This week two new councillors took office at the IBA. Ferial Haffajee profiles the new kids on the block The two thirtysomething councillors add to an Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) that has grown younger and younger since it was established in 1994. It is led by lawyer Felleng Sekha, herself just on the cusp of […]

Dawood Dithato When Sir Ketumile Masire retired last week, the bitter pill of leaving Botswana’s highest office after 18 years was considerably sweetened. The size of the former president’s retirement package comes as another indication that his departure from public life was not the magnanimous gesture it was widely heralded to be, but a negotiated […]

Janet Smith Since the 1950s in the United States, television has defined generations, with some programmes becoming objects of special public attention, even fanaticism. It’s no wonder a channel devoted to popular and cult series has finally been created, capitalising on the nostalgia of the television age before the digital generation overtakes it in the […]

Brenda Atkinson: Corporate art When Cecile Loedolff enthusiastically mentioned “totem poles” over a glass of wine and spinach phyllo tartlett in the Absa Towers foyer, I bit my tongue. Loedolff is Absa’s arts and function consultant, and the occasion was the announcement that the banking group will use a percentage of the building costs for […]

Ralph Borland A division of a major advertising agency has been contracted by cigarette giant Rothmans to create a brand aimed at a new generation of smokers: 18 to 24-year-olds. Insiders at Ogilvy & Mather Rightford Searle-Tripp Makin say the Cape Town- based advertising agency took up a multi- million contract to market brands owned […]

Michael Walker FA Cup At times it was tense, at times it was unconvincing, there were even times when it looked as though it might not happen at all, but ultimately, as they say, class will prove decisive and a touch of it from Alan Shearer last Sunday delivered Newcastle United their first FA Cup […]

Elisa Segrave: PERSONAL HISTORY I found my brother’s things in a box in my mother’s attic. She must have put them there after he drowned in our grandmother’s pond on my seventh birthday in November 1956. He was five. I found the box recently while sorting out my mother’s house. She has Alzheimer’s and has […]

John Updike’s new novel is dividing the critics. He spoke to Joanna Coles Waiting for the lift with John Updike at his Park Avenue hotel, he catches sight of himself in the chrome doors, his face a beige pancake from an earlier television appearance. “Oh dear,” he giggles brightly, his jaunty green eyes staring back […]

James Garner South African rock bands may come and go at a rate that makes the turnover of Bafana Bafana managers look comparatively pedestrian, but Cape Town four-piece Lithium are one group that has managed to keep things together and develop their sound over a period of time. Many people felt that the band’s days […]

Mercedes Sayagues It used to be that every morning when Zimbabwe’s only English-language daily, The Herald, was delivered to my home, I would read it at leisure over coffee, or take it to the office for a mid-morning perusal. A quick read was enough, since the government-owned Herald served a bland porridge of watered-down local […]