The news that Dudley Moore has a form of Parkinson’s disease has focused fresh attention on the illness. Here David Beresford, a veteran South African correspondent and an associate editor of the Mail & Guardian, gives an extraordinary account of his battle with the disease – and how it has given him access to a […]
Louisa Young BODY LANGUAGE Product placement has never had it so good. According to underwear manufacturers Hanro, the Egyptian cotton camisole worn by Nicole Kidman in a scene from the Stanley Kubrick epic Eyes Wide Shut has been a hit all over the world. As the film opens in each country, sales of the skimpy […]
corruption Where there is war, there is corruption, and in Southern Africa there are many conflicts. David Le Page reports on the SADC To find corruption in Southern Africa, first seek out war, tyranny and transition. These are the circumstances that create the space and opportunity for corruption, and among the 13 Southern African Development […]
The Boer War taught the Afrikaner to stand on his own and sometimes do unspeakable things for the survival of the Volk. A hundred years later it is time for a more inclusive story, says Antjie Krog It is early October 1899. At a farmhouse people are laughing, dancing, having a party. On a kopje […]
David Le Page South African innovation has achieved global recognition once again – the Blaster flame-thrower car defence system of Charl Fourie and Michelle Wong has been awarded the annual Ig Nobel Peace Prize. Wong said this week that Blaster was honoured to have received the prize, but unfortunately did not have time to attend […]
Ivor Powell There’s a passage in Des-mond Tutu’s just- published memoir of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, No Future without Forgiveness, that sums up the dilemma and the moral enormity of the truth commission. Tutu is in Rwanda, and he has just delivered a sermon warning against Tutsi retribution for the atrocities committed by the […]
Tony Paterson in Berlin Gnter Grass, regarded by some as the enfant terrible, by others as one of the few giants of post-war German literature, heard that he had won the Nobel Prize for Literature on the radio at his home in Lbeck last week just as he was on his way to the dentist. […]
The boom of Los Angeles’s skin flicks is putting Hollywood in the shade, writes Edward Helmore As Hollywood cuts production and frets over the economics of movie-making, one niche of the entertainment business headquartered over the hills in the San Fernando Valley is enjoying hot’n’heavy boom times. According to figures released recently by the Los […]
profitability Who is the trailblazer in e-commerce? Don’t look to Bill Gates, says Polly Sprenger, but to a stripper … One of the simplest truisms summarising the human condition is “sex sells”. But, “sex drives innovation”? That’s an idea without such a popular following, but no less true. >From the early days of photography to […]
Alex Clark JAMES MIRANDA BARRY by Patricia Duncker (Serpent’s Tail) Patricia Duncker has nipped and tucked at history and bent it to her own purposes in this peculiar tale of cross-dressing in the 19th century. Drawing on the real historical figure of Dr James Miranda Barry, who has already been the subject of factual analysis […]