Andy Capostagno Rugby If God had meant man to live in England, he’d have given him gills. That line kept recurring in my thoughts during two trips to the Cape last week. On Saturday Clive Woodward’s prayers were answered as the heavens opened and soft, suppressing rain fell on his England team at Newlands. On […]
theft Mail & Guardian reporters The former Umkhonto weSizwe cadre heading the company that controls controversial Aids drug Virodene cut his business teeth in the Southern African criminal underworld. Former colleagues from the African National Congress’s years in exile claim Joshua Nxumalo had a reputation for “getting things done”, and that he specialised in providing […]
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg `So, how was the play?” asks a friend over dinner. How was the play? How do you describe Closer? A couple of hours after seeing Sello Maake ka Ncube’s production of Patrick Marber’s acclaimed contemporary British play, the whole thing is really only just beginning to sink in and […]
Stewart Dalby Spending it The tantrums and antics of some modern chess masters are nothing new, it would seem. Histories of the game tell a story, possibly apocryphal, that the earliest recorded enthusiast in Britain was the Viking King Canute (1016 to 1035). It seems that Canute quarrelled one day when playing Earl Ulf, who […]
Jeremy Cronin These are the South African Communist Party’s concerns about the government’s growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear): l In the first place, and consistently since June 1996 (when Gear was first unveiled), the SACP has been critical of the process that led up to Gear. In contrast to the reconstruction and development programme, […]
Chris McGreal Unwelcome uitlanders (foreigners) in the rainbow nation can now get more bang for their buck, or quid. But first they have to lay their hands on their own cash, and South African banks are practised at preventing that from happening. It’s hardly a situation to invoke much sympathy hereabouts, but the rand’s periodic […]
Diane Coetzer For weeks, I tried to prise a CV out of YFM station manager Randall Abrahams. When I met with him at the station’s funkily appointed offices in Gauteng’s Bez Valley, we never really got to the details of Abrahams’s radio career so far, beyond discussing his early days on the University of Cape […]
Jacques Magliolo If you’re in the enviable position to have enough money to invest in unit trusts, chances are you’ve been encouraged to invest part of your portfolio in bonds. But bonds appear to be complicated, jargon-laden creatures with names like the “benchmark” R150. Actually, they are simply loans. For instance, if the South African […]
than the mail Douglas Rushkoff Online Never, ever, respond to an e-mail advert again. You’ll be doing yourself and the rest of us trying to work or play on the Internet a big favour. I’ve made a habit, perhaps even an ethic, of shrugging off commercial advances on the Internet. Since the real estate in […]
Andy Duffy Truth and Reconciliation Commission chief investigator Dumisa Ntsebeza was fighting a rearguard action this week after a confidential letter he wrote to University of the Transkei (Unitra) principal Alfred Moleah swept across the troubled campus. Ntsebeza is chair of Unitra’s governing council. He says the lengthy letter – which begins “Dear Bro Alf” […]