MONDAY, 12.30PM: THE South African side on a short tour of Ireland mauled the Irish bowling in their first limited-overs match at Downpatrick on Friday, scoring 333/9 for in their allotted 50 overs. The Irish sent the South Africans in to bat, and struck quickly, removing the South African top three for 29 runs in […]
FRIDAY, 4.00PM: RECENTLY liquidated Afrikaans talk radio Punt Geselsradio has been reduced at a 40% staff complement after resignations or retrenchments following its liquidation. The radio was provisionally liquidated earlier in the week at the request of its major shareholder Boland Financial Services after discovering the radio station has debts of over R26-million. Staff spokeswoman […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM: PORTNET, the ports and harbours subsidiary of transport parastatal Transnet, announced on Thursday that it is planning to invest R7-billion over the next five years on constructing, maintaining and upgrading its harbours nationwide. Transnet’s executive director in charge of Portnet, Rob Childs, said R1,5-billion will be invested this financial year, with the balance […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Lusaka | Saturday 5.30pm. A ROW over who leads a key rebel group in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Saturday delayed the start of the ratification in Kinshasa of a ceasefire deal to end the war in the former Zaire. The signing ceremony had been due to open at 10:00 am […]
SPRINGBOK South African flanker Corne Krige may be out for the remainder of 1999 after suffering a knee injury early in the first half of Saturday’s test defeat by the All Blacks in Dunedin. The Springboks were beaten 28-0. Krige, 24, had to come off after just 10 minutes. Team officials said it looked as […]
SOUTH African Greg Emslie defeated Californian Tim Curran in the opening heat of the day at the G-SHOCK ASP Billabong MSF World Championship tour surfing event. Emslie ranked 33rd outsmarted Japan Pro winner Curran ranked eight, using a combination of superior wave choice and radical manoeuvres to gain victory. Emslie will now face Australian Brendan […]
FRIDAY, 1.30PM: THE Blue Bulls Under-19 Craven Week side showed again that they are peerless in this year’s competition, soundly trouncing the much-vaunted Northern Free State side by 44-0. SA Schools flyhalf Tiaan Snyman was excellent, contributing 19 points with the boot. The Bulls scored five tries. South-Western Districts beat Mpumalanga 13-5. The half time […]
KAIZER Chiefs coach Paul Dolezar’s future with the organisation looks uncertain after team director Kaizer Motaung met with top coaches from Germany and Belgium last week. Motaung is expected to make a decision about who will coach the Premier Soccer League’s darling club after consultations this week. Speculation that Chief’s loss to Eseprance of Tunisia […]
SCHUTTE BEKKER may be able to play first-class rugby after his mild heart attack seven weeks ago. Bekker has begun walking on the treadmill, and must still be cautious while building up his strength. He hopes to be back for the Blue Bulls by the end of the season. Bekker has a single Springbok cap […]
THE battle between Wales and Australia over Jason Jones-Hughes has been won by the Wallabies. Wales named Jones-Hughes for their World Cup squad, and Australia protested, saying it owned the young player. The Australian Rugby Union (ARU) protested to the International Rugby Board (IRB) saying Jones-Hughes played for the Australian Barbarians, formerly Australia A, against […]
DEON POTGIETER, Johannesburg | Thursday 1.00pm. SOUTH Africa’s former International Boxing Federation Heavyweight world champion, Francois Botha, will be facing one of the highest rated heavyweights in the world, Shannon Briggs, on August 7 in Las Vegas. The White Buffalo, as Botha is known, almost caused a major upset six months ago when he was […]
SPRINGBOK scrumhalf Dave Von Hoesslin is happy to play in cold and wet conditions in Dunedin, should those arise. Weather conditions are widely touted as favouring the All Blacks, but Von Hoesslin, and any other Springbok who plays in Cape Town, will be used to soggy, windy, cold weather. The New Zealand side may have […]
FRIDAY, 12.30PM: TELECOMS parastatal Telkom on Thursday launched its ambitious borrowing programme with a $150-million syndicated loan — its first foreign loan without a government guarantee. The loan, signed in Amsterdam on Thursday, is lead managed by ABN Amro, Dresdner Bank and Socit Gnrale. The loan consists of the three-year tranche of $100-million at 45 […]
FRIDAY, 1.30PM: AMAZULU Football club skipper Francis Shonai has been given a free transfer by the club after it battled to sell him for a year. Santos FC’s newly appointed CEO Afzal Khan said at his introduction by Santos chairman Goolam Allie in Rondebosch on Thursday that he wants the club to start winning trophies […]
Cameron Duodu Letter From The North The late Joshua Nkomo is the sort of personality to which the world is exposed only once in a thousand years. A familiar figure in Accra in the early Sixties, when President Kwame Nkrumah was helping Africans everywhere to organise resistance against white rule, Nkomo could easily have passed […]
Newtown Some big projects, with big names, are being aired in yet another attempt to resuscitate the Newtown Cultural Precinct in Johannesburg, which first saw the light of day nearly a decade ago, writes Ricky Burnett Sometime in the early years of this decade Christopher Till, then director of culture for Johannesburg, described a future […]
Ben Laurance and Ed Vulliamy In many ways it was a very 1990s crime. The suspected perpetrator was a loner who dressed in baggy jeans and T-shirts. He worked from home and rarely went out. The technologies of cable and satellite allowed him to surround himself with more than 100 TV sets and computer screens […]
In the mystically charged Grahamstown, more drama is taking place in the streets than on the stages and in the theatres, writes John Matshikiza `I wish people would stop talking about white and black,” National Arts Festival director Lynette Marais is quoted as saying in last week’s Sunday Times, “and just talk about a South […]
South African theatre appears to be in the doldrums of self- indulgence, even though play makers are finding plenty to say, writes Matthew Krouse The National Arts Festival has been a glorious gathering of gurus – all strutting about like peacocks. It’s their moment, a time to get what they deserve. A time for nonchalant […]
University of the North vice-chancellor Njabulo Ndebele says he is proud of Edupark and its achievements.
The falling gold price is making money for traders around the world, writes Belinda Beresford Champagne corks were popping in New York this week as traders celebrated their winning bets that the gold price would fall. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic in Pretoria, miners demonstrated in a desperate attempt to draw international […]
Fiona Macleod Riccardo Ghiazza, the man at the centre of the Tuli elephant furore, is being investigated by police in connection with a huge illegal animal-smuggling network. The endangered species protection unit (ESPU), a branch of the police service, is scrutinising Ghiazza’s alleged links with some of the kingpins of Southern Africa’s illegal wildlife trade. […]
Matthew Krouse Down the tube Of all the images of South African culture identifiable to the outside world, the Ndebele homestead must stand out as the one most exoticised. In pictures of homely bliss, postcards and books have portrayed neat little Ndebele communities as organised as the geometric patterns that women paint on their houses. […]
Bryan Rostron A Second Look Thabo Mbeki first prompted the comparison with talk of his renaissance. Italy has long baffled the Anglo-Saxon mind with its knack of reconciling contradictions, and today our new president displays an equally acrobatic flair for juggling opposites. Why, we now even have a pacifist as deputy minister of defence and […]
Of the half-a-million `convicts’ shipped to Siberia to fuel the engines of the Stalinist regime, only a few survived. Eventually, they were given their freedom, and a paper to say they had not committed any crime. Yet 50 years on, many are still living in their icy prison. James Meek reports On a winter’s day […]
Women of the sports world are no longer hiding behind their skirts. They themselves are the latest fashion trend and have no reason to be modest. That was the week of women in sport. The Wimbledon women, the women’s football World Cup and the England versus India women’s cricket test series are moving to centre […]
A peace deal to end almost a decade of civil war in Sierra Leone has been signed. But, writes Mark Doyle, many feel that the rebels are being rewarded for atrocities In a muddy refugee camp in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, a two-year-old with her right arm amputated smiles a lot and seems unaware that […]
Review of the week Struan Douglas When Nelson Mandela opened the National Arts Festival’s anniversary celebrations with his compassionate shuffle on June 29, African jazz started going mad all over town. Ebbing, flowing, dipping, peaking, threatening boredom, crying unprogressive yet ensuring its longevity. We’ve had the retrospective perennials. July 1 was devoted to old timers […]
Marianne Merten Police investigators probing People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) have quietly arrested at least six members of the group in the past 10 days without the usual “breakthrough” headlines that backfired on detectives in the past. This comes as Cape Town courts refuse bail to those facing charges ranging from possessing pipebombs and […]
Aaron Nicodemus Aids and KwaZulu-Natal hotels apparently don’t mix very well. Last week, participants in a workshop on Aids were nearly evicted from the Hluhluwe Zulu Nyala Protea Hotel in the north-east of the province when it was revealed that some were HIV-positive. According to Aids activist Oziel Mdletshe, who attended the workshop, the hotel […]
John Matshikiza With The Lid Off Maybe it’s the drugs, but I still get occasional waves of confusion, mixed with dj vu, in my day-to-day experience of South Africa. Just to remind you, I am one of those many hundreds of thousands who returned to this turf after long years of what we used to […]
Christina Patterson MANLY PURSUITS by Ann Harries (Bloomsbury) This novel, by a South African migre, comes garlanded with praise from Doris Lessing and JM Coetzee -deservedly. Set in South Africa at the end of the last century, it features many of the leading thinkers and writers of their generation – Cecil Rhodes, Rudyard Kipling, Charles […]