Shaun Harris TAKING STOCK With the end of the year hurtling down on us like a minibus on the N3, a lot of people are trying to form a view on where the local economy and investment markets are going. Those brave enough are even trying to see past the mother-of-all New Year’s Eve parties […]
Amy Lawrence Gliding over the deep red lino in thick claret socks which flap around his calves, Joe Cole looks like your average teenage apprentice milling around the training complex. His life is about to change for ever. He is about to embark upon a journey of infinite possibility. If fortune favours him, he could […]
Howard Barrell OVER A BARREL It is the government’s job to put our tax money where our mouths are. We expect it to allocate revenues to the priorities we have agreed. This makes the annual budget, which sets tax and spending targets, the cutting edge of policy. But who is to decide how the edge […]
Scotch Tagwireyi The Directorate of Serious Economic Offences has decided to prosecute its own cases as directors of public prosecutions have failed to bring many of their investigations to court, some of them dating back to 1993. Jan Swanepoel, director of investigations at the Directorate of Serious Economic Offences, says he believes the delay is […]
Researching Herman Charles Bosman’s prison memoir, Stephen Gray got into his death cell Shows how much I knew about South Africa’s most famous inland jail, Pretoria Central Prison. There its most celebrated inmate, Herman Charles Bosman, spent “a somewhat lengthy sojourn”, as he put it in Cold Stone Jug. But that was in the 1920s. […]
Fiachra Gibbons In the time-honoured tradition of the Booker, all the leaks about who would be shortlisted this year were wrong. Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and Roddy Doyle – the heavyweight “favourites” for this year’s prize -didn’t make the shortlist. Instead, South Africa’s JMCoetzee is up for the prize for the second time. The chairman […]
year’s Booker Prize?And who has been left out? DISGRACE by JM Coetzee (Secker &Warburg) An embittered, disgraced Cape Town professor goes to live with his daughter on an Eastern Cape farm, where they are savagely attacked. The prose never spills a drop, and is almost bloodless in its pale perfection. – James Wood FASTING, FEASTING […]
David Gough in Kenya It was a hot summer’s day, and Joseph Ekuwam and two friends from his village were herding cattle in the arid plains of northern Kenya when they came across a shiny object half-buried in the ground. What they thought to be a harmless piece of metal turned out to be a […]
Christian Figenschou When the conversation turns to insurance companies, most people just roll their eyes. The general attitude seems to be that insurance is a necessary evil, for which you must pay excessively high premiums, but don’t ever expect to recover your full loss, especially if your car is older than five years. However, in […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby World Cup As opening games go, South Africa’s match against Scotland at Murrayfield on Sunday looms as a considerably easier task than the corresponding fixture against Australia in Cape Town in 1995. But that is where the simplicity ends. Kitch Christie’s team was expected to lose against a demonstrably more talented Wallaby […]
Peter Hammond RIGHT TO REPLY Your correspondent, Ivor Powell, accuses me of “gun-running” and “of supplying military hardware and training to Sudanese Liberation Army rebels” in the front page banner headline article, “SA pastor in row over gun-running to Sudan” (September 23 to 30). I wasn’t aware of any such row – it would appear […]
Barry Streek In a bold move towards transparency in the contentious area of arms sales, the government has published details of South Africa’s sale of arms to 83 countries over the past three years on a website. Although it does not disclose details of what weapons were sold, it give details of four categories. Category […]
Caught in a civil war, thousands of Mozambicans sought refuge in South Africa in the 1980s, writes Nicola Johnston After nearly two decades in South Africa, a group of 250 former Mozambican refugees have recently been assisted to return to their former villages in Mozambique. They became the first convoy of a group of 600 […]
skills Marianne Merten Cape Town is often described as the rape capital of the world and it is here that Albanian women – who deal with survivors of horrendous mass rapes – came to share and learn. Discussion of rape is still very much a taboo in Kosovo and Albania, says executive director of Albania’s […]
HOSTS Wales defeated Argentina 23-18 in the opening match of the 1999 World Cup at the Milennium Stadium. Full match report to follow September Link to the day 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 […]
Barbara Ludman INDIANA GOTHIC by Pope Brock (Review) Anyone who hasn’t a skeleton in the family cupboard isn’t looking hard enough. Pope Brock didn’t have to look far – there had always been rumours of something funny about Great-Grandmother Maggie, something weird about the sudden death of Great-Grandfather Ham. Eventually, an elderly great-aunt steered Brock […]
Bernard Schlink’s novel The Reader (Phoenix) has gained the most critics’ votes in Exclusive Books’s annual “Boeke Prize” promotion. In second and third place respectively are Pamela Jooste’s Dance With a Poor Man’s Daughter (Black Swan) and White Oleander by Janet Fitch (Virago), separated by only one vote.
Barry Streek The government continues to send mixed messages on its tax policies and approach to NGOs. In the National Council of Provinces last week, Minister of Education Kader Asmal expressed strong support for the role of NGOs. But in a memorandum attached to the National Student Financial Aid Scheme Bill, it emerged that the […]
John Sutherland The shortlist is out and Booker moves into its middle game. Between now and October 25 the final contenders will – on past evidence – enjoy a month in the sun. Bookshops will display and discount the lucky six. Readers will scoop them up. Unfriendly newspapers will excoriate the list as the “most […]
FORMER Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere is in a “critical” condition, a spokeswoman for the London hospital where he is being treated said Friday. “He is critical at the moment. He was in a stable condition yesterday and his condition has worsened,” she said. She said his family “want everyone’s prayers for him.” Nyerere, (77) was […]
Robert Kirby Channel Vision His teeth are naturally immune to stain, so that when he releases a full blown smile, the naturally white teeth discharge a rediation (sic) pregnant with sweet joy and real happiness for those lucky ones who are fortune (sic) to be around him. No, the above is not part of a […]
The Ministry of Public Enterprises has given Nabera, the company which runs ailing state diamond company Alexkor, a deadline to fulfil its contractual obligations. Donna Block and Mungo Soggot report The Minister of Public Enterprises, Jeff Radebe, moved swiftly this week to extricate himself from the controversy surrounding a consortium chaired by his wife, Bridget, […]
Angolan government forces may have won a crucial victory in Unita’s ‘zone of control’, writes Chris Gordon in Luanda The Angolan government has destroyed Unita’s stronghold in the city of Bailondo two weeks after starting a new and long- awaited military offensive. The Angolan air force unleashed its recently acquired Su-27 planes in a massive […]
their own Struan Douglas Once, there was an old American street busker who used to play loose jazz grooves. Some kid asked him, “Hey, what’s this cool music you’re playing?” “Juss music”, the old man replied in a rich American drawl. “Oh, jazz music!” said the kid – and the name was born, for a […]
SOUTHERN African leaders will meet with business and labour leaders from the region and abroad on Sunday in a bid to boost regional economic growth and cooperation. The leaders will meet under the auspices of third annual Southern African International Dialogue (SAID) at a luxury hotel in Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. The four-day meeting will […]
David le Page Product: StarOffice suite Requirements: Any robust PC running Windows 95/98/NT, Linux, OS/2 Price: Free for personal and commercial use You can now download Microsoft Word – in fact the whole of Microsoft Office – free of charge from the Internet. Well, that might be exaggerating a bit. Okay, you can download a […]
Shaun de Waal Movies of the week The pairing of compellingly contrasting characters has surely been a staple of film narrative since film narrative began. Obviously, the development of a (heterosexual) romantic relationship is one of cinema’s favourite plots, the ultimate form of bonding across the gender line; the buddy movie does the same for […]
the tournament Australia They played very well in beating New Zealand in their last game and the return of John Eales and Stephen Larkham will strengthen them considerably. They have a fantastic defence and the World Cup is always won by the best defence. Not knowing how South Africa will perform, I’d tip Australia as […]
On the eve of the Pride Parade, Charl Blignaut attended the country’s premiere black drag pageant You’d never tell from the outside that Monyaka by Nite is the sort of nightclub given to displaying a galaxy of star- shaped refracting mirrors across the ceiling above its dance floor. >From outside, you’d never even tell it’s […]
Evelyn Groenink and Mail & Guardian reporters The special prosecutions team which is trying to prove that the Civil Co- operation Bureau’s (CCB) Witwatersrand unit, region six, is solely to blame for the murder of Anton Lubowski, and that the motive for the murder was purely political, may well be looking in the wrong place. […]
plant Peter Dickson With the prospect of a nuclear “demonstration plant” in their coastal backyard, so coveted by itinerant surfers, the good citizens of Jeffreys Bay, Humansdorp, St Francis Bay, Oyster Bay and Cape St Francis decided it was time for a showdown. And Eskom switched off. The power parastatal, to the whoops of delight […]
Andy Capostagno John Leslie (Scotland) Nick Mallett calls him the best inside centre in the world and wonders how the All Blacks can possibly have allowed John Leslie to play for the land of his grandfathers. There is added irony to his choice of allegiance since Leslie’s father, Andy, captained New Zealand in 10 Tests. […]