A survey has found that diplomats at 51 out of 71 missions are overpaid – so they’re taking heavy salary cuts, writes Mungo Soggot THE Department of Foreign Affairs has slashed the salaries of South African diplomats – some by as much as 50% – after exploring what it really costs them to live abroad. […]

Desmond Morris, at 68, is still pursuing his provocative studies of the naked ape. He spoke to Andrew Billen in Oxford DR DESMOND MORRIS has made a career out of watching people. He has the eye of a zoologist trained in the tradition of Julian Huxley and Darwin, but he also possesses highly developed showbiz […]

A few years in New York changed Tananas’s drummer Ian Herman. GWEN ANSELL finds out how much THE club is crowded. So crowded, in fact, that the punters can’t get to the toilets and the musicians can’t get to the stage. The bar staff are sprouting extra arms, and the waiters have started a human […]

Gwen Ansell TANANAS WIDE ENSEMBLE: Unamunacua (Gallo/GMP) FOR this, their fifth album, Tananas’s core of guitarist Steve Newman and drummer Ian Herman expands to include more than a dozen jazz and folk colleagues. The difference is dramatic. The spacey, wistful guitar tunes are still there (with reprises of a few old favourites) but the limited […]

Marion Edmunds The Steyn Commission on remuneration of representatives has recommended an 8% real increase on the total package for MPs and members of the Senate, bringing their total annual package to R239 642 from R221 861. Members of the provincial legislatures will have their packages increased by 2% and President Nelson Mandela will have […]

The French Barbarian team is packed with talent, but the Springbok `dirt-trackers’ team has been playing well enough to show that they can meet the challenge RUGBY:Andy Capostagno T HE trouble with touring is that just when you’ve gotten to like a place, you have to move on. Those of us lucky enough to spend […]

Mark Milner in Sao Paulo PEDRO MALAN does not look like a gambler. Pipe-smoking and bespectacled, he projects the image of the career civil servant he has been for much of his working life. Malan, however, is now Brazil’s minister of finance; a key player in President Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s attempt to wean the country […]

Joshua Amupadhi traces how the virus was identified by a Johannesburg doctor before it could spread too far `Angel,” the Gabonese doctor who unwittingly brought the Ebola virus to South Africa, flew home on Wednesday. Back in Libreville he is popularly known as the “Angel” because of the lives he saves so regularly at the […]

Stuart Hess THE South African embassy in Washington this week disputed claims by human rights organisations in South Africa and the United States that 18-year-old Azikiwe Kambule is being mistreated in prison. Kambule is awaiting trial, and is said to face the death penalty, in Mississippi state on a charge of being an accomplice in […]

Rehana Rossouw FAITHFUL members of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) continued to flock to the organisation’s activities this week, despite an initiative by religious leaders to caution against its militancy. On Wednesday night, more than 1 000 Pagad members marched to a house in Lansdowne, Cape Town, which they claimed was owned by an […]