OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 11.00am. TWO local golfers, looking for their first wins as professionals, set new course records of nine-under 62s at the Royal Johanesburg West on Thursday, when they shot their way to the top of the second-round leaderboard in the Gauteng leg of the Vodacom series. Ryan Dryer (26) and John […]

battleground On October 23 1942, the battle of El Alamein began. James Ambrose Brown, a young soldier, carried into battle a diary in which he recorded the horror of all he saw This year there will be no old soldiers at the graves of comrades who died at the battle of El Alamein. Like those […]

indifference Mark Atkinson in Washington When Asian currencies collapsed last year, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank came to the rescue with multi-billion-dollar bail- outs. Since 1985, when Tanzania began implementing its IMF structural adjustment programme, the local currency, the shilling, has devalued by 1 500%, yet the country will not qualify […]

Steve Gordon South African musicians at home and abroad will be saddened to learn of the death last week of guitarist Russell Herman, who died in London, where he had been living since the early 1980s. Born in Cape Town in 1953, Herman grew up in District Six, and was an integral part of the […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Randburg’s public prosecutor struggled this week to determine whether he could prosecute the managing director of Legacy Merchant Bank, Douglass Fliess, on the bizarre charge of stealing a garden. Charges relating to the theft of plants and malicious damage to property were laid against Fliess by property agents Gary Bruyns Properties on behalf […]

Sharon Hammond Dispossessed villagers living near the Kruger National Park’s Numbi Gate may soon become partners in an R85-million Hilton International hotel. If the project is approved by Mpumalanga’s development tribunal and the Department of Environmental Affairs, impoverished members of the Mdluli tribe will be able to cash in on their heritage by having an […]

A peace monument in honour of those killed in conflict in Thokoza is to be unveiled, writes Thokozani Mtshali Four years ago the East Rand was the scene of widespread political violence between supporters of the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Open gun battles raged between IFP-aligned hostel dwellers and ANC-aligned township […]

fears Barry McIntyre She may have healthy green eyes and a vibrant pink complexion, but this model female head could prove to be a headache for the cellular phone industry. The unchristened head, packed with probes and sensors, will play a key role in a 500 000 European Union- funded study to measure the electromagnetic […]

Robert Mugabe is desperately trying to shore up the teetering Laurent Kabila, write Howard Barrell and Iden Wetherell Congolese rebels, flushed by their victory this week over thousands of government and foreign troops in an eight-day battle for the key town of Kindu, are regrouping for a two-pronged assault southwards on the diamond-mining centre of […]

Stephen Moss Jos Saramago has finally received his due from the Swedish Academy. Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, he is the first writer in Portuguese to win the world’s most prestigious literary award. “I am very happy for myself,” he told a cheering crowd at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “But I am also […]