Elizabeth Wurtzel:BODY LANGUAGE In 19th-century France, the art academies considered it less than respectable to have students paint posed nudes. So, lest all the fun be quashed, the budding artistes made paintings of other people painting naked models. Now Esquire’s at it, too. How else to explain its February issue’s devotion to the topic of […]
The launch on Sunday of a new title is the first clear shot in a newspaper war likely to radically change the face of the South African media. The Sunday World, aimed at a wealthy, top-end black readership, hits the streets this weekend, drawing counter-attacks from its competition, the Sunday Times and City Press. Eight […]
Ted Leggett After years of withdrawing from the sex lives of South Africans, the government is considering poking its nose into the bedroom again. The Law Commission is presently circulating a discussion paper on the “need for a statutory offence aimed at harmful HIV-related behaviour”, or rather, the need for criminalising the spread of the […]
Gerda Dullaart The KwaZulu-Natal Conservation Service this week launched a R1,3-million strategy to combat tuberculosis in buffalo that doesn’t entail killing the animals in order to test them for the disease. The service expressed its concern about the threat of buffalo TBspreading to cattle in neighbouring areas, and from there to humans. For the past […]
media maze AAn alphabet soup. That’s what the print media industry is becoming. Ownership is changing every day. Shares have changed hands in each of the four major newspaper publishers and they seem to continue to do so as black shareholders buy in. New titles are hitting the news-stands with regularity and new media personalities […]
THE Department of Correctional Services on Wednesday grated Janusz Walus permission to marry his girlfriend of three years next Wednesday. Walus is serving a life sentence for the 1993 murder of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani. Walus’s fianc, Berril Roy, is a qualified church minister and gospel singer. Walus and two fellow prisoners […]
After initially neglecting the Internet, South Africa’s traditional media houses are now investing heavily in the next wave of media: online newspapers. Most major newspaper groups for the past two years have maintained a virtual presence on the World Wide Web, usually postings of their print stories and searchable archives of previous editions. But late […]
dark’ Thokozani Mtshali Born in South Africa, Ayanda Moatshe (19) has lived all her life in the country. She holds a valid identity document, speaks four African languages and English, studies engineering at Wits Technikon, and plays on the national softball team. Her mother works at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. But Moatshe has been picked […]
Coenraad Visser Never before have classical music lovers in Gauteng been offered a feast like they have this week. On Sunday, tenor sensation Johan Botha returned home for his first appearance on a professional stage since he left for Europe 10 years ago. And on Monday, the Orchestre National de France, with musical director Charles […]
Charlene Smith Andrew Oberholzer, senior group product manager at Pfizer, makers of Viagra, is a tired man. He speaks to an average of 10 journalists a day – all asking the same questions. He is overseeing the mailing of 30 000 samples and medical information to doctors and pharmacies. Oberholzer is under the average age […]
THE Safety and Security Minster Sydney Mufamadi released government plans on Thursday to curtail the widely abused lending of firearms by changing gun-lending laws in terms of the Arms and Ammunition Act. The Act allows people over 16 to borrow guns with a letter of permission from the owner. The amendments will stipulate that borrowing […]
John Matshikiza:WITH THE LID OFF I’m summoned to appear in the magistrate’s court at 8.30am. It’s a simple matter. My car was broken into, the culprits were caught a few minutes later with my property still hot in their hands, and the case has finally come before a magistrate. I am obliged to testify. The […]
THE amnesty hearing for notorious apartheid-era police officer and “superspy” Craig Williamson concluded in Pretoria on Thursday. Williamson applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty for letter bombs which killed Ruth First, the wife of prominent communist and housing minister Joe Slovo, in Maputo in 1982 and activist Jeanette Schoon and her daughter, […]
Peatlands, which take thousands of years to establish, are being exploited to make compost and potting soil, writes Rehana Dada Most gardeners buying plastic bags of “environmentally friendly” potting soil and compost are probably unaware that they are in fact contributing to the destruction of valuable wetlands protected by law. Unscrupulous profit-seekers often gouge this […]
Karlin Lillington It’s about the stupidest site you’ll look at all week, but the URL has been flying across the Web as everyone mails it to friends: it’s the dancing hamsters at . If it doesn’t make you laugh, then you’re clearly the kind of person who enjoys reading Windows programming manuals. We’ve all prayed […]
Loose cannon:Robert Kirby Like so many I find myself touched by Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s now routine meditations on national virtue. His sense of right and wrong becomes more acute by the day, his recent utterances seldom lack florid moral embellishment. Homilies about truth and probity fair tumble from his lips. His speeches have that […]
CD of the week:Neil Spencer Even in their prime, Blondie always were better at making singles than albums. It’s Picture This, Heart of Glass and Rapture for which the New York New Wavers are celebrated, not Parallel Lines or Eat to the Beat. Reconvened 16 years after their acrimonious split amid the usual regroup talk […]
Ferial Haffajee:TAKING STOCK Walking up the stairs to the infamous 10th floor of the Johannesburg Central police station, one realises it will take much more than a change of name to cleanse the tortured space that was John Vorster Square. The monolithic building hulks over the southern verges of the city, its police-blue exterior an […]
Ferial Haffajee The government will spend just over R310- million on the arts this year. The amount budgeted for arts is about R7-million more than last year’s arts vote. But in real terms, state support for the arts will be cut. Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Director General Roger Jardine said the cut […]
Mungo Soggot A labour relations arbitrator has ordered Minister of Minerals and Energy Penuell Maduna to pay his former special advisor R170 000 in compensation for his unfair dismissal. Maduna axed his advisor, Thulani Gcabashe, without a hearing last March in the midst of the scandal surrounding the appointment of Liberian Emanuel Shaw II as […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week The opening scene of Todd Solondz’s Happiness, which deservedly won the International Critics Prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, is just an indication of what’s to come in this devastatingly brilliant, unsettlingly mordant mix of comedy and tragedy. In a simple shot that lasts about three minutes, the […]
When Dr Ron Clarke, formerly of Wits University, made his discovery of Little Foot at Sterkfontein last year, the find was hailed as yet further proof that humans are descended from an ape-like ancestor. But although evolution is the keystone of our modern world-view, the theory propounded by Charles Darwin and his followers still remains […]
WESTERN Province captain Craig Matthews and Border’s Makhaya Ntini have bowed out with injuries from the five-day Supersport Series cricket final which starts in East London on Thursday. Matthews has been suffering from an ankle injury while Ntini, who failed a fitness test on Thursday morning, has a hip strain. Ryan Joffe comes in for […]
Keith Henderson Prodigy will soon be in South Africa. Possibly one of the world’s most successful electronic/rock cross-over outfits, they will be taking to the stage and blasting their unique sound out in an audio and visual performance many South Africans have been itching to see for some time. Their manic, beat-invested brand of electronica […]
If words are cheap for politicians, they are cheaper for journalists. We are free to criticise most decisions while seldom having to live with the consequences of what we might have advocated. Unlike politicians, we can afford to have poor foresight. But we always have excellent hindsight. This difference between politicians and journalists seldom seems […]
The organisation which selects and monitors members of the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE)index is to consider rewriting the rule book governing the proportion of a company’s shares that must be available to outside investors. The Equity Indices Committee of FTSE International is expected to decide on a wide- ranging review of the whole “free-float” […]
reality Philippa Garson:CLASS STRUGGLE When a country’s legislative and policy framework is totally at odds with the reality on the ground, sober mutterings about anarchy and “meltdown” begin. Compared with the mayhem in some of the disintegrating, war-ravaged countries to the north, it would appear South Africa has nothing to worry about in this regard. […]
THE Zambian government denied on Thursday allegations that it was responsible for the weekend bombings in Lusaka, to divert attention from gunrunning claims by the Angolan government. Denouncing the claims, Information Minister and chief government spokesperson, Newstead Zimba, said agents of confusion were deliberately twisting the facts about the bombings. He added that the water […]
Howard Barrell South Africans are headed for their most expensive election ever on June 2, costing the taxpayer and political parties a total of R2-billion. Voters will be saturated with media coverage extolling the virtues of parties, as politicians draw on the latest campaigning methods developed in Europe and the United States. By the time […]
Magnus Heystek appears to have created an eyebrow-raising conflict of interest in a property deal involving a family trust of which he is a trustee. Mungo Soggot and Belinda Beresford report High-profile financial adviser Magnus Heystek engineered a questionable R1,5-million property deal in which a family trust he oversees bought into land used for his […]
Andrew Muchineripi Soccer The analysis of a soccer match usually centres around the skill, strength and speed of the footballers and the tactics of the coach. Luck is a word rarely mentioned. Yet luck often plays a significant role and the African Nations Cup qualifying tie between South Africa and Gabon at Odi Stadium last […]
Friday night Bongani Madondo Feeling kinda bluesy as I scribble this piece. As one African slave-descended poet, Langston Hughes, once inked, “Feeling bluesy should not be confused with feeling down”. Feeling bluesy is feeling emotionally enchanted in that you’re closer to your ancestors than anyone around you. And that is how I am feeling today. […]