Staff Reporter

Simon Singh E=mc2: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS EQUATION by David Bodanis (Macmillan) After a magazine interview, Hollywood actress Cameron Diaz was asked if there was anything she wanted to know. “Yeah,” said Diaz, “what does E=mc 2 really mean?” The journalist laughed, but Diaz reiterated that she really did want to know […]

Neil Spencer CD OFTHEWEEK This DJ-as-superstar lark has been getting out of hand for some time now. Let’s be clear: musicians make music, disc jockeys play it, and a box of rarities and mixes to scratch and sample don’t amount to a hill of beans, though they can add up to an awful lot of […]

Dave Barry Body Language When I’m in the supermarket checkout line, I always look at Cosmopolitan magazine to see if the editors have made any progress in their ongoing effort to figure out men. I’m sure you’re familiar with Cosmopolitan (“Fun Fearless Female”). It’s the one with the cover that always has a picture of […]

The Bafokeng are sitting pretty, fuelled by the millions made off the mineral rights to platinum on their land Khadija Magardie The fame of Phokeng “The Place of the Dew”, a township 5km outside Rustenburg, in the Northern Province, stretches way beyond its borders. It is said that Phokeng’s streets, which eventually become the road […]

Jill Waterman Dance The removal of funding from government for the State Theatre Ballet Company has led to Maestro Entertainment stepping in to produce and present The Nutcracker from December 1 to 16. This is a tried and tested old work, which in most cases brings in good box office returns. Maestro Entertainment, being a […]

Neil Sonnekus SIGNS OF THE HEART by Christopher Hope (Picador) There are usually two reactions to the name Christopher Hope. The first and most frequent, usually by those who worship television programming, is one of blank incomprehension. The other is slightly more difficult to pin down and therefore more interesting. It is something that approaches […]

‘Free as the air we breathe’ Could a United Kingdom model for digital community networking be applied in South Africa? Sean Dodson Using an aerial, a lightning conductor, a floppy disk and a microwave transceiver little bigger than a credit card, a pair of techies are hoping to beat the world’s big telecommunication companies and […]

Nechama Brodie looks at the legacy of South Africa’s beauty queens Historically, the spectacle of a pageant was used as a means of expressing national, religious or communal identity. The occasion may have ranged from fertility rites and harvest festivals to military victory parades. Beauty pageants were a natural extension of this, alone or as […]

Iain Harris music Early in 1997, rock funk trio Boomslang had axed its vocalist and was shedding its skin for something newer and fresher, looking to reinvent itself in a funkier and more experimental coat. DJ Bonanza Clone, aka Adam Lieber, and MC Ultra Berzerk, aka Denver, came into the mix, adding spoken word, turntables, […]

Richard Spoor’s e-mail about being spanked by MTN’s Jacques Sellschop (as published in Krisjan Lemmer, December 1 to 7) brought back a flood of memories. Though I was fortunate enough not to have been on the receiving end of his cane, I can recall vividly the day he “flapped” three boys in front of our […]

Barry Streek A report on media diversity published by the government indicates that about 7,8-million South Africans, 18,6% of the population, still do not have access to standard radio broadcasts, the Grade B FM radio reception available on portable radios. KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga, Northern Province and the Eastern Cape each have more than one million people […]

Neal Collins rugby The Barbarians, South Africa’s final foe on their topsy-turvey European tour, have wisely opted to pick just two Englishmen for the final showdown at Cardiff’s Millennium stadium on Sunday. Barbarians? Hardly. Arnold Schwarzenegger won’t be there and several of the team are from civilised society. It’s just the name given to a […]

GHANAIAN President Jerry Rawlings, in a final address to the nation before elections heralding an end to his 19 years in power, called for peaceful and fair polling and pledged to hand over power to the people’s choice. Vice President John Atta Mills is facing a stiff challenge in Thursday’s election from John Kufuor of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday THE Cape High Court has granted a secret order for an inquiry into LeisureNet, the embattled health and entertainment company, according to the daily Business Report. The inquiry, in terms of section 417 of the Companies Act, was brought in secret in a bid to prevent possibly wayward directors […]

A PREGNANT 17-year-old girl sentenced by an Islamic court in Nigeria to 180 lashes for pre-marital sex will give birth within days, her family said. Bariya Ibrahim Magazu told the court in September she had been pressured into having sex with three middle-aged men from her village and produced seven witnesses who agreed to her […]

HUGH NEVILL, Johannesburg | Thursday SOUTH African politics has entered a new phase with the emergence of the Democratic Alliance (DA) as genuine opposition to President Thabo Mbeki’s African National Congress (ANC) in this week’s local government elections, say analysts. “What is worrying is that people have voted along class and race lines,” said Richard […]

THE body of a strangled seven-year-old boy from Eerste River outside Cape Town has been found in a suitcase under his parents’ bed. Cheslyn Hammers’ aunt found his body when she went to fetch clean towels from the suitcase. The boy’s father has been arrested for murder, while his mother thought he was visiting his […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Nairobi | Thursday CANADIAN mining firm Tiomin Resources has defended its titanium mining project in Kenya, denying claims it had acted heavy-handedly, paid bribes and covered up the presence of radioactive materials. Opposition to Tiomin’s $120m project to mine an estimated 12% of the world’s largest deposits of titanium on the southern coast […]

AN eight-year-old Zimbabwean boy was burned to death after lighting a candle for his father in an illegal petrol dump in Harare. The boy, Brian Alfenti, had been helping his father when a power cut hit the township of Zengeza. The flame from the candle, held near petrol being poured by hand into a minibus […]

ERICSSON South Africa has been awarded Telkom’s coveted QTel Gold quality certification, a South African quality standard for the local telecommunications industry. Ericsson is one of only nine of Telkom’s top 20 local vendors to have been awarded the QTel Gold certification. Several of the 35 vendors on the QTel listing are foreign companies. This […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday INVESTIGATORS in the case of apartheid chemical warfare expert Wouter Basson had no idea of the murders of hundreds of Swapo detainees and SADF members until apartheid assassin Johan Theron made a full confession “out of the blue”. Senior Superintendent Dawid Venter, who was at one stage one of the […]

ADE OBISESAN, Lagos | Thursday LATE Nigerian military ruler Sani Abacha attempted to assassinate his then number two with a bomb blast at Abuja airport in 1997, a packed human rights hearing has heard. Former lieutenant-general Oladipo Diya told the Nigerian human rights panel Abacha’s agents had planted the car bomb that blew up outside […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday WITH 9,8 million votes counted in South Africa’s key local government elections, the ruling African National Congress has wrested control of 46 local councils, with the Democratic Alliance taking 18 as it made major inroads into ANC’s support base. Early on Wednesday afternoon the ANC had captured 58% of the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENTS, Johannesburg | Wednesday WITH just over six million votes counted in South Africa’s key local government elections, the ruling African National Congress has wrested control of 24 local councils countrywide, double that of the opposition Democratic Alliance – but the DA is looking ominous in the hotly-contested Western Cape. By Wednesday morning, the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lagos | Wednesday SCAVENGERS, undeterred by the death of some 60 people in last week’s fuel pipeline fire in Nigeria, have begun scooping up fuel around another leak site. Security agents guarding the Atlas Cove Jetty, a few metres from the site of the inferno near Lagos port, stood by and watched as […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Wednesday MURDER charges have been dropped against the Zimbabwean war veteran alleged to have shot dead a white farmer, David Stevens – ostensibly for “lack of evidence”. Stevens, an outspoken supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was the first of six white farmers killed in more than nine […]

THREE people accused of painting a 14-year-old girl white after accusing her of shoplifting will be tried in the Louis Trichardt Regional Court in March next year. Former Pep Stores manager Thelma Strydom and two colleagues, Julia Munyai and Albert Mbezi, have not been asked to plead on charges of assault, theft and crimen injuria. […]

SOME 400 Rwandan children who took part in the 1994 genocide have gone to camps for two months of UN-backed re-education before their release, Justice Minister Jean de Dieu Mucyo said this week. Their training, financed by UNICEF (the UN Children’s Fund), includes civics lessons and workshops on justice and human rights. Between 2 000 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday POTIONS made of bark and crushed leaves are being used successfully to treat infections plaguing Aids victims in Tanzania’s Tanga region, a Commonwealth conference on phytomedicines has heard. American David Scheinman told delegates from Africa and Europe a German doctor had stumbled on the benefits of the traditional medicines […]

THE Nigerian justice minister has been asked to explain the “abduction” of a businessman to the United States at the request of the US drugs agency. The lawyer of Lanre Shittu, a prominent car dealer, asked the Federal High Court in Abuja to summon minister Bola Ige to explain why the government allowed the US […]

HUMAN rights activists and opposition parties have called for the immediate resignation of Malawi’s Electoral Commission chairman Judge James Kalaile after he tried to dismiss massive voter apathy as “nonsense”. Kalaile said the turnout of only 14,2% of Malawi’s 5,2 million voters in the country’s first ever multi-party local government elections last month was better […]

THE ruling Avant-Garde for Madagascan Renewal (AREMA) has emerged victorious in most cities except the capital after weekend polls for new provincial administrations. Turnout in Sunday’s proportional representation elections, which will eventually lead to the creation of six provincial governments after more than a century of extreme centralism, was about 30%. Results out so far […]