Robert Kirby We approach the end of the century and it’s nowhere to be found. The long- awaited, enviously portentous but never threatening: the Great South African Novel is yet to be written. It’s not that there hasn’t been a wealth of human experience in this country. This century kicked off with a boisterous local […]

Aaron Nicodemus PERSON OF THE YEAR … CHARLENE SMITH Charlene Smith’s home has become a national clearing house for information on rape and Aids. She receives five or six calls a day from rape survivors, asking for help and support. She gets calls from government officials, women’s groups, doctors, policemen, insurance companies, men married to […]

In the mid-1800s, it was derided by Europe as an ‘experiment in gross vulgarity’. Today, it bestrides the world culturally, economically, technologically and militarily. Christopher Hitchens charts the unstoppable rise of the United States Who looks at an American book?” asked the Reverend Sydney Smith scornfully in the Edinburgh Review of the mid- Victorian epoch. […]

Ellen Bartlett There has been a lot of speculation lately about what the Mail & Guardian plans to do regarding its tradition of designating a Bug of the Year – that is, naming the bug that has had the greatest impact in the last 12 months. The question, in short, has been: will the M&G […]

stay the same Neil Manthorp flicks through the past century of cricket as we head into the next The day the famous Dr WG Grace, in the autumn of his career, replaced the bails after being bowled and said to the startled bowler: “The people have come to see me bat, not you bowl, sonnyE…” […]

Paul Kirk It would have been the ultimate New Year’s party – toasting in the millennium on board a ship once billed as the largest moving object in the world. But plans to rebuild the Titanic seem to have sunk while still in shallow water. Nearly two years ago, in January 1998, CEO of the […]

intelligence and depth Gavin Evans It’s in the nature of those who attract epthets like “great”, “the greatest”, and now, of course, “the greatest of the millennium”, that a large proportion of the population should at least have vivid recall of how, why, and where this exalted human being came to their vicarious attention. I […]

report card Making the Grade What the scores mean A – Take a bow. You’re doing an excellent job B – Good, but room for improvement C – You’re OK, but that’s all we can say for you D – Get your act together. You’re verging on useless E – Do yourself and the country […]

1 Jomo Sono 2 Richard Branson 3 Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin 4 The Shah of Iran and the King of Albania 5 South 6 Enigma 7 De Voortrekkers, in 1916 8 Lech Walesa 9 Macao 10 Chris Patten 11 The Watergate 12 Luciano Pavorotti, Jos Carreras and Placido Domingo 13 Emily Hobhouse 14 General Fulgencio Batista […]

Howard Barrell spoke to a Cape Town cosmologist who believes there will always be a limit to what science can do In terms of the age and extent of the universe, the passing of the millennium that many of us are marking with such fervour, fear or superstition is an irrelevance, according to George Ellis, […]