After 10 Old Trafford years, the winger tells Daniel Taylor that his best is yet to come Ryan Giggs has a contract worth millions of pounds binding him to Manchester United, but he can still remember the days when the club that is now the richest in the world would not even give him a […]
Peter Robinson cricket At least one school of thought about Test cricket holds that the only way to go about the business is to win your home series and cross your fingers and hope not to be beaten when you travel abroad. This view is not so much defeatist as pragmatic. Different conditions, different food, […]
The failure of the Proteas’ lower order is a worry despite the second-Test victory John Young The traditional virtues of South African cricket pulled the coals out of the fire in Port of Spain again and ignited the Proteas’ hopes of joining a very exclusive group of cricketers to win a Test series in the […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION How refreshing to watch a television documentary that leaves you with a feeling of hope; in this case that the excesses of human craving can be met without permanent loss to the natural world. Sea horses have long been under siege and their numbers have become dangerously low. In this wise these […]
#David McKay Brian Gilbertson, chair of Billiton, collects clocks. Isn’t that odd as well as intriguing? Odd because Gilbertson is renowned in mining circles for the more outward shows of his material success: the ostentatious commuting to and from his Johannesburg office by helicopter, the Porsche apparently permanently on display in an underground bay at […]
Andy Capostagno rugby There are a number of truisms that are regularly trotted out when the Super 12 is in progress. There is no such thing as an easy game, beware the team that can win away from home, it’s about peaking in May and not in March, don’t get carried away with home wins. […]
Deon Potgieter boxing Dingaan Thobela may find himself in the ring in the early hours of the morning of April 22 again contesting the World Boxing Council (WBC) super-middleweight world title he was robbed of in Canada in December. Whether he faces Glen “Crybaby” Catley or Eric Lucas, Thobela will steal the spotlight from the […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo badminton One of South Africa’s Cinderella sports, badminton, received a boost this week when Morten Frost, the most-capped Danish badminton player, was appointed director of performance and national team coach. Frost represented Denmark 78 times and spent 12 years in the top three men’s single international rankings, with seven years as the undisputed […]
Serjeant at the Bar Human Rights Day is a cause for considerable satisfaction among all South Africans. Forty-one years ago the massacre at Sharpeville occurred because we were governed by a system that preferred to kill opponents rather than permit dissent. The significance of Human Rights Day is that it personifies our change from a […]
Two leading congressional inquisitors into former US president Bill Clinton’s pardon of sanctions-buster Marc Rich also worked against the embargo Josey Ballenger The role played by fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich in supplying oil to South Africa’s apartheid government, violating international sanctions, has been buried in the furore over the pardon he was granted in […]
Neal Collins soccer In London, where snow is falling to mark the start of spring, English soccer fans are forced to migrate even further north, into the barren tundra region of Merseyside to keep track of their Holy Grail: the World Cup. Last seen a millennium ago (AD 1966 to be precise), they have been […]
Belinda Beresford The true HIV infection rate may be closer to one in eight South Africans, rather than the one in nine suggested by a government study released this week. Using statistical models from the Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA), researchers have estimated that about 5,3- to 5,4-million people in South Africa are carrying […]
Roshila Pillay The government has yet to formulate and implement legislation to prevent the trafficking of women and children, despite being a signatory to a United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, which includes a protocol on trafficking in people. South Africa first ratified a UN convention in trafficking and prostitution in 1951. This week […]
Some walked a few paces and broke into a sprint, some ran all the way, but most devotees made it through the fire-walking ritual, reports Gavin Foster It’s a grey, drizzly day, but the coals are pumping out the heat and the crowd is restless. A rhythmic drumming keeps people praying and waiting their turn […]
Steven Friedman Second look All those who matter in our society are eager that we become “world class” in many things. Encouraging people to serve society without profit is not one of them. While we battle to outdo the world in business, sport or Constitution-making, in offering incentives for giving to non-profit organisations we lag […]
A new Egyptian film, called <i>Girls’ Secrets</i>, is breaking taboos with the story of a teenage girl who becomes pregnant and confronts an unforgiving, conservative society.
Animation legend William Hanna, who with partner Joseph Barbera turned television into their own personal cartoon world, creating such characters as Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear and the Flintstones, died on Thursday, a spokesman for Warner Brothers said.
As the film <i>Requiem for a Dream</i> continues to attract wider audiences and critics’ attention around the country, so does the soundtrack continue to find new fans, thanks to the work of composer Clint Mansell, in collaboration with Kronos Quartet and Bang on a Can’s David Lang.
LEADING oil companies BP Amoco and Shell said on Tuesday they had made two further oil discoveries in Angola. The new discoveries – at the Cromio and Cobalto wells – mean the two oil majors have now discovered oil in all six wells drilled to date in the region. “Drilled in the vicinity of four […]
FIFTY percent of South Africans polled in a survey believed voluntary euthanasia was acceptable while the other 50% felt the idea was unacceptable, one of South Africa’s leading information companies, Research Surveys, has found. White respondents (67%), were more inclined to find the idea of voluntary euthanasia acceptable than black (47%), Indian (46%) and coloured […]
THE International Monetary Fund has voiced concern about the worsening economic crisis in Zimbabwe and has offered recommendations to address the problems, the lender said on Wednesday at the end of its two week mission to Harare. “The mission expressed concern about the deepening of Zimbabwe’s economic crisis in recent months as evidenced by the […]
THE US aircraft manufacturer Boeing announced on Wednesday that it would upgrade 35 Apache attack helicopters for Egypt in a deal worth $400m. A statement from Boeing’s aircraft and missile systems division here said that a foreign military sales contract would be finalised in the coming weeks, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2003. The […]
AIDS has claimed more lives in South Africa than apartheid ever did, says top Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) leader Costa Gazi, who branded Aids the “Sharpeville of today” in a Human Rights Day address. The day is the anniversary of the 1960 massacre of 69 anti-apartheid activists in Sharpeville. PAC health secretary Gazi was speaking […]
GRIFFIN SHEA, Harare | Thursday ZIMBABWES white farmers have banded together and pledged to work with the government to resolve the nation’s land reform crisis, after an apparent split within their ranks over the violence-wracked scheme. The farmers reaffirmed their support for their union’s current leadership, expressed their “absolute commitment” to negotiating with the government, […]
AID organisations said this week that the Guinean army was barring their access to the volatile Parrot’s Beak region, where they are unable to reach thousands of refugees amid reports of heavy fighting. A “security mission” of the United Nations, which was to have gone to the area on Tuesday, was postponed until Wednesday. Parrot’s […]
THE Madagascan government said on Wednesday it had signed a contract with US firm Vanco Energy to begin oil exploration off the northwestern coast of the large Indian Ocean island nation. Madagascar has already awarded contracts to four other United States and Canadian firms, Gulfstream, Hunt Oil, Triton and Xpronet, for oil prospecting in the […]
THE South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has recovered 12 luxury stolen vehicles worth over R1,1m at a series of temporary border checkpoints along the South African border with Mozambique since the beginning of March. Regional joint task force representative Lieutenant Colonel Phillip Eloff said the first batch of six vehicles was recovered on March […]
THE Nigerian police and army received no pay in January or February because of an administrative foul-up, senior officials said, describing the problem as “worrying”. For months, federal civil servants have been complaining of delays in the payment of their wages – blamed by the government on an ongoing exercise aimed at verifying the payroll. […]
GUINEA-Bissau’s President Kumba Yala has sworn in Prime Minister Faustino Imbali, asking him to form a government to “get the country out of a disastrous situation”. Yala said there was no time to lose, adding: “Out with nepotism and arbitrary changes in the leadership of the state.” On Monday, Yala sacked the previous prime minister, […]
THE Somalia-based Dr Ismail Jumale Human Rights Organisation (DIJHRO) has condemned the conditions and alleged human right abuses of 245 prisoners in the cells of an Islamic court in Mogadishu. Some of the prisoners have been tortured and denied due judicial process, a statement by DIJHRO co-director Maryan Awreye said. The 245 prisoners, some of […]
ASSET Forfeiture Unit investigators have begun tracing former Mpumalanga parks chief Alan Gray’s foreign bank accounts and properties after attaching all his South African assets. The international forensic probe began shortly after a large AFU team swooped on Gray’s Nelspruit home this week. Gray and his family where only left with their clothes, beds and […]
THE military ruler in the Comoro islands, Colonel Azali Assoumani, says power will be returned to civilians at the start of 2002 and added that he would not stand at the polls. Power will be restored to democratically elected civilians, insh’Allah [God willing], as we say,” Azali said. “I’m going to become a citizen,” added […]