Ferial Haffajee A leaner, meaner Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) went on show this week at the start of its most gruelling licence hearings yet. By the end of March it must decide which of seven strong contenders will win the coveted private television licence. That’s a decision likely to be contested whichever way it goes […]

Dan Glaister in London All in all, Elton John should be feeling quite pleased. After all, just 250 for some curtains is not bad by any standards. But unfortunately the other items on his 280 050 weekly spending list are causing concern. Accountants have warned of a cashflow crisis for the singer whose Candle in […]

Janet Smith In your ear I wanted to take a look around. Curiosity had nothing to do with it. Later John Perlman and I spoke about journalists’ need to see inside people’s spaces at interviews. A Tretchikoff can tell you as much about a person as a Tommy Motswai. I thought Perlman’s magnificent wine collection […]

They may disagree on the methods, but the world’s financial gurus are unanimous that the forces of globalisation must be reined in, writes Larry Elliot Like a new car that unexpectedly develops life-threatening faults, the 1997 model of globalisation has been recalled by the makers. The havoc wreaked in the Far East by the crisis […]

president’s son John Grobler The questions directed at a defiant former president PW Botha by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission last month could equally have been directed at Botha’s mysterious counsel, Pretoria attorney Ernst Penzhorn. As a sort of legal agent-cum-fixer extraordinaire for the previous dispensation, entrusted with operations which still raise as many questions […]

Belinda Beresford Investor or tourist, gift-giver or generous parent bailing out stranded offspring, how can you best get your money out of the country? The quickest way of taking money overseas is to use your credit or debit card, although this can be expensive. Internationally, credit-card transactions are operated in dollars. A withdrawal in yen […]

Eddie Butler : Rugby For all its reputation of being the dearest, dearest institution never to have been added to the government’s sacred “listed events”, the Five Nations Championship has a decidedly murky history. There may not have been much that even the home unions committee could do about the world wars that interrupted the […]

Melvyn Minnaar Potable pleasures The nickname they have in common, promises pleasure. But whereas the white stuff offers play with a pinch of peril, the black substance carries a free-and-easy, “all-ages” prescription and a registered trademark. To the contemporary tune of Always Coca- Cola, Coke is hailed as universal libation of fun with a long […]

Julian Drew : Skiing Alex Heath, South Africa’s representative in Alpine skiing at the Winter Olympics starting on Saturday, is not your ordinary sort of guy. In November 1996 he suffered a fractured skull and brain haemorrhage that put him in a coma for 18 hours after a fall from the climbing wall in the […]

Andrew Worsdale Domestic war film of the week In 1973 director Ang Lee (The Wedding Banquet, Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility) hadn’t set foot in the United States and couldn’t speak English. So it’s deeply paradoxical that he has directed a perceptive, poignant and sharp movie about the US during the era […]