David Beresford The adage that it is possible to lead a horse to water, but difficult to make it drink is proving well-founded where the business community is concerned as it approaches its “moment of truth” before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Corporate South Africa faces three days of hearings before the commission next week, […]

for the human genome What links Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Abraham Lincoln? Well, a US company wants to sell their DNA. Mark Honigsbaum reports Earlier this year StarGene, a San Francisco- based biotechnology company, hit on a novel marketing idea. Using the latest DNA cloning techniques it would duplicate samples of DNA taken from […]

Jonathan Spencer Jones : Sailing South African Lynnath Beckley, navigator on board the all-female crewed EF Education in the Whitbread Round the World yacht race, likens the event to Formula 1, calling it “the Formula 1 of sailing”. And it is an analogy to which she returns frequently, with good reason: the Whitbread entries represent […]

Egyptian director Youssef Chahine recently won nine out of the 14 categories in the M- Net All-Africa Film Awards with his film Destiny. He spoke to Janet Smith A journalist could gush like a desert oil well after meeting Egyptian film director Youssef Chahine. He’s charming enough to persuade a glass of wine to replace […]

THURSDAY, 6.20PM: SOUTH AFRICA ended Sri Lanka’s nine-match unbeaten record today, winning by 66 runs. But the Wills series final still lies ahead on Saturday, when the Sri Lankans, who were without three key players in this game, will make sure to avenge themselves. Hero of the match was Lance Klusener, who scored a fast […]

Dullah Omar has come off second-best in his battle with the gay and lesbian community, write Charl Blignaut and Swapna Prabhakaran The gay and lesbian community is claiming victory in its battle with Justice Minister Dullah Omar. The National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality says Omar has dropped his opposition to the removal of […]

Alex de Waal In June 1993, a Belgian soldier serving with the United Nations in Somalia put a gun to the head of one of my Somali colleagues and threatened to shoot him. At the time I was investigating the war in Somalia: that the residents were living in fear of the peacekeepers came as […]

Rowley Leigh : Moveable feast Although I first ate and enjoyed polenta at a dinner party many years ago, I never got around to cooking it myself until the current vogue first started in the early Nineties. But the stuff I came up with in the kitchen was hardly the stuff of dreams, and came […]

Robert Kirby : Loose Cannon I adopt as the subject for my sermon this week the recent decision by the Western Cape’s leading prophet, Hernus Kriel. Kriel has announced that as far as he’s concerned, the democratically imbued people of the Western Cape have every right to express their opinions on whether or not the […]

Marion Edmunds The parliamentary session ended in acrimony this week as opposition parties rallied around Pan Africanist Congress firebrand Patricia de Lille. She has become embroiled in a fight with the party after accusing some of its top officials of spying for the apartheid government. The National Party’s Jacko Maree yesterday walked out of the […]