatia in Cairo EGYPT’S only two hard rock bands have abandoned rehearsals, hidden their poste rs and locked up their CDs after a police crackdown on heavy-metal fans brande d as Satanists. A satanic fever sweeping the country has prompted some Islamic leaders to warn that “deviants” deserve the death penalty, and Egypt’s opposi […]

This week’s guest writer, Zakes Mda, speaks to skilled black professionals about why they’re planning to leave the country `I DON’T feel guilty at all,” says Wilson Mokgadi. “I feel angry instead. This is not a chicken run. This is a second exile.” We are in a restaurant at the Johannesburg International Airport. He is […]

Helena Smith in Tirana THE road to Albania’s economic integration=20 in Europe is potholed. The furore over=20 pyramid investment schemes has exposed the=20 fragility of free enterprise in a country=20 emerging from one of the world’s most=20 centralised political systems. Their collapse highlights how criminality=20 has become a way of life. Five years into=20 democracy, […]

TENNIS: Jon Swift IT must be more than satisfying to captain Danie Visser that the 3-1 victory over Russia in the Durban Davis Cup tie was built on the success of the less heralded players rather than on the often overworked talents of Wayne Ferreira. And, in the analysis, only Ferreira came out on the […]

From carpets to computers, the public register reveals what gifts MPs have received – or in some cases what they haven’t received. Rehana Rossouw reports ALMOST all the visitors to room V121 in Parliament this week were journalists eager to peek at the assets of South Africa’s elected leaders. If they were hoping for evidence […]

Krisjan Lemmer Wear shades, the future’s so bright A South African man with a dream of a=20 bright future is about as scarce as a=20 politician driving a VW nowadays. Or so we=20 thought, until someone showed us a speech=20 made by the rector and vice-chancellor of=20 the University of Zululand, Professor CRM=20 Dlamini. What […]

THE ANGELLA JOHNSON INTERVIEW PULEEZE, do not call Basil Douglas a “so- called coloured”. It pisses him off. Like the k-word does black folk. He is Coloured, with a capital C, and proud of it. Heck, he is even prepared to fight for the right to be called coloured. The man who organised last week’s […]

THEATRE: Andrew Wilson WHILE some of Athol Fugard’s later works, like A Place With the Pigs, are mark ed by claustrophobic symbolism and metaphor, his earlier plays like Hello and Goodbye and People Are Living There are finely textured examples of dirty real ism, where action and character are not slaves to ethereal philosophies or […]