The recent rape of a matriculant by four fellow scholars has highlighted that not even schools are safe any longer. Andy Duffy reports The 17-year-old Mitchells Plain schoolgirl should have been writing matric these past couple of weeks. Instead, she sits alone at home, victim of a gang rape. For legal reasons, the girl cannot […]

FRIDAY, 5.00PM IT was a bad Friday for shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, with the all share index dropping 139 points or 2,1% to finish the day on 6374. At one stage the market was down more than 3%. The industrial index slid 111 points to 7898, while the financial index plummeted 214 points […]

Melvyn Minnaar Together with vineyard virtuosos like Gyles Webb of Thelema, Beyers Truter of Kanonkop and Norma Ratcliff of Warwick, a new generation of winemakers is gaining more and more attention. At Stellenzicht, originally almost a second label to Neethlingshof, a confident and sometime controversial Andr van Rensburg is making wines for a new era. […]

Steve Morris Rugby We would have to take Springbok coach Nick Mallett’s word on the fact that disgraced prop Toks van der Linde intended no deliberate harm during his unsavoury tap dance on the head of French Barbarian David Dantiacq. The French centre and his Gallic counterpart, referee Joel Dume, had different perspectives on the […]

Bongani Siqoko Boxing Legendary champion Roberto Duran knows very well that if he is to get another crack at a world title, he has to win his fight on Saturday. Duran meets Englishman David Radford in a 10-round light-heavyweight non-title fight, in the Jumbo Cash & Carry “Amabutho Empi” boxing extravanganza at the Carousel on […]

Ferial Haffajee Zwelakhe Sisulu is expected to quit the SABC for one of many tempting media executive positions being dangled before him. Senior SABC insiders believe Sisulu is likely to leave in the next “three to six months”. He has not taken the option of extending his contract as chief executive – which came up […]

FRIDAY, 11.00AM: SPRINGBOK scrumhalf Joost van der Westhuizen is considering leaving the Blue Bulls after playing for them for the last seven seasons, because he feels his game is suffering. Van der Westhuizen said he is fearful of losing his Bok place ahead of the 1999 World Cup finals. “At this stage I don’t have […]

Marion Edmunds Pretoria’s controversial high-security CMax prison was kept secret from key Department of Correctional Services officials until a week before it was put into operation for fear it might provoke protests. Even correctional service’s head of prisons, chief deputy commissioner of functional services Timothy Khoza, had not heard about CMax until just before it […]

The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary gave us their own alternative key words for the past two decades: 1978 BMX, Teletext 1979 Space Invaders 1980 Reaganomics 1981 Walkman 1982 Exocet 1983 Star Wars 1984 Aids 1985 Yuppie 1986 Perestroika 1987 Freemarket, Black Monday 1988 Lager lout 1989 Poll tax 1990 Global warming 1991 Citizen’s […]

FRIDAY, 1.30PM: GOVERNMENT spending in October once again exceeded the 6,1% increase expected by finance minister Trevor Manuel for the 1997/98 year, with spending since March up 10% on last year’s figure for the same period. While the ministry had expected an 11,1% rise in revenue, the real figure for the first seven months is […]