IT took Wayne Ferreira two hours and 46 minutes of intense tennis to give South Africa its first Davis Cup win in two years on Sunday. The world number 30 came back from two sets to one down to quell Belorussian Vladimir Voltchkov 6-0, 4-6, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 in their Euro-Africa Zone Group I tie […]
BAFANA Bafana received a timely boost with the news that top striker Shaun Bartlett will be released early for the crucial second leg African Nations Cup qualifier against Gabon in Libreville on Saturday. A clash of fixtureS with the Gabon match saw Swiss club FC Zurich reluctant to release Bartlett early for the match. Bartlett, […]
FIREFIGHTERS continued on Tuesday to battle a fire which has been raging in the Drakenstein mountain range above Franschhoek in the Western Cape Boland for the past two weeks. Firefighters are trying to protect buildings against flare-ups which are possible in the warm, windy conditions.
THE Zambian government’s failure to beat the March 31 deadline to sell its loss-making Konkola, Nkana, Nchanga and Nampundwe copper mines could undermine its economy, which registered a negative 2% growth last year, economists say. The delay in selling the mines is attributed to Anglo American Corporation’s failure to secure $90-million and a major mining […]
THE famed Dakar rally will bypass Europe in 2000, beginning in Senegal and ending in Egypt, the event’s organisers announced on Tuesday. For the first time in the race’s history it will be an all-African affair. The race is scheduled to begin on January 6 in Dakar and to end in Cairo on January 23. […]
SOUTH Africa hauled back a feisty Irish team and overtook them 27-20 in the dying minutes to snatch third place in the World Rugby Junior Championships in Wales on Sunday. Ireland led with three penalites by centre Jeremy Staunton, before South Africa got on the score sheet with a goal from full back Conrad Jantjes. […]
THE Black Empowerment Investment Consortium (BEIC) has increased its share of food and services group Fedics by purchasing another 20% from Tiger Oats, which is selling its 35% share in Fedics. Tiger got its stake in Fedics by default when it puchased ICS Holdings, and has a policy of not hanging on to minority positions […]
JUDGE WILLIAM Heath has confirmed that he will meet Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to clear up a dispute over money his anti-corruption unit has recovered. Manuel began a row with Heath a month ago when he told Parliament that he had no record of the huge sums Heath claimed to have recovered, and accused the […]
PRESIDENT Nelson Mandlela is planning to build an R8-million house in the Mozambican capital Maputo, Afrikaans daily Beeld reports. The paper said Mandela is to build the house to share with his wife Graa Machel in the upmarket Summer Shields suburb, a stone’s throw from the home of Mozambican President Joachim Chissano. The newspaper said […]
PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela announced on Monday he had been asked by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to intervene in the crisis in Yugoslavia, but that he had declined. “I am not keen to intervene in another issue,” Mandela told reporters in Pretoria. “It engages your full time and attention, and the problems in South Africa are […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Tuesday 11.30am THE Easter weekend road death toll had reached 184 in 106 motor accidents by Monday night, the Arrive Alive campaign said on Tuesday. The Arrive Alive figures, which will be finalised on Wednesday, show that the dead comprised 101 passengers, 49 pedestrians and 34 drivers. The highest toll was […]
THE Wellington Hurricanes blew away the Sharks 34-18 in their Super 12 encounter in East London on Saturday. The Hurricanes led 24-15 at the break. The Sharks were convincingly outplayed by the visitors, obviously smarting from their 43-27 thrashing by the Cats last weekend. The South Africans, playing at the Basil Kenyon Stadium rather than […]
A RIVER of lava from the volcano Mount Cameroon, which erupted on March 28, has now reached three kilometres from villages that are home to a thousand inhabitants. No further volcanic activity was recorded on Monday, but officials are on standby to assist with evacuations if needed. 01
THIRTY NINE bodies have been recovered from a ferry that sunk off the coast of south east Nigeria in a storm late on Thursday night. Some 300 passengers were aboard. A number of survivors who swam to safety on a sandbank were rescued on Saturday, but most passengers were trapped inside the boat as it […]
UGANDAN rebels staged an attack on a fishing village on the shores of Lake George over the Easter weekend, killing six people, abducting an unknown number of others, and destroying homes and shops. The rebels, members of the Allied Democratic Forces, are dominated by the Tabliq Muslim group which operates out of bases in the […]
DAVID SHAPSHAK, Johannesburg | Saturday 5.00pm. THE Stormers, fresh from a triumphant tour of Australasia, continued their streak with a win 35-14 over the Queensland Reds at Newlands on Saturday. The Stormers, playing with confidence in their first home game in Cape Town, led 13-3 at half-time. Their forwards dominated in set pieces and their […]
NIGERIA, which last month objected to a Confederation of African Football offer to co-host the African Nations Cup next year, has now accepted the offer. Chief of General Staff Vice Admiral Mike Akhigbe said before the start of a World Youth Championship match in Ibadan late on Sunday that Nigeria was looking forward to co-hosting […]
DAVID SHAPSHAK, Johannesburg | Saturday 6.00pm. A RAMPANT Cats side ran in eight tries to two to convincingly beat the Northern Bulls 57-24 at Ellis Park on Saturday. The Cats, leading 36-14 at the break, stamped their authority early on in this regional equivalent of the old Transvaal (Cats)/Northern Transvaal (Bulls) derby. Playing superior running […]
ISAAC Tshabalala won the Two Oceans Marathon in Cape Town on Saturday, just 13 seconds ahead of Desmond Zibi. Tshabalala finished the 56km course in 3 hours, 11 minutes, 20 seconds, while Angelina Sephooa, of Lesotho, was the first woman home in a time of 3:38.07. The leading finishers: 1.Isaac Tshabalala 3:11.20 2.Desmond Zibi 3:11.33 […]
A NIGERIAN group representing 61 communities hit by an oil spill last year, has given the Mobil Oil company an ultimatum to pay up US$22 million today. Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper reports that the group has warned Mobil that it will “take appropriate steps to make operation difficult or impossible for all oil companies in the […]
Chris Roper tunes in to Channel, an exhibition giving exposure to South African video art Video art occupies a slightly ghettoised place in the world of art. Not many people can name its exponents, and some galleries and museums are ambivalent about its status. The Channel exhibition, currently running at the Association for Visual Arts […]
middle class Black accession to the South African economy has come fast in the past four years. The value of the deals shifting ownership into black hands is quadrupling every year. And black business has shown a talent for the game. For example: it took Afrikaner capital 10 times longer to achieve the level of […]
Charlene Smith The law is being “cheapened” – not only by lawyers who charge extortionate rates, but by a public misled by poor journalistic understanding of legal debates, Judge Mohammed Navsa told a graduation ceremony at the University of the Witwatersrand on Tuesday night. Navsa, a Johannesburg High Court judge and head of the Legal […]
At a recent seminar on journalism in Africa, I was asked about the Mail & Guardian’s uncomfortable relationship with the office of Deputy President Thabo Mbeki. Was there something uniquely African about the apparent intolerance of criticism at the highest levels of our government? Not at all, I shot back. The experience of our sister […]
Howard Barrell The Angolan rebel movement Unita has taken delivery of up to six Russian-built MiG fighter aircraft for use in its intensified civil war with the government in Luanda, according to security sources in Southern Africa. The aircraft are understood to have come from Ukraine, formerly part of the defunct Soviet Union, and Angolan […]
Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week Soviet cinema has an incredible legacy. After all, Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 Battleship Potemkin, which chronicled the Kronstadt naval mutiny that sparked off the Russian Revolution, is probably the most studied film in cinema history. Eisenstein invented the notion of montage creating dialectics within a sequence, like the famous Odessa […]
Loose cannon:Robert Kirby Carl Jung called it synchronicity, the acausal relationship between events. Two completely unrelated things I read last week seemed suddenly to fit that bill. The one was a book by Ilya Zbarsky and Samuel Hutchinson, called Lenin’s Embalmers, and the other was Minister Jay Naidoo’s lengthy Right to Reply, published in denial […]
Alex Dodd Now here’s something worth downing a couple of Red Bulls for. A jazz gig with one of the hottest line-ups imaginable that will, unlike any other official jazz circuit gig to date, go on through the night. Jazz till dawn in a pleasure resort – a night to make Kippie smile. Headlined Jazz […]
Nato air attacks on Serbian military targets continue in what is clearly a paradoxical exercise: the emphasis on air intervention has worsened Serbian attacks on Kosovar military and civilians, bringing the prospect of Nato ground intervention to establish control – peacemaking – imminent; and the expanded Serbian repression has increased Kosovar support for independence, a […]
Howard Barrell:OVER A BARREL At a lunch for a visiting Western diplomat I attended with a few MPs a couple of months ago, that hot political potato, the government’s growth, employment and redistribution strategy (Gear), came under discussion. A minute or so into the conversation, it became clear that our guest was lost. He was […]
Following the withdrawal of charges against Robert McBride, lawyers for the foreign affairs official have spoken out about those who framed him. Wally Mbhele reports More than a year after the dramatic arrest of Department of Foreign Affairs official Robert McBride on trumped-up charges of gun-running, his defence team this week finally had an opportunity […]
Andy Colquhoun Rugby The Stormers should have been given a ticker- tape parade down Adderley Street when they arrived back in Cape Town earlier this week. Wins Down Under by South African sides occur only as frequently as Fiji fail to win the Hong Kong Sevens – which is to say almost never. The storm […]