OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Sunday 7.00pm. TRADE and Industry Minister Alec Erwin said on Sunday negotiations to create a regional free trade deal in Southern Africa are progressing but cautioned that difficulties still lay ahead. Erwin addressed the ninth annual Southern African economic summit in Durban this weekend following a meeting with Zimbabwean trade minister […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dunedin | Sunday 8.00pm. JONAH LOMU will rejoin the All Black squad on Monday but is unlikely to make the starting 15 for the Tri Nations Test with South Africa next Saturday. Lomu was impressive in the New Zealand A win over the ACT Brumbies in Canberra on Saturday night. But All Blacks […]
WHILE out of the singles competitions at Wimbledon, South Africa has two standard-bearers in the women’s doubles draw quarterfinals. Mariaan de Swardt and Ukrainian Elena Tatarkova are ninth seeds, and quickly beat Spain’s Virginia Ruano Pascal and rgentina’s Paola Suarez 6-4 6-3. Liezel Horn and Slovenian partner Katarina Srebotnik disposed of sixth seeds Lisa Raymond […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Saturday 6.00pm. ARGENTINE-BRED El Picha, under jockey Robbie Hill, swept up on the outside to win Saturday’s Durban July. The 12-1 gelding is owned by former trainer Terrence Millard, six times a July winner, and trained by his son-in-law Jeff Woodruff. This was Woodruff’s first July victory. Favourite to win at […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 3.15pm. BANGLADESH will choose a new national cricket coach from either South Africa or Australia following the controversial departure of West Indian Gordon Greenidge, reports said on Friday. “We are expecting the new coach either from South Africa or Australia,” Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Saber Hossain Chowdhury was quoted […]
Matthew Krouse The opening item on the programme of the National Arts Festival didn’t happen. The print of Athol Fugard’s 1991 celluloid version of Road to Mecca was damaged and replaced by his earlier Boesman and Lena. This gave patrons a chance to prepare a comparison of the version currently in production, with Angela Basset […]
Andrew Muchineripi Jnr Soccer When your grandchild greets you in 2040AD and inquires about the origins of the African Super League, you will say it all began back in 1999 when the R1-million Vodacom Challenge was launched. The child will give a blank stare and wonder what the connection is between the annual club championship […]
Iden Wetherell Zimbabweans are at each others’ throats over the ground rules for a poll next year that could decide the future of President Robert Mugabe’s 19-year grip on power. At the centre of the controversy is a constitutional review process launched by the government in May in response to growing demands for reform to […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 5.20pm. POLICE are awaiting a report from the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Bulelani Ncguka, before deciding whether to take action against former narcotics bureau head, Piet Meyer, for alleged fraud and racketeering. KwaZulu-Natal police spokesperson Director Bala Naidoo said on Thursday: “We are considering acting against him (Meyer) but […]
What light through yonder windshield breaks? I read the title of Mark Dunlop’s video work on the exhibition Truth Veils: The Inner City, currently on at the Rembrandt Gallery, after two weeks spent thinking about the Truth Veils project. In Dunlop’s video – a stylish and cleverly crafted sneer at white perceptions of Johannesburg as […]
Shaun Harris An interesting share appeared on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) recently in the form of Liberty International, debuting locally courtesy of former parent Liberty Life’s decision to unbundle. Liberty Life’s controlling stake of 76% in Liberty International now reduces to 30%, in the process increasing the number of individual minority shareholders from 5 […]
Tony Twine Data published by Statistics South Africa (SSA), which effectively wrote the economic recession we thought we were living through out of the history books, appears to have been accepted by analysts, while astounding the man in the street. Is it simply smoke and mirrors, or something more sinister along revisionist lines? The definition […]
THURSDAY, 6.00PM: THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange bucked bad news from the currency and bond markets to gain 1,45% on Thursday, reports Sarah Bullen. Despite the gains, the market sentiment remained negative, Deutsche Morgen Grenfell head of trading Chris Wilde said. The rand was the problem, said Wilde, playing off its “back foot” since the morning, […]
Xolela Mangcu Guest Column `Where are the black intellectuals?” President Thabo Mbeki has often asked. I would urge him to consider an even larger and prior question: where is the intellectual environment required for the emergence of those intellectuals? Black people have been excluded from what I have previously called the “knowledge-ideas- complex”. It consists […]
A woman who once managed a Katlehong park has taken charge of 340 of Johannesburg’s `green lungs’, writes Luvuyo Kakaza The sun slants over the green trees of Rhodes Park in Kensington, Johannesburg, where Michelle van Blerk is the new “boss”. Besides this vibrant park, she is responsible for maintaining 340 municipal parks in the […]
Architects and theorists gathered in Paris to discuss the current state of architecture. Globalisation in the form of cyber-culture was the main topic of conversation, writes Michael Nurok If a bomb had gone off in the Palais de Chaillot last week, architecture’s past, present and future would have ceased to exist. Rarely have the doyens […]
THURSDAY, 6.30PM: THE Zimbabwean government appears to have wrested charge of Air Zimbabwe’s privatisation process from the airlines management, an official said on Thursday. “It now seems Air Zimbabwe management has no voice over the running of the company.” an airline official said. Transport and energy minister Enos Chikowore, however, said he feels government intervention […]
Robert McCrum There’s nothing like a new poet laureate to confirm the choleric longevity of British philistinism. Tony Blair’s “traditionalist” appointment of Andrew Motion has provoked a reaction which shows that, if John Bull is no longer eating beef on the bone, he hasn’t forgotten how to sneer at a poet. The stampede by press, […]
capital city Luvuyo Kakaza A Mail & Guardian editorial (“Rename Pretoria Mandela City”, June 18 to 24) has found favour with politicians at the Greater Pretoria Metropolitan Council and the Pretoria City Council. Max van der Wath, a councillor at the Pretoria City Council, said the idea of renaming Pretoria Mandela City has merit. “It […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby In case anyone is still depressed about the showing of the young guns in Cardiff, there is further bad news: the golden oldies ain’t what they used to be, either. Naas Botha took a team of former greats to the fourth Tusker Safari Sevens in Nairobi last week. Included were such luminaries […]
Paul Trueman Online gaming is the fastest-growing industry on the Internet, where players spend hours online sharing information … and killing each other. Some friends and I blew up the Death Star last night, freeing the galaxy from the emperor’s evil tyranny. Not bad for a night’s work. I used to be someone who got […]
JIM SLATER, Landover | Friday 3.30pm. NIGERIAN coach Ismaila Mabo ripped FIFA and Colombian referee Martha Toro Pardo and after an 87th-minute ejection contributed to the Super Falcons’ quarter-final ouster. Brazil’s Sissi scored a “golden goal” on a free kick in the 104th minute of over-time for a dramatic 4-3 triumph over a 10-woman Nigerian […]
Loose cannon Robert Kirby Herebelow a look at what is nowadays considered to be unacceptable behaviour in the office, as sent to me anonymously by someone at a well-known South African insurance company. Apparently these guidelines are extracted from some sort of behavioural manual being supplied – by heaven only knows who – to employers. […]
1975: Angola wins independence from Portugal amid civil war and intervention from the apartheid regime in South Africa. The conflict evolves into a war between the new Marxist MPLA government and its main rival, the then Maoist Unita led by Jonas Savimbi. Cold war years: Washington funds Unita while apartheid South Africa fights many of […]
Deon Potgieter in Copenhagen Denmark has fewer boxers than South Africa and certainly fewer world champions, but they have a positive attitude towards the noble art, which is sorely lacking in the southern tip of Africa. In fact local boxers travelling to Copenhagen may find that they have larger appeal in the Danish capital than […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 2.45pm. BAFANA Bafana will be delighted to know that key Namibian defender Mohamed Auseb will not be playing in the two countries’ Cosafa Castle Cup quarterfinal in Windhoek on July 31. Auseb is under suspension after picking up two bookings in Cup matches against Lesotho and Malawi. Namibia will surely […]
East Rand Proprietary Mines is in danger of becoming the first South African mine to be buried by this year’s collapse in the gold price, writes Mungo Soggot For more than a century, Johannesburg’s deepest mine has been home to two communities locked in distrust – a distrust they seem destined to share until the […]
William Fotheringham Cycling When it starts on Saturday in the Vende, this will be the Tour de France of crossed fingers, murmured prayers and nervous glances over Lycra-clad shoulders. For there was no precedent for last year’s disastrous, scandal-stricken Tour. This year’s race has been billed as “the Tour of reconstruction”, but events took on […]
Friday night Alex Sudheim Its a dry, flinty wind that blows across the plains and greets me like a John Wayne handshake as I step off the stagecoach and pat the prairie dust from my jeans. The bare-boned bite of the air is advance warning that this place takes no prisoners, so I square my […]
POLICE have found evidence of ghost writers in 4000 papers from last year’s scandal-hit Mpumalanga matric exams. Police spokesman Senior Superintendent Faizel Abdul-Kader on Thursday said it meant that at least two handwriting styles showed up in each of the papers. If the normal rules were applied this would have been impossible. Abdul-Kader said police […]
At a tiny settlement in the centre of Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve, a small village is fighting a rearguard battle against removal from their land. These are the bittereinders, among the last of the first people of Southern Africa. Photographer Paul Weinberg and writer Tony Weaver report Author’s note: I freely interchange the words […]
Ivor Powell While talks in Lusaka aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo continue to stutter, the war is intensifying in the diamond-rich area around Mbuji Mayi. Congolese forces are reportedly under heavy attack in the town of Kabinda, 100km to the east of the diamond capital, Mbuji Mayi. They are […]