Shaun de Waal SOUTH AFRICA: A GUIDE TO RECENT ARCHITECTURE by Christina Muwanga (Ellipsis) This exceptionally cute little book (it is a mere 10cm square, though 350 pages thick) is an excellent pocket guide to South African architecture of the last decade or so. It doesn’t go back into our history, so it lacks some […]
Catherine Knox at the Eastern Cape Dance Umdudo The Eastern Cape has always been an incubator bed, a crucible. A place of fecundity and foment. Last week’s FNB Dance Umdudo – five days and nights of dance in Grahamstown – was a celebration of work in progress. An unadjudicated bricolage of bodies in movement – […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby Three rounds to go and the Super 12 semi- finalists remain as elusive as a Waisale Serevi side-step. There are those who will argue that the Highlanders and the Stormers are certainties for the last four, but that’s all it is; an argument. The remaining fixtures for all the contenders are full […]
Chris Gordon This decade has seen a major drop in De Beers’s Central Selling Organisation (CSO) share of the diamond market, and there are questions as to whether the cartel can survive in its current form. The diamond giant now controls an ever-decreasing share of the world’s diamond output. The Southern African diamond industry, traditionally […]
Andrew Muchineripi in Copenhagen Top-class international football is chess on grass, a battle of brains as much as brawn with a credo that stresses the importance of making no mistakes while forcing your opponent into them. South Africa set out this week to end a 13- match winless streak outside Africa that has seen some […]
THURSDAY, 2.00PM: BOND traders are gearing to confront the Reserve Bank over inefficient handling of the its bond auction, after the Bank this week released the results of the auction over an hour-and-a-half late. Investors and traders alike were thrown off balance when the Bank, held back by a computer problem, failed to release the […]
The ANC’s leader-in-waiting this week walked confidently into the full glare of the spotlight, writes Makhosini Nkosi African National Congress president Thabo Mbeki is just about the only politician in the country who is guaranteed a government position after the second democratic election in June. With all opinion surveys predicting the ANC taking a big […]
Tony Twine The relaxation of foreign exchange controls on South Africans has opened a world of opportunity previously forbidden. Unhappily, it has also unleashed a world of mystery on relatively innocent South Africans, many of whom had only had the domestic capital markets as their benchmark for investment performance. Wealthy South Africans, and those who […]
Melvyn Bragg:A SECOND LOOK I owe Christianity a debt, and so, I believe, does the world we have lived in for the past 2 000 years. Much of what is best in that duo-millennial span has been due to the man who inspired the faith which took his name. But Christianity also owes me and […]
Friday night :Andrew Kay My Friday night was so good it actually started the night before. Coming at the tail end of a cathartic and sleep-deprived three- day bender, my Friday night was perhaps a little tame in comparison with the previous two nights. If this column had been titled Wednesday to Friday night, you […]
Marianne Merten General Constand Viljoen hit the campaign trail in the Western Cape this week without bodyguards, motor cavalcades, delays or the usual politician’s razzmatazz. Asked about his punctuality, so unlike many other politicians, he confessed jokingly: “I’m no politician.” Although there were no babies to be hugged or toddlers to be kissed, he smiled […]
Ian Clayton Women in South Africa have won “a victory” in terms of the laws passed by Parliament since 1994, but key legislative changes are still required, says Pregs Govender, chair of the parliamentary joint standing committee on the improvement of the quality of life and status of women. The priorities she identifies are “a […]
WAYNE Ferreira, the world sixth seed, beat Boris Becker in the tennis legend’s home town of Munich in the German Open on Tuesday. Wayne Ferreira foiled Boris Becker’s latest attempt to finally win a title on clay, defeating Germany’s three-times Wimbledon champion 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 at the $525000 German Open on Tuesday. Despite being cheered […]
THURSDAY, 11.30AM: MOROKA Swallows coach Walter Rautmann on Wednesday joined a growing list of people claiming Birds players have been accepting bribes to throw certain matches, and which may have resulted in Swallows losing a crucial league match. Rautmann said there could be substance to claims that former Swallows directors bribed key players to deliberately […]
THURSDAY, 2.00PM: STATE-owned diamond mine Alexkor is at loggerheads with local Northern Cape pigeon clubs to find the most palatable solution to rid the town of the birds, thought to be used in a uncut diamond smuggling racket that has reportedly cost the mine production losses of up to 20%. Alexkor’s chief executive Thian Combrink […]
If reverb makes it hard for you to figure out what the words to Heartbreak Hotel are, help is just a click away. All the words to Elvis’s songs are available at , which includes a photo gallery of The King, from school photographs to the lanky youth of early publicity shots to the bloated […]
Matthew Krouse Down the tube If God is directing television broadcast programming, then He’s trying to tell us something about the past. Why else would the hipsters and swingsters of the Sixties and Seventies keep cropping up? Bell bottoms, stiff cupped bikinis, sideburns, big medallions and some very outdated morality has crept into the fuzz […]
THURSDAY, 12.15PM: UNITED Crickate Board MD Dr Ali Bacher on Wednesday announced sweeping changes to South African cricket, including co-opting black members to the UCBSA board, splitting the Supersport Series into two divisions, and a new-look Standard Bank League and Cup format. Bacher said three black cricket representatives will be co-opted to the UCBSA board, […]
The Godolphin stable has made its mark everywhere except America. Saturday could change all that, writes Jamie Reid Louisville, Kentucky, spends most of the year looking and feeling like a prosperous but dull provincial town. But on Monday, the old riverboat landing on the banks of the Ohio became the sporting, hustling and gambling capital […]
Jamie Doward The story so far. Deutsche Telekom wants to get into bed with Telecom Italia. Deutsche’s ardour for a Latin lover has hurt the sensibilities of France Tlcom which, via its membership of the Global One consortium, had been enjoying a threesome with the German telco and American company Sprint. However, British Telecom (BT), […]
Director Ken Kaplan has made a zombie movie that mixes red blood and black humour. Andrew Worsdale, acting like a zombie, gets the inside story Ten years ago writer/director Ken Kaplan, at age 24, was in the formative stages of pre-production and major development on a movie called Fanus – Pure Blood. It was the […]
DEPUTY army chief Major-General Roland de Vries retires on Friday, according to an army statement issued on Thursday. De Vries, in the army since 1963, finished his career heading up transformation and joint training. For many years, from 1973, he led the Ratel Mechanised Infantry Combat Vehicle. Army reorganisation has made his post redundant, and […]
abusive police Ted Leggett There has been much speculation about why South African Police Service (SAPS) officers would abuse shackled and wounded citizens in front of BBC cameras, in footage they must have known would be broadcast all over the world. But criminal investigators often come across similar cases, where the perpetrators apparently go out […]
In light of the falling rand and the uncertainty in the share market, investing abroad is a very good idea, writes Donna Block What world markets are going to do these days is anyone’s guess. You might as well get out the old crystal ball. One thing that is certain though is the demand for […]
Hamish Mackintosh Millions of people are now using the Internet as a source of free music, and the major record companies don’t like it. The problem is that there’s no way of controlling what amounts to a global distribution network, so hardly anyone is paying for the music files they’re downloading. It’s copyright theft on […]
David le Page Economists are not as a rule reluctant to be quoted, but the subject of personal investment in unit trusts induces unusual reticence. This is largely due to their being advisers to the managers of those funds. The fund managers would be irked to have their doubts confirmed by their paid gurus. After […]
Are Africanism and nation-building mutually exclusive, or can Mbeki harness them in a team, asks Stanley Uys? While President Nelson Mandela has concerned himself with ceremonial matters, winning foreign friends and influencing people, Deputy President Thabo Mbeki has been running South Africa: chairing the Cabinet, managing day-to-day affairs, shaping policies, and moving on to the […]
If HIV/Aids infection continues at its current rate, the gap in the productive workforce could be devastating. Aaron Nicodemus reports For a country like South Africa, the worst part about Aids is who it kills. Unlike the bubonic plague that devastated Europe centuries ago, Aids does not prey upon the weak, the old and the […]
`depression’ Marianne Merten The current spotlight on police brutality has apparently made little difference to the fate of two members of the Cape Peninsula dog unit. Accused of shooting dead two car-theft suspects and endangering the lives of their colleagues during the incident, they have avoided the suspension recommended by the police watchdog, the Independent […]
`The vibrancy and rich, kaleidoscopic colours in his work reflected a 20th century of quicker movement, shortening distances, instant news.’ John Fordham assesses the legacy of Duke Ellington in his centenary month I heard Duke Ellington and his Orchestra just once, at Westminster Abbey in October 1973. Ellington was 74, but though he looked a […]
Howard Barrell The African National Congress has gained significant voter support in recent months, edging it closer to a two-thirds majority in elections in five weeks’ time. The ANC also looks set to control provincial legislatures or governments in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces – in all but the Western Cape. These are the […]
KAIZER Chiefs’ midfielder Lifa Gqosha is recovering in Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital after police shot him on Tuesday night while he was allegedly trying to flee. Gqosha had been arrested for possesion of a suspected stolen vehicle and assaulting a police officer. The player’s family plan to lay charges against the police for assault. Gqosha’s […]