Nigella Lawson BODY LANGUAGE There’s a poster, a huge sky-stretching poster: it features a woman, or her almost bare torso; shoulders, neck, a transparent black T-shirt over unconcealed – indeed, heightened – nipples. It’s an advertisement for Vogue.com (that’s Vogue-dot-com) though the dot is typographically missing. I don’t say it isn’t witty (and the other […]
Andy Colquhoun RUGBY Picking a Springbok squad for the coming tests against England and Canada has probably been as difficult as shooting fish in a barrel. Once Nick Mallett and his panel of Francois Davids and Wynand Claassen had swept aside the belly-up Sharks and Bulls bobbing about uselessly on the surface, they’d have found […]
UGANDAN coffee exports were down 45% year in April to 94953 60-kg bags due to a poor harvest and slower deliveries as farmers held out for better prices, officials said on Thursday. “Trading activities were extremely low during the month largely due to temporary suspension of operations by some volume movers,” the Ugandan Coffee Development […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Paris | Friday 3.30pm. ALGERIAN national coach Nasser Sandjak announced on Friday that he has quit his post and will be returning to French third division side Noisy-le-Sec, based in the suburbs of Paris. “I’ve decided with a lot of regret not to renew my contract,” Sandjak said in a statement. He said […]
Cameron Duodu LETTER FROM THE NORTH The speed and efficiency with which Britain has deployed forces to evacuate its beleaguered citizens from Sierra Leone has been admirable. But to many Africans the British action raises a very worrying question: why didn’t Britain place its forces at the disposal of the United Nations, so that everyone […]
With few resources to aid it, the Cape Peninsula’s visible gang unit battles to bring an end to gang activity Marianne Merten The dark alleys of gang-wracked Mannenberg on the Cape Flats resound with a rapid- fire volley of 20 gunshots shortly before 8pm on Saturday night. Gunsmoke is heavy in the air only metres […]
Paul Kirk Arthur Konigkramer, the treasurer general of the Inkatha Freedom Party and one of its earliest members, has resigned from the party after nearly 30 years’ service. Sources within the office of the KwaZulu- Natal premier, Lionel Mtshali, this week confirmed they had received a letter from Konig-kramer in which he asked to be […]
Peter Dickson Port Elizabeth, gateway to one of South Africa’s most impoverished regions, is gearing up for an economic miracle that could ironically put immense pressure on the city as the homeless and jobless compete for living space. A decade ago 30 000 people poured into Saldanha and set up informal settlements, built on the […]
MILITANT youths in Nigeria’s volatile oil-producing Niger Delta abducted five Royal Dutch/Shell workers and released them 24 hours later, company officials said on Thursday. The workers were abducted on Wednesday along with two navy escorts from Shell’s Opuama flow station in southern Delta State, the officials said. “All the hostages were released this [Thursday] morning,” […]
MPUMALANGA’S suspended parks board chief Alan Gray and three alleged accomplices are scheduled to appear in Nelspruit’s regional court on Thursday on 77 embezzlement charges. Gray, who was forced to sell his personalised M3 BMW and Land Rover earlier this year due to escalating legal fees, is accused of siphoning over R2,3-million out of the […]
Barry Streek If the fight against rural poverty is to be won, the government has to ensure a “national lifeline tariff” of 50 litres of clean water a person a day, the Rural Development Services Network (RDSN) said this week. Its research has shown that about 40% to 60% of rural people do not have […]
Neil Manthorp Whatever else may be said about the King inquiry, the notion that South Africa’s cricketers will somehow attempt, let alone be successful in masking the truth would appear to be absolute rubbish. Not only are the national squad players prepared and willing to testify, they are, for the most part, looking forward to […]
The Motley Fool began as a hoax. Now it is a serious player in investment advice Jamie Doward For a while it was a very successful company. It was the new, new thing and everyone wanted a slice of the action, despite the fact that details of what it did and where it operated were […]
with fraud Darran Morgan Six members of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands child protection unit (CPU) in Pietermaritzburg have been charged with fraud after an internal investigation revealed irregularities in informer payment claims going as far back as 1996. Most of the allegedly fraudulent claims were made out to a police reservist who, according to a member […]
SOUTH African Monique Strydom, held by Muslim rebels in the Philippines for more than two weeks along with 20 other people, is pregnant, according to a Filipino abducted by the same group. Strydom, whose husband Carel is also being held by members of the Abu Sayyaf group, is two months pregnant, the Filipino hostage, Andy […]
EMPOWERMENT company African Harvest posted excellent results for the six months to March 31. Headline and attributable earnings per share on a pro forma basis grew by 36% from 14 cents to 19 cents. CEO Leon Campher said the results are very pleasing. He noted that because of the capital reduction of R5 per share […]
Howard Barrell OVER A BARREL Looking to a bureaucrat to stimulate entrepreneurial activity is rather like asking a journalist to forget his or her sense of superficiality. It is about as well-directed an expectation as striking to persuade your employer to create more jobs, or calling on millions to hate capitalism in order to attract […]
Trekking up a mountain and cherry-picking in season are only two of the many things to do in the ‘mini-Serengeti’ Jean Spear ‘There’s Chester Williams and Brendan Paulse of our springbok herd,” points Willie Nel, owner of Moolmanshoek, a luxury new guesthouse and adventure farm in the Eastern Free State. Nel has affectionately given the […]
Julie Flint reports from Sudan’s frontline where hunger is now used as a weapon of war against the ancient Nuba tribe In a few weeks, barring miracles, the children in this region of southern Sudan will begin to die – if not from hunger, then from disease. Most families are living in the open, without […]
NEWSINBRIEF Salary increases of more than 12% are on the cards for the president, deputy president, Cabinet ministers and long- serving MPs. The commission charged with regulating public representatives’ salaries has proposed a three-tier remuneration structure for parliamentarians and ministers according to their length of service, the highest of which will allot a 15,5% increase. […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 4.30pm. THE rand remained weak by late afternoon, after testing the key resistance level of R7,03 to the dollar in early trade on Friday. Dealers said the dollar and negative overseas sentiment continues to weigh on the market. By 4pm the local currency was trading at R7,04 to the dollar. […]
SERGEANT Barnabas “Rogers” Jabila, a hitman for late Nigerian military ruler General Sani Abacha, has admitted killing the wife of late politician Moshood Abiola. Kudirat Abiola was assassinated on a Lagos road in June 1996 by men suspected to be members of a killer squad set up by Abacha, who died in June 1998 after […]
Stephen Gray LIFESTYLE Once, for my sins, a man whose name really was Paul von Blixem approached me. He ran a mampoer distillery and his mission was to widen the appeal of his product, an important patriotic beverage, to English- speakers, not just to lying, lazy louts in the backveld. And to tourists, that was […]
Chris McGreal in Freetown The surge of foreboding among Freetown’s long-suffering citizens is not made any easier by the realisation that their peninsula city is little better than a sprawling trap. Foreigners may scan the skies for the rescue helicopters, but there is nowhere for Sierra Leonians to run if Foday Sankoh and his rebels […]
Barry Streek The South African road network is in a state of rapid decline due to under- investment, with an accrued backlog for road infrastructure of R37-billion by 1997, according to Minister of Transport Dullah Omar. The Moving South Africa study, which estimated the accrued backlog, found the annual shortfall for road infrastructure in 1997 […]
A potential commitment to renewable energy comes close on the heels of predictions of solar power as a possible multibillion-dollar market Terry Macalister BP Amoco is considering a massive expansion of its renewable energy programme over and above the $250-million it has already earmarked to spend over the next five years. In a move that […]
NEW Zealand’s High Commission in violence-torn Zimbabwe is fending off demands from some 400 people a day for free air tickets to New Zealand because of what Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel says is misinformation. “Some information being reported in Zimbabwe by media there is not correct…It has been reported that New Zealand is offering free […]
Neal Collins SOCCER It makes you proud (sob) to be English. True grit in the face of stunning mid- table mediocrity (sigh). It was (simper) marvellous to watch. Last Sunday we saw Southampton, safe and sound above the relegation zone, hold mighty Liverpool 0- 0. On Monday, mid-table Everton had two sent off as they […]
The line between tax havens and offshore financial centres is fairly fuzzy, with most of the latter operating in the former Sarah Bullen A tax haven is one of those emotive phrases that conjur up images from a John Grisham novel: Lotharios in tailored suits popping over to an island for a day, azure seas, […]
Fraud and corruption are widespread in the local medical industry, involving doctors, medical administrators and pharmaceutical companies Belinda Beresford South Africans are paying an estimated extra R8-billion a year in medical costs because of fraud, corruption and perverse incentives spread throughout the country’s Alice in Wonderland health care system. The private sector spends approximately R30-billion […]
Don Albert It’s alarming just how misunderstood jazz is in South Africa. Jazz is, after all, a form which provides the purveyor with basic as well as intangible rules. Unlike the 100m dash or an office memo, there is no specific format. It’s amazing that everyone is a so called “classical music” listener; maybe that […]
COMPANY liquidations slowed to 326 in March, down 1,8% on the same month a year ago, figures released by Statistics SA showed on Thursday. In the first three months of 2000 there were 748 liquidations, a drop of nearly 30 percent on the same period a year ago, Stats SA said. Insolvencies have also decreased […]