Staff Reporter

Guy Willoughby review OFTHEWEEK It is cause for rejoicing that a serious new operatic work by a composer of global reputation receives its premiere in South Africa and even more cause for celebration that the work in question is powerful, dark, and challenging. Thomas Rajna’s first opera presented by Cape Town Opera and the University […]

Innovations Here’s another good reason not to misbehave at your upcoming office Christmas party. Scheduled to go on sale next week is the SpyPen, a tiny digital camera squeezed into a slim upright frame not a great deal larger than an average ballpoint. The SpyPen takes and archives low-resolution (352×288 pixels) images that can then […]

Suzan Chala A campus jol with a group of friends is a common phenomenon over weekends, but one Saturday evening turned out to be more than what Thabiso Mokoena had bargained for when he was awoken at midnight by a vigorous bout of love-making. The 21-year-old information technology student was not dreaming; a female intruder […]

It was not surprising to note the commentary by Grant Shimmin (“Ramsamy has tough questions to answer”, November 24 to 30) in which he attacked the president of the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (Nocsa), Sam Ramsamy. Shimmin has repeatedly worn his heart on his sleeve in being part of the lobby that seems […]

Thebe Mabanga in your ear The first time I encountered Highveld Stereo (94.7fm in Johannesburg) was in 1995 when, as a first-year student, I had just moved into a hotel that offered the adult contemporary station as its in-house broadcasting service. Back then the station would have been a thriving operation servicing the geriatrics of […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Friday UNETHICAL business practices are common among South African doctors, with nearly two-thirds of doctors in a study about ethical practice in the medical profession that they had seen a colleague acting unethically. According to a report in Afrikaans daily Beeld, almost two thirds (65%) said doctors supplement their income by […]

Belinda Beresford The Medicines Control Council has approved the use of a generic drug, Biozole, on public health grounds. The council’s acknowledgement of humanitarian arguments potentially opens the door to the mass importation of cheaper medicines to combat Aids and its side effects. The ruling comes after the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) illegally imported 3000 […]

Paul Kirk As HIV/Aids, cholera and drive-by shootings grip KwaZulu-Natal, two businesses are booming funeral parlours and money-lenders. Seven years ago Durban had six funeral parlours and Pietermaritzburg four. Today Durban has 55 and Pietermaritzburg 49. Durban also has five factories producing coffins. In the wake of this boom in the funeral business, the money-lending […]

Neal Collins cricket Cricket has a problem. A dark secret. It has nothing to do with match-fixing, ball-tampering or rule-changing. Sadly, this is far more serious. The gentleman’s game has a suicide rate currently running at two and a half times England’s national rate. The latest professional to take his own life was former Nottinghamshire […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday AFRICA’S two most powerful nations, Nigeria and South Africa, have demanded that Zimbabwe abide by its laws in its controversial program to confiscate white-owned farms. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and South African President Thabo Mbeki, after two-and-a-half hours of talks with embattled President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, stopped short of […]

MC Sparky The annual award ceremony at the Ablelarde Sanction in Brixton, Johannesburg, is set to delight unsigned bands, general public and major publications alike. “Our commitment to cheap booze, contraband cigarettes and teddy bears remains unchallenged … the struggle continues.” This vague statement boldly pasted on the inner wall of the Abelarde Sanction in […]

Neal Collins soccer English Premiership side Leeds United have made an approach for South African striker Benni McCarthy on the recommendation of his Bafana Bafana captain, Lucas Radebe. Leeds coach David O’Leary, who paid a record 18-million for defender Rio Ferdinand last week, is desperate to sign a goal-getter, with Australian Harry Kewell and Michael […]

Worldwide, corruption costs at least $80-billion a year. Attempts to end the corruption of foreign nationals have met with resistance. So how realistic is it to think we can put an end to the practice? Pierre Abramovici Everyone has a word for it: hongbao in China, baksheesh in Arab countries, matabiche in central Africa, propina […]

JUSTIN ARENSTEIN and SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Middelburg | Friday THE foot-and-mouth outbreak in Mpumalanga this week, which could drive the South African meat industry to the brink of disaster, could well have been caused by cattle imported from a neighbouring country. The outbreak, which has seen Swaziland close its border with South Africa for imports of […]

Robert Kitson rugby Of all the grim picket-line images involving the England squad last week, few will fade slower than Jason Leonard, in his brown leather jacket and jeans, standing calmly in the car park of the team hotel and announcing that, yes, he was as prepared as anyone to sacrifice his international career on […]

Standard computer equipment and software can often be the key to a better life for disabled people Mandy Collins Most of us take technology for granted we have computers at home and at work, we can access the Internet, we have smart cards, smart phones, palmtop organisers the list is endless. The future, too, is […]

Marianne Merten ‘I want to come back [to District Six]. God spare me,” says 85-year-old Fatima Benting. But she and 1700 other families will have to wait a few more months before their new homes are ready. The dream of one of the key movers behind the return to District Six, Anwah Nagia, is that […]

Andrew Muchineripi soccer If ever a community scored an own goal it was Vosloorus last weekend when a bunch of barbarians brought shame to the East Rand, Gauteng and South Africa. Unless I have been reading the mind of President Thabo Mbeki upside down, what had been happening in the East Rand township was exactly […]

Serjeant at the Bar Gilbert Marcus, SC, dealt most effectively with the complaints of Rex van Schalkwyk, once a judge of the supreme court (“Constitutional Court: A triumph over repression”, November 17 to 23). Hence the question as to why the need to traverse the same ground yet again. The reason is simple: Van Schalkwyk’s […]

A new project to save medicinal plants from extinction will initially concentrate on five plants that are fast-growing and popular among healers Fiona Macleod An ambitious project was launched in Mpumalanga on December 1 to grow high volumes of traditional medicinal plants by cloning them from DNA. The main goal of the project, launched at […]

Piers Pigou a second look Leaving aside, for one moment, the contested issue of covert security force involvement, there are a number of reasons why we should be appalled, but not necessarily surprised, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty committee’s decision last week to grant amnesty to 13 Inkatha Freedom Party supporters convicted for […]

A new book suggests that a South African mercenary may have assassinated a former UN secretary general Nawaal Deane A new biography of former United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjld has rekindled suspicions of South African involvement in his death. Hammarskjld was killed in an airplane crash on September 18 1961 near Ndola, Northern Rhodesia, […]

Notes & Queries Who first described aristocratic blood as “blue” and why? n The warriors of Islam called the Moors (or more poetically by the lyrical name Blackamoors) ruled over most of Spain for five centuries.?Toward the end of their rule the Spanish aristocrats of Castile began to distinguish themselves from these darker-skinned people by […]

Christianity faces extinction and it is not science but Christians themselves who are to blame for its demise, argues AN Wilson The millennium is the anniversary of an event that we no longer believe: namely, the birth of Almighty God in human form in a stable in Bethlehem. How, at this date in history, could […]

The Democratic Alliance’s trumpeting of the defection of Solly Kotane to its ranks and the African National Congress’s exhibitionism over former newspaper spy Craig Kotze symbolise the rank opportunism that has characterised our local government elections. Just when we thought that no one could go lower, the DA delighted at the questionable granting of amnesty […]

The Shangaan community in the Northern Province fears it will be sidelined in the municipality shake-up Evidence wa ka Ngobeni For the past two years Mzamani Mathebula has been queuing at Nandoni dam, an incomplete water reservoir project in the Northern Province, in search of employment. Mathebula, who has been unemployed for the past seven […]

Steven Friedman Worm’s eye view The interesting story in next week’s local elections may not be the share of the vote the major parties win, but that which they do not. Talk of electoral swings notwithstanding, it is a safe bet that the African National Congress will win the vast majority of local councils. But […]

After the hoopla, the people will speak Reports by Jaspreet Kindra, Sechaba ka Nkosi, Marianne Merten, Evidence wa ka Ngobeni, Phillip Nkosi, Peter Dickson and Justin Arenstein Free State The Free State has had a strikingly lacklustre run-up to the local government poll. The Electoral Institute of South Africa (Eisa) says the parties’ election campaigns […]

Valentine Cascarino It’s dawn on a weekday and Joubert Park, former playground of nocturnal romance, is already busy. Its occupants are homeless characters, lying flat on their stomachs a technique they claim relieves the incisive pains of hunger. Outside the grounds schoolkids muscle their way through boisterous taxi drivers and passengers while within the park […]

Barry Streek Ousted Western Cape MEC and former member of the Democratic Alliance Freda Adams has upped the stakes in her sexual harassment battle with DA mayoral candidate Peter Marais, providing details of his raunchy and unsolicited advances. She has now signed a sworn affidavit giving particulars and dates of her claims that Marais, her […]

John Arlidge It has been dismissed as racist and divisive, but scientists are confronting the greatest taboo in sport: that black athletes are “genetically programmed” to run faster and longer than white athletes. In the most comprehensive study of the biological differences between African and European athletes, Scandinavian researchers compared runners in Kenya and Denmark. […]

Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION The best of the rash of humorous comments made about the United States presidential election fiasco was by an American television comic, at a stage last week when the public farce was proceeding apace in the Florida Supreme Court. He commented: “The good news is that neither George Bush nor Al Gore […]