TENNIS:Jon Swift The revival of tennis has proved in a sporting season just what this country is capable of. From a base of minus zero a short time ago, the game has regenerated and is on the path back. The internal wranglings and factionalism — witness the unsavoury squabbles about the national manager at the […]

Madeleine Wackernagel Sometimes it does not pay to take advice. Everyone I asked upon arriving in Johannesburg recommended I exchange my travellers’ cheques immediately; little did I know I could have virtually doubled my money 10 months later. And as the rand continued to fall and economic gloom set in, the question I often heard […]

Calls to rid official medical research of racial stereotypes are being resiste d, reports Marion Edmunds The Health Department is resisting challenges to take race categories out of h ealth research, even though the ANC is committed to non-racism in the new Sout h Africa. Four academics associated with the Medical Research Council, including Dr […]

Vusi Mona Allegations that teachers are not being adequately included in discussions aro und South Africa’s new school curriculum, but are instead being caught up in c ommittees and bureaucracy, are dogging the vital rewriting process. The new curriculum, expected to be launched at the end of January, will be pha sed in by January […]

While 1996 was in many ways the year of big business, there is still space in South Africa for the little person … David Shapshak AT the end of every working day, as commuters stream out of Johannesburg’s cit y centre, Sewlinali Ngwenya packs pots of face cream and bottles of washing-up liquid into a […]

Lawyers say the cases dealing with the relationship between the Constitution a nd the rest of law were the most important.Mungo Soggot reports This was the year of the Rechtstaat, a state dominated by law: the country’s f inal Constitution was passed into law and in courts across South Africa the pr inciples it enshrines […]

Populist power: Halfway through the Government of National Unity’s reign, the ANC struggles to save face after the very public clashes among its leaders Stefaans Brummer EATING “a lot of meat with local people” in rural Transkei is what Bantu Holom isa did in the pre-Christmas days. This may not be as innocuous as it […]

the cultural year The best and the worst of the continuity presenters PLENTY happened in SABC television this year. We had a relaunch with an unwieldy Jumbo jet and some awkward, second-grade, politically-correct United States TV actors. Felicia Mabuza Suttle looked pleased with herself. Stevie Wonder was asked to comment on the quality of South […]

“Barney, please! Resign! You’re incapable of doing the job! ” – Dennis Davis t o Barney Pityana, chairman of the Human Rights Commission “Johannesburg is a jungle. The problem in Beirut is political, not criminal .. . I feel much safer in Beirut than in Johannesburg.” – Lebanese ambassador Ch arbel Stephan, victim of an […]

One of South Africa’s most wanted hitmen Glen Chait committed suicide in priso n rather than face charges in Britain. The ebola virus claimed its first South African victim when Morningside clinic’s Marylin Lehana lost her fight agains t the horrifying virus. Photographer Mohammed Amin died in the crash of a hija cked airplane off […]