CD of the week Cape Verde – the name just hasn’t been the same since that wonder-woman Cesaria Evora was discovered singing her mornas in a dusty bar in Mindelo. These days Evora must be one of her country’s biggest exports. Ignored until her fifties, she suddenly sold over 200E000 copies of Miss Perfumado, which […]

Movie of the week It is rather strange to see Brad Pitt, who has a body immaculately toned down to the last sinew, scoffing at the male models in Gucci ads. Is the irony deliberate? In Fight Club it is often hard to tell. This is a film that derides consumerism, but it is made […]

Matthew Krouse The fake stones that built Sun City, its intentionally haphazard forestry and its pretentious pools that look like ruins are part of the general lie it lives. Here, in the sad old North-West province – we’re supposed to pretend – a playful, lost African civilisation put down roots that can now be explored […]

Stefaans Brmmer The Mmakau villagers first knew there was trouble 18 months ago when the baboons came down from the hills. Little could they have known that the primates were harbingers of a saga that would split the community and draw in controversial granite magnate Fred Keeley, relatives of Minister of Public Enterprises Jeff Radebe […]

Letter from the North

Howard Barrell A small black economic elite has benefited most from the democratisation of South Africa over the past 10 years. While the black share of wages, salaries and other income in South Africa rose dramatically over the five years to 1996, almost all of this increase occurred among the top 10% of black earners, […]

Jubie Matlou Who are … Tumi Makgabo, Charles Mogale and Jeremy Maggs? For a woman who earns her living by talking, current affairs presenter Tumi Makgabo was surprisingly cagey about her prospects of joining Ted Turner’s Cable News Network (CNN). For Makgabo (25), Atlanta beckons with not just the promise of life captured by Coca- […]

When Ian Player won the first Dusi in 1951, he did so without much in the way of outside help. Last weekend more than 150 policemen and dozens of soldiers, sailors and firemen helped to make the race safer for more than 2 000 competitors. Gavin Foster reports Three helicopters, 39 pistol-packing motorcyclists and 40 […]

Stephen Bierley Tennis Jennifer Capriati overcame her old troubles to reach the final four of the Australian Open. Drugs were bound to come up. And they did within minutes of Capriati beating Japan’s Ai Sugiyama 6-0, 6-2 on Tuesday to reach her first grand slam semi-final since 1991. At the subsequent press conference she was […]

William Boot The International Monetary Fund’s (IMF)top three officials and the vice-president of the World Bank flew to Gabon last week to introduce 20 African leaders to a new initiative to make it easier for countries to escape the bonds of debt and grow their way out of want. Arriving in private jets at Libreville’s […]