FRIDAY, 8.30AM: The Auditor-General’s office is not satisfied with book-balancing procedures followed by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, according to a report submitted to the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee on Thursday. The IBA wrote off more than R4,86-million when it discovered its fixed assets register did not agree with its accounting records. The Auditor-General’s office filed […]

Ferial Haffajee : Design of the week They were in need of a hard sell. Old favourites indeed, but a little frayed at the edges. So men needed rebranding, decided Marie Claire magazine recently. The results of the advertisements for men’s competition appear in the magazine’s November edition. They are a welcome break from the […]

Gustav Thiel : Rugby Louis Luyt will win the battle for the presidency of the South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) because he ‘bought the loyalty of the smaller unions’. But there is hope for rugby fans in the country who feel that Morne du Plessis is the sport’s messiah: he will oppose Luyt in […]

Andrew Worsdale looks at two promising entrants to the Newcomers Competition at this year’s Film and TV Market Among the 26 entries to the Newcomers Competition at this year’s Film and Television Market are two movies made by first-time directors on wings and prayers. Brendan Pollecut and Zak Dakile are heavily in debt as a […]

Bridget Hilton-Barber Unspoilt places What was once the headquarters of a cattle- rustling, river pirate, is now one of the most ridiculed towns in South Africa. Pofadder, Pofadder, how the mighty have fallen. Puffadders had nothing to do with it. This dusty dorp was named after a Koranna leader once known to the area’s white […]

FRIDAY, 9.25AM: South Africa will open the batting with Andrew Hudson and Gary Kirsten with Pat Symcox or Lance Klusener at three and Fanie de Villiers to share the new ball with Shaun Pollock in their opening Wills series clash against Pakistan at the Gaddafi stadium on Sunday. Mark Boucher, Adam Bacher and Paul Adams […]

Johannesburg A decade after the removal of restrictions Soweto remains a ghetto but a development plan is on the cards, writes Charlene Smith In the 1980s, when the vision of the creation of a black middle class became fashionable, businesspeople almost salivated at the tremendous opportunities they saw opening up with the removal of apartheid […]

Alex Duval Smith in Paris Do you have nightmares in which you are walking down a crowded street wearing nothing but a shower cap or a bra, and you are powerless to do anything about it? Susanna Hailstone, an executive with the LSD advertising agency, does. “I think it is quite a common dream among […]

While the Fed chief sought to calm the world’s stock markets, Hong Kong took another drubbing, pointing to more turbulence ahead, write Madeleine Wackernagel, Mark Tran in New York and Paul Murphy in London Asian stock markets took little comfort from the soothing words of Alan Greenspan, chair of the United States Federal Reserve Board […]

Madeleine Wackernagel : TAKING STOCK The economist John Maynard Keynes referred to the “animal spirits” of financial markets. This week they demonstrated a wild streak as one after another, world stock markets plunged. After months of conjecture, predictions of a repeat of October 1987 became a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was an accident waiting to happen: […]