Michael Metelits I admit it. I was a yuppie during the 1980s. Not just any kind of yuppie, either. I was the trade settlement operations manager for a small, but nonetheless venal, investment management firm in Boston. I sat on the trading floor and witnessed a great deal of what the Eighties had to offer. […]

spring fever Friday night Genevieve Cutts Remember the days when it was a mission to find something to do on a weekend in Johannesburg? Well, those days are over. My Fridays now begin (please note I say begin) vegged out on my couch in front of the TV as I am e-ntertained and e-nthralled by […]

Cocaine, whisky, grass, Dunhills, whisky, cocaine… Staying up all night with the bad boy of US literature is a trial. Marianne Macdonald lived to tell the tale Hunter S Thompson’s big things have always been raising hell and taking drugs, and though he is now 61, neither hell nor ill-health will stop him. He holes […]

Anew TV documentary seeks out the person behind the `freak’ Sara Baartman, writes Alex Dodd `Can you imagine? You’ve become a rented spectacle. You’re owned by a guy who sells you to an animal trainer who then hires you out to scientists. And you return home to stay with his animals. There’s probably a trained […]

Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo scored an important victory this week in capturing the town of Kindu, which Laurent Kabila’s government was trying to use as the launch pad for a counter-offensive against the rebels. But the victory merely underlines why that long-suffering nation cannot afford a military solution to its problems. What […]

Jean-Marc Ela: A SECOND LOOK The paradigm of bankruptcy has become the context for every analysis of modern Africa’s economic and social history. Samir Amin evokes this picture: “The 1960s were marked by the great hope that we were at the start of an irreversible process of development throughout the Third World, and especially Africa. […]

DAVID LE PAGE, Johannesburg | Friday 9.00pm. THE Lesotho government has washed its hands of the issue of 30 Lesotho Defence Force soldiers arrested on charges of mutiny, saying the law must take its course. But the opposition, which has demanded the soldiers’ release, is arguing that the soldiers’ mutiny was a political issue and […]

Moving into Dance, now 20 years old, led the way to a truly South African dance style, writes Shaun de Waal This week, with a series of performances at the Wits Theatre, Moving into Dance celebrates its 20th anniversary. Begun in the garage of choreographer Sylvia Glasser’s Victory Park home, with classes three nights a […]

The Nobel laureate’s visit to Lagos is the embodiment of hope and as good as a permanent return, Alex Duval Smith reports from Lagos After four years in exile, Nigeria’s most high-profile campaigner against military rule, Wole Soyinka, came home on Wednesday night. All the men and women guarding Lagos airport made sure their fatigues […]

reserve’ land A new land law is set to overturn decades of paternalistic land relations between the state and more than 70 000 people living on former “coloured reserves” in the Western Cape and surrounding provinces. But similar legislation for former black homeland residents is still bogged down in “consultations”. Department of Land Affairs Director […]