Microsoft is in the dock again, but Bill Gates isn’t bothered. No, it’s not a story you missed. It’s the year 2010 Jamie Doward ‘I have nothing to say about this. I hold only a tiny stake in Microsoft these days. We faced charges of being a monopoly and acting anti-competitively in the past and […]
Just as his new film, All About My Mother, confirms his status as a master, Pedro Almodvar is about to swap Europe for the US Damon Wise The day Pedro Almodvar’s latest movie, All About My Mother, made its European debut at Cannes this year was the day the festival truly started. Until then, Cannes […]
Dalene Matthee’s new novel deal with the first interracial family at the Cape under the Dutch Jane Rosenthal Dalene Matthee, who is rather smaller than one would expect from the authority and stature of her novels, appeared promptly for a hotel breakfast interview. She applied herself politely and diligently and with increasing eloquence to a […]
John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF Politics is funny. Innuendo is even funnier. Innuendo brought into the service of politics is funny as hell. A lot of people who didn’t know they were in the middle of a game of political innuendo were brought to their knees and died, not realising that it was all […]
It’s full steam ahead as Rustlers Valley prepares for its big moment this Easter Claire Bezuidenhout Travelling to Rustlers Valley from Durban by bus – along with Germans, Belgians and one future “big time” London DJ wannabe – we arrived at the Amphitheatre Backpackers at the perfect point of the evening, where evening dew meets […]
Drastic changes could shake South Africa’s public service if proposed plans are implemented Howard Barrell and Glenda Daniels South Africa’s 1,1-million civil servants face a revolution in their working conditions if the government has the political will to get its plans past suspicious public service trade unions. The government is due to unveil new pay […]
In an international scoop, we have obtained the authentic transcript of the telephone conversation between Hansie Cronje and the London bookmaker that resulted in Cronje receiving $8 200 for match “forecasting”. Shan: Hello, Hansie? Shan here, calling from London. Did Joe tell you I’d be calling? Hansie: Hello Shan, nice to meet you. Yes, Joe […]
David Jays SMILE PLEASE by Jonathan Keates (Chatto & Windus) Adam, the central character in Smile Please, has a favourite gay sleazepit where you can take a break from the business of grapple and groan to “discuss early Antonioni or the Shostakovich cello sonata”. As in Alan Hollinghurst and Edmund White, Jonathan Keates’s novel ripples […]
l www.travel-2-africa.co.za Searchable online travel agency with info on fishing, hiking, golfing, railing and hunting. Specialised guides to Swaziland, Malawi, Lesotho, South Africa, Zambia. l www.getaway.co.za A fabulous searchable site with archives on plenty of destinations as well as info on a variety of environmental topics. l www.ananzi.co.za/outthere Articles for adventurous travellers. l www.ananzitravel.co.za Virtual […]
David Beresford ANOTHER COUNTRY There is a curious document identified as “MC/M353” in the Oliver Tambo collection of papers at the University of Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape. The document, it should be said at the outset, is undoubtedly a fake. It is written as a “memorandum” in the form of minutes of a […]
Neil Thomas What a start to the millennium! Investment professionals’ forecasts have basically been wrong, but unit trust investors who stuck to their own views have largely been well rewarded. So scratch up one point for individual investors, nil for the investment industry. Late last year, among much nervousness about Y2K and an accompanying shift […]
Michelle Matthews ‘Though celebrating the strides that women have made in the dance scene, this is no patronising event,” assure Sleaze Syndicate regarding its Chicks with Decks party. The pejorative is probably less disturbing than the pun, which insinuates that dicks and decks are the natural order. Unfortunately, the perception is valid, with the Cape […]
Tim Adams THE MARRIED MAN by Edmund White (Chatto &Windus) Edmund White has always trawled his own intensely sexual life in his novels, and since that sexual life has charted the course of gay liberation, his books have been beautifully candid political acts. His last novel, The Farewell Symphony, was a vast valediction to his […]
Steven Friedman WORM’S EYE VIEW There is nothing like the fall of a national figure to bring on an orgy of moral hand-wringing. So it is with the Hansie Cronje saga. Public commentators have rushed to bemoan how the apparent fall of a pious, clean-living sportsman shows how debased we have become. The usual suspects […]
Is Crawford a school for nobs or a great leap forward in progressive education? Nawaal Deane investigates Growing up in government schools – school uniforms, a bleak and boring landscape seen through grimy windows, lunch bought over the fence – doesn’t prepare you for Crawford. Visiting a Crawford College is like landing on another planet. […]
Luvuyo Kakaza CDs OFTHEWEEK In 1998, BMG Africa seemed to have grovelled hard in the dustbins of the ghetto in search of new talent. Every Wednesday at Johannesburg’s dancehall, 206 in Orange Grove, BMG hosted a musical showcase with a funky name: Jozi Vibes:Vibes 2 Smoke Ya. The fruitful results have been the release of […]
Thebe Mabanga A package of four artists and three DJs are set to take to the road in a big way over the next two months. Touring as Jozi Vibes and Izwe Sound System No. 1, their eclectic, Pan-African sound is set to thrill audiences countrywide. Jozi Vibes is a development record label formed with […]
anyway Michael Finch ROADRUNNING A Two Oceans Marathon without Chapman’s Peak? That’s a bit like having a one-day cricket international without a ball. The famous 10km stretch, regarded as one of the most scenic roads in the world, is as much a part of the Two Oceans as the fish horn that signals the start. […]
Ebrahim Harvey LEFT FIELD The dramatic mass demonstrations at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) conference in Seattle and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a few months ago, and that which took place last week at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank meetings in Washington, has starkly spelled out the kind of […]
Alex Sudheim LIFESTYLE Leaving Durban for a cruise down the South Coast is like sliding into a daydream on a warm weekend afternoon – drowsily hovering on the fuzzy threshold of the land of Nod, absently aware of the world going pleasantly blurry and vague. As you roll through the green hills with the sea […]
Strange but true, in South Africa some cattle are still being fed the remains of other cattle Carolize Jansen Four years after “mad cow disease” shook the cattle-farming world, the South African government still has no laws in place to prevent the syndrome. The Ministry of Agriculture promised this week it intends legislation banning the […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION I had intended to write about this matter a couple of weeks ago but, of course, the Cronje saga got in the way. What I wanted to say was how profoundly impressed I was by forthright statements made a fortnight or so ago by the redoubtable Mr Kader Asmal. It seemed that […]
Jean Spear ‘Wealthy gentleman living in Beverly Hills is looking for a petite, adventurous, intelligent female travel mate to the exotic islands of Thailand. Must have photos. E-mail now and cruise with me.” Internet travel sites are filled with similar notices from travellers seeking the ideal travel companion to tour the globe with. From the […]
Carolize Jansen There have been 176E069 cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or mad cow disease) in the United Kingdom up to the end of last year. The consumption of BSE-infected meat is widely accepted as the cause of a strain of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease (CJD), a human brain condition. There have been sporadic outbreaks […]
Rupert Neethling The publication in March of Stephen King’s novella Riding the Bullet marked the first time that writing by someone of King’s commercial stature was released exclusively on the Internet. Riding the Bullet sold half-a-million copies in 48 hours. The advantage of this commercial model is that recently published works are made available on […]
Telford Vice CRICKET A fortnight ago there would have been no shortage of schoolchildren able and willing to reel off a list of their South African cricketing heroes. That is no longer the case, because at least one former hero has been exposed as anything but. And because it is by no means clear how […]
Justin Arenstein A group of international investors is threatening to sue the National Intelligence Agency (NIA)and the South African Secret Service for $14-million after getting ripped off in a complex scam by spies using apartheid-era front companies. The American investors were already granted a US district court judgment for $10,9-million in 1998, but are struggling […]
Brenda Atkinson REVIEW OFTHEWEEK Just three months after finding a home and willing financial midwives, Johannesburg’s inaugural urban culturefest Artichoke got off to an uneven but promising start on Saturday April 8 at the Sandton Civic Gallery. The quarterly cultural event – initiated by dancer/performer Jeannette Ginslov and organised by herself, Kathryn Smith and Bie […]
STEVEN MANN, Cape Town | Wednesday 12.00pm. THE recent hammering taken by share prices on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange was inevitable, but the country’s economic fundamentals remain sound and the economic outlook is positive, Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni said on Wednesday. “It’s a correction that was bound to happen at some point,” he told […]
LEFT-arm wrist spinner Paul Adams, sidelined since breaking a finger while fielding in the fifth test against England in January, returns to the South African squad for their tour of Sri Lanka in July and August. The 16-man squad named on Monday includes the 13 players who contested the three-match one-day series against Australia which […]
AUSTRALIAN paceman Brett Lee on Sunday bowled the fastest delivery measured in South Africa when he let fly with a 156km/h snorter in the one-day final against South Africa at the Wanderers in Johannesburg. Lee’s delivery is 1,5km/h faster than the previous best, a delivery of 154,5km/h bowled by Pakistani speedster Shaoib Akhtar also recorded […]
KENYAN national football coach Christian Chukwu has perhaps his last chance to prove his worth when he leads his team against Malawi in a 2002 World Cup qualifier on Saturday. But with the absence through injury of the country’s veteran striker Mike Okoth, the Nigerian-born coach has his work cut out. Since taking over in […]