Henry Gee looks at the surprising secrets of one of nature’s stickiest surfaces – the gecko’s atom-powered feet Robert Full’s laboratory is more than usually full of gizmos, even for a modern biologist. Full is a biological engineer. Like an industrial espionage outfit, he and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, look at nature […]
Soundtracks are an integral part of movies and their promotion. Scott Hughes traces their track record They’d never done it before. But, with a screening of some rough footage, and, no doubt, a big white grin, Tom Cruise managed to persuade United States rock giants Metallica – for the first time in their two-decade career […]
Nigel Fairhead spoke out this week for the first time about the dastardly murder of his wife and young daughter Lin Sampson The early part of this year was marked by a spate of unusual fires that crackled ominously across the Constantia Valley and left a deposit of ash on everything like a veil of […]
The world’s largest modern art museum is now open Adrian Searle The opening of Tate Modern is a watershed in the cultural life of Britain. It signals the importance of the art of our times, and its centrality in British culture. Unlike most of the big cities and capitals of the Western world, London has […]
UREGENT moves were afoot on Thursday to get the Sierra Leone national soccer team to travel to Nigeria for this weekend’s World Cup qualifier against the Super Eagles, sports ministry officials said. The statement came a day after the team refused to board the helicopter which should have taken them to the country’s international airport […]
Stephen Gray I, TITUBA by Maryse Cond (Faber &Faber) THE ABYSSINIAN by Jean-Christophe Rufin (Picador) As one of their first books dated 2000, Faber have reissued one of Maryse Cond’s novels in their Caribbean Series, chosen by Caryl Phillips. The short title is I, Tituba, although this had previously been followed by the subtitle Black […]
Barry Streek The government is pressing ahead with its plans to establish an independent Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA), which it hopes will start operating in the middle of next year. It also says considerable consensus about the basic principles of the new agency has already been achieved, ahead of the publication of a […]
C Robert Kirby LOOSE CANNON You knew the way it was going to go that moment, a few weeks back, when a morose Hansie Cronje stepped into the press room flanked by two politicians and his greaseball Christian mentor. It was like finding that soft tomato at the bottom of the bag. You don’t have […]
Peter Robinson If Bob Woolmer could be persuaded to take one position on Hansie Cronje and stick to it, then it might be possible to establish, if not guilt, then at least some kind of responsibility for the former captain’s fall from grace. All around the world this week, cricket tried to come to terms […]
RWANDAN bishop Augustin Misago, who faced charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, was acquitted on Thursday and freed by a court in Kigali. The verdict was applauded in the court. The trial of Misago, the former bishop of southwestern Gikongoro, for his alleged role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda which claimed between 500000 […]
South Africa Paul Kirk A new survey of the muti industry shows that trade in traditional medicines tops R500-million a year and concerns 27-million South Africans. The study, by the Institute of Natural Resources, found that in KwaZulu-Natal alone more than 4E000 tons of indigenous plants are traded a year, while the value of the […]
Ups: Cheery Cape clone that’s Jo’burg’s current favourite. Colourful, clean, safe to walk around at night. Great restaurants, cafes, bars, clubs and some interesting shopping. Downs: The people. Rich hippies, media kids and ever-so-slightly-smug residents. More cool than culture ensures an empty- headed experience. What the Estate Agents say: “Melville’s looking good. High demand and […]
The Simpsons finally has a rival for sharp, subversive, animated satire, but Zombie College can only be watched on the internet Michael Collins There’s something about the DIY aspect of a webpage that is in keeping with the punk ethic of another age, and from which sprang a million three-minute songs and equally as many […]
A performance audit has given ANC councillors the jitters in the wake of local government elections Sechaba ka’Nkosi Ashake-up within African National Congress branches is expected to take place in the build-up to local government elections amid serious tensions and jostling for power among councillors uncertain of their future role in the party. The uncertainty […]
THE Pretoria State Theatre is being closed for the rest of the 2000/2001 financial year due to “gross financial management”, Minister of Arts and Culture Ben Ngubane told journalists on Thursday. The theatre’s 477 employees will be retrenched in the process. Ngubane said the balance of the government grant of R33 million, which currently stands […]
Siki. Dutch director Niek Koppen, who will be a guest of the festival presents his hour-long work of 1992 about Louis M’Barick Fall, who in 1922 became the first African to win a world boxing title. The documentary recounts the life of Battling Siki, the intelligent “savage”, activist, dandy, husband and womeniser. Using unique film […]
Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH The term “senseless war” should be a contradiction in terms. Because humanity was given the power of reasoning by Mother Nature, war should not be in our vocabulary at all. But Mother Nature also gave us the power not to use our reason! And more often than not, we […]
Peter Robinson One by one they have taken the stand, damned Hansie Cronje with their evidence and then sought to soften the blow by declaring their respect for the fallen former captain. “The finest captain South Africa has ever had,” is typical of the sentiment. It has occurred to none of Cronje’s erstwhile team-mates that […]
WHAT’S NEW It’s called Sealand, it’s currently 10m by 25m and it’s about to become an international “data haven” run by an American company, HavenCo. Sealand is an abandoned fortress built by the British during World War II and “colonised” by a British eccentric and former army major, Roy Bates, in 1966. A 1968 British […]
SOME 600 elephants from Mozambique have trooped into a Malawi national park, doubling the elephant population. Aggrey Dzimbiri, manager of Liwonde national park in southern Machinga district, bordering Mozambique, said he suspects the elephants were fleeing from Mozambique because the vegetation there had been destroyed by the recent floods. Dzimbiri, who looks after the 538-square-kilometre […]
David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY Many years ago I interviewed the former British prime minister, James Callaghan. He was foreign secretary at the time. The event was unremarkable, except that it was conducted in a nursery school classroom. We could not find anywhere to sit and he ended up wedging his considerable frame into one of […]
Barry Streek LETTERS FROM ROBBEN ISLAND: A SELECTION OF AHMED KATHRADA’S PRISON CORRESPONDENCE, 1964-1989 edited by Robert D Vassen (Zebra) From prison, Ahmed Kathrada wrote thoughtful letters, initially twice a year and then once a month, to the outside world, knowing that they would first be censored by prison officials, then examined in detail by […]
The description of the game of cricket as a metaphor for life has never been as apt as now, in the midst of the so- called “Hansiegate” match-fixing scandal. As allegations and disclosures pour forth testifying to the self-serving greed which inspired these heroes of times so recently gone by, the impulse of the holy […]
Jason Venter SQUASH This week’s South African squash open national championship, staged first at Johannesburg suburban courts and later on a portable glass court in the middle of Sandton Square, is no doubt one of the premier events on the South African sport calendar – as if anyone cared in this era of Hansiegate and […]
THE country’s mining fatalities and injuries fell sharply in 1999 as mine safety legislation took effect, the Chamber of Mines said on Wednesday. Only one accident was reported in 1999, when 19 miners were killed at the Mponeng Mine in an underground gas explosion, compared with an average of over eight major accidents a year […]
THE Johannesburg stock exchange said on Tuesday that it is recalculating all the trading carried out late on Monday to correct “anomalies” in its backup system after technical problems halted the session. “Subsequent to this, the JSE was made aware of certain anomalies in the JET hot backup system and has had to declare all […]
PORT Elizabeth police said they will not prosecute a couple who attacked and killed an intruder in their home on a smallholding outside the city. The armed man entered the house of Brian Knox, 50, and his wife, Anne-Marie, 47, while they were having dinner, and confronted them. Mr Knox apparently grabbed the man and […]
ERITREAN officials on Wednesday reported renewed fighting on western and eastern fronts, in the latest round of its two-year-old war with Ethiopia. Eritrea confirmed Ethiopian reports that its forces had retaken the western Eritrean town of Guluj, 250km southwest of Asmara. “The Ethiopians are in Guluj and the fighting is in the Guluj area,” he […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Sydney | Wednesday 10.45am. FORMER Australian Test vice-captain Ian Healy has called on South African businessman Jacques Sellshop to prove claims that Australian cricketers are involved in match fixing. Sellshop told the King Inquiry into match fixing in Cape Town on Tuesday that he had a conversation with Pakistani fast bowler Shoaib Akhtar […]
BOETA Dippenaar will take the place of disgraced opener Herschelle Gibbs in the Proteas squad to tour Sri Lanka. Dippenaar was on Monday named as replacement for Gibbs who was dropped from the side after he admitted to accepting an offer for $15000 from his former skipper Hansie Cronje to play badly in a one-day […]
Former President Nelson Mandela is due to visit one of Burundi’s controversial "regroupment camps" as he continues his mission to try to bring peace to the troubled country.
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday 12.00pm. THE penultimate Premier Soccer League match of the season served up a thrilling battle between arch-rivals Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates at Ellis Park on Tuesday night, with Chiefs holding the Buccaneers to a 2-2 draw. The match, which had little bearing on the league title, saw BobSave […]