Q & A Acclaimed jazz musician Don Laka recently launched his new album Supernova, his second recording as a solo artist. Playing solo allows him to be more experimental on acoustics. The name, Supernova, reflects Laka’s growing interest in cosmology. His first album, Destiny, was released internationally and led him to perform at the premier […]

Judge Willem Heath has always said the public and the media are his commission’s greatest allies in the fight against corruption. It is a pity he cannot say the same of senior ministers in the government, notably the two who should have most to gain from his commission’s efforts: Minister of Justice Penuell Maduna and […]

John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF Whose town is this Johannesburg, anyway? The city centre swarms with an aggressive cacophony of black bodies that is unrecognisable if your mental picture is still stuck on the metropolis that was thrown up into the highveld sky by the heirs of Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Beit. Jo’burg has […]

Midi TV, owner of fledgling broadcaster e.tv, is besieged by problems, report Mungo Soggot, Donna Block and Ivor Powell Embattled television company Midi TV has hired one of South Africa’s most respected broadcast managers, Quentin Green, to help save fledgling broadcaster e.tv from the gallows. Midi TV’s chief executive officer, Marcel Golding, confirmed this week […]

The murder of South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) advocate Anton Lubowski 10 years ago could have been linked to a South African military intelligence (MI) network in collusion with French businessmen and secret service agents, investigations by the Mail & Guardian have revealed. The network was out to obtain decisive political influence in the […]

Telford Vice Cricket Four months after arriving at the World Cup as champions-in-waiting, the South African cricket team is floundering in a sea of insecurity. The familiar, inspiring strut is gone, faded to slope-shouldered tolerance of the fact that the supposedly low key tour to Kenya has lurched into a harsh spotlight. That is the […]

follow Andy Capostagno At the final of the 1991 Rugby World Cup there was a small group of people in green and gold shirts holding a banner which read, “The Springboks; the real world champions”. On that bright winter’s day at Twickenham, when Nick Farr-Jones held aloft the William Webb Ellis trophy, such bombast from […]

Shaun Harris TAKING STOCK With the end of the year hurtling down on us like a minibus on the N3, a lot of people are trying to form a view on where the local economy and investment markets are going. Those brave enough are even trying to see past the mother-of-all New Year’s Eve parties […]

Researching Herman Charles Bosman’s prison memoir, Stephen Gray got into his death cell Shows how much I knew about South Africa’s most famous inland jail, Pretoria Central Prison. There its most celebrated inmate, Herman Charles Bosman, spent “a somewhat lengthy sojourn”, as he put it in Cold Stone Jug. But that was in the 1920s. […]