SOUTH Africa’s seven-a-side rugby team kick off their challenge for the Stellenbosch Sevens title on Friday with a match against Kenya at the Danie Craven Stadium. The team, led by former Bok winger Jacques Olivier, will be hoping to improve on their recent showing at the Dubai Sevens where they were beaten 31-0 in the […]

n Western Cape Premier Gerald Morkel will be next to his cellphone with the family at his official residence. He is one of seven in the provincial government put on standby just in case the Y2K bug causes havoc. n Cape Town Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, a keen gardener, will spend the time in the […]

Thirty-one years after the assassination of the civil rights leader, one man is still fighting to expose what he says is the truth behind the murder. Tony Stark reports Bill Pepper is a crusader – a man with a mission that has transformed this quietly spoken American lawyer from an unknown attorney into someone who […]

Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala With legislation on the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Bill due to be passed soon, a special parliamentary committee is currently debating whether examples of discrimination should be included in a schedule to be added to the Bill. Examples suggested to form part of this schedule are discrimination based on […]

DEPUTY President Jacob Zuma on Thursday wished South African Muslims well as they embark on the holy month of Ramadaan on Thursday night. “These thirty days of fasting are, as we understand it, a period not only about abstention from food and drink, but also a time of deep spiritual rejuvenation and awakening,” he said […]

The Festival of Living Treasures is set to take over from Womad, writes Alex Sudheim A warm wave of sensuous sound from the four corners of the earth engulfs South Africa this month in the form of the Festival of Living Treasures. Held in KwaZulu-Natal over five days from December 15 to 19, the festival […]

CD of the week Okay, Orbital have sampled Dollar on In the Middle of Nowhere (ffrr). It shows an admirable open-mindedness, if you ask me. Not that you’d expect anything less. My favourite Orbital moment is when they whack the chorus of Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is a Place on Earth through the speakers at their […]

Fiona Macleod Six cheetahs from the De Wildt Cheetah Research and Breeding Centre, one of South Africa’s most reputable breeding centres of endangered species, were exported this week to a safari park in China that has been universally condemned by animal welfare organisations. John Wedderburn, of the Asian Animal Protection Network, describes a recent visit […]

Paul Trueman Arthur C Clarke may have correctly predicted the uses of orbiting satellites and artificial intelligence, but boy did he come a cropper with his notion of a video phone. In 2001: A Space Odyssey a character makes a video call home from a space station, and chats to his daughter on a huge […]

Aaron Nicodemus A labour arbitrator has reinstated two top officials from the Medicines Control Council (MCC) who were ousted during a purge of the drug-regulating body’s management in March 1998. The former minister of health, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, axed the officials after the MCC’s refusal to approve clinical trials of the controversial Aids drug Virodene. But […]