WEDNESDAY, 9.30AM: The SA Breweries-controlled Amalgamated Beverage Industries is to acquire Suncrush in a R1,9-billion deal payable in cash and equities that will see ABI controlling 60% of SA’s soft drinks industry. ABI is already the largest Coca-Cola bottler in SA, holding the franchises for Gauteng and metropolitan Durban. ABI’s acquisition of Suncrush, which holds […]

Ferial Haffajee “All in all, a bleak year lies ahead for [the SABC] unless it vigorously evaluates its operations.” — Raymond Louw, Mail & Guardian December 24 1996. He was spot on: 1997 was the SABC’s annus horribilis. But with the help of that 20th-century engineer of capitalism — the management consultant — the broadcaster […]

Looking good, spending money and having fun are what seem to interest most teens. But where they are from influences what they are into. Teenagers in 1997 were definitely down with sports labels like Nike and Reebok, Kangol clothes and hats, body piercing, platforms, the baggy hip-hoppy skater-boy look. There’s still a taste for expensive […]

Summer poems for the beloveds 1 husband man with rampant tongue hold me and hear my heart howl with lust flaying my skirt to the thigh as I ride out on your voice man who holds me as if embracing womb I am with young by you my abdomen lows its fertility in this festive […]

Some of the most important figures of our age died in 1997, writes Fumane Diseko This year saw the deaths of three first-generation African leaders who had outlived most of their contemporaries, but not, unfortunately, to the benefit of their people. Dr Walter Hastings Banda (92), president of Malawi from 1964 to 1994, died at […]

Hopes are high for a gradual rebirth of a South African film industry, writes Andrew Worsdale ‘Every year I seem to feel the film industry surging with renewed optimism, yet nothing seems to happen. It’s all a state of foreplay with no penetration. well, now I can finally say — or predict — that the […]

Against all odds, the ANC emerged from Mafikeng alive and kicking, report Wally Mbhele, Sechaba ka’Nkosi and Marion Edmunds The African National Congress emerged from its 50th national congress in Mafikeng last week invigorated and more united than it has been since taking the reins of government in 1994. This was all the more extraordinary […]

Emanuel Shaw II may be the king of sleaze, but South Africa is not without its own homegrown sleazeballs, writes Mungo Soggot While discussing Liberian politician Emanuel Shaw II’s spectacularly corrupt track record in the West African country, a Liberian journalist based in Washington told the Mail & Guardian last month: “You must watch out. […]

“Turning around a ship the size of the SAPS is a little bit like making love to an elephant: first of all … there’s very little pleasure in it, there’s every likelihood you could get crushed, and I know from my house doctor it takes years to see the result.” — Police CEO Meyer Kahn […]