Staff Reporter

Many financial institutions offer a range of products for the small people, writes Belinda Beresford Slipped furtively into appreciative little hands or neatly tucked away in a Christmas card, gifts of money to children are one of the traditions of the festive season. An unexpected bonus to pocket money and the grind of begging from […]

AUTHORITIES in Botswana have signed execution warrants for two convicted killers expected to be hanged on Saturday, the country’s deputy attorney-general said on Thursday. The hangings will bring to 34 the executions carried out in Botswana since its independence from Britain in 1966. The last executions took place in 1995 when five convicted murderers were […]

On the second Saturday of each month, starting on February 13, Shirley Kossick -emeritus professor of English literature, Unisa, and Mail & Guardian book critic – will give a series of talks on fiction and biography at the Natal Labia Museum in Muizenberg, Cape Town. On February 13, the subject is Canadian fiction; on March […]

A columnist in the American journal Business Week pointed out in the New Year that the single most important improvement in the quality of life of Americans during the past two decades has been the fall in crime. This, he said, had punctured the views – commonly trotted out in South Africa – that poverty […]

JOHANNESBURG youth radio station YFM was hit by robbers late on Thursday night, who assaulted staffers and stole their possessions. Ten armed men stormed the station’s studio in Troyeville at about 11.30pm, forcing late-night presenter Msizi Shembe and his producer Desmond Mashaba to open the station’s safe. When they discovered there was no cash stored […]

Mungo Soggot The Northern Province has quietly started repaying most of the 92 000 pensions and disability grants it froze last year on the grounds it wanted to check recipients’ bona fides. The province’s decision to restart the pay-outs comes after it was hit with scores of lawsuits. These included a class action which asked […]

SOUTH African boxer Soon Botes is angry after being notified from Germany that WBU super middleweight champion Norbert Noriega has refused to meet him in a return bout. Botes lost a disputed decision against the German with the vacant WBU title at stake in Dortmund last year, and was assured by WBU president Jon Robinson […]

lap of agony Andy Capostagno Cricket For Brian Lara and his beleaguered team, the agony is almost over. The fifth Test, which begins on Friday at SuperSport Centurion, is the last proper cricket that the West Indies will have to play on this tour of South Africa. From next week on Philo Wallace will be […]

Howard Barrell African leaders were guardedly optimistic about making progress towards peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo at their meeting in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, which began this week. South Africa has rejoined Congo peace efforts, indicating that it has received assurances from African states supporting Laurent Kabila, Congo’s erratic president, that the new […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Rome | Friday 12.30pm. THE Sierra Leone capital was calm on Thursday night, according to the Catholic Misna news agency, which reported a halt in fighting in Freetown’s eastern Kissy district. “The night seems to be calm,” a Sierra Leonean priest in the city told the Rome-based agency late last night. “On the […]

Cameron Duodu Letter from the North As the guns boom around Freetown and its starving citizens cower inside those of their walls that have not yet been burnt down, who would have thought that Sierra Leone was once one of the favoured spots in West Africa? Its Fourah Bay College, founded in 1827, was once […]

Mark Milner Soccer Ajax, the Dutch football club, this week claimed a world first with the purchase of a South African soccer club with the aim of nurturing young talent. Under the terms of a franchising agreement, Ajax, which is quoted on the Amsterdam stock exchange, is taking a 51% stake in Ajax Cape Town, […]

Iden Wetherell The Zimbabwean government continues to be less than frank about how it is funding its forces in Democratic Republic of Congo. Ministers at first suggested it cost no more to keep troops in Congo than it did at home. When that argument failed to fly, conflicting statements followed. Zimbabwe’s finance minister said the […]

Mungo Soggot A Soweto man has received South Africa’s largest personal injury award – R17- million – in compensation for the paralysis and dismemberment he sustained after being shot wrongfully by the police. The Johannesburg High Court granted the award with costs in December – more than 10 years after the man was shot. As […]

Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week `God, yet another pooftah movie,” groaned a fellow critic at the preview of Turkish Bath last week. Well, yeah, gay and lesbian cinema is booming – even the studios are making films with homosexual themes. Universal Pictures made To Wong Foo, an inferior drag queen movie with Wesley Snipes […]

Marianne Merten Non-governmental agencies in Cape Town are growing increasingly sceptical of the police’s ability to end the violence in the Cape and many are formulating new plans to stop the conflict. Several observers said that at the heart of the problem was the increasing politicisation of policing in the Western Cape. In the run-up […]

David Shapshak The Cabinet has discussed the possibility of deploying the army at the end of the year in anticipation of possible chaos stemming from the year 2000 computer problem (Y2K), says Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Broadcasting Jay Naidoo. “I have discussed with the Cabinet the possibility of mobilising the security services in terms […]

CD of the week: Dave Chislett The recent vast successes of the Springbok Nude Girls, best exemplified by the track Blue Eyes, has tended to overshadow the roots of the band, and the fact that, without a doubt, they are really an alternative act. At Nude Girls shows at the moment, you will find trendies, […]

Alex Dodd It is Tuesday midday. We are driving along the N1, returning to Johannesburg after taking in Jo Ractliffe’s End of Time show in Nieu Bethesda. It’s hot and the road seems to go on forever. Attention is anaesthetised by an immensity of nothingness – nothing but the blank Karoo landscape and the road […]

Edmund White THE SPELL by Alan Hollinghurst (Chatto & Windus) This is a thoroughly English novel in one way and totally exotic in another. What is undeniably English about the writing is the delicate sense of social comedy, the oblique silliness, all insinuation and suspension points, and the zanily camp humour, not to mention the […]

Review of the week:Phillip Kakaza The Market Theatre’s new musical, Bozzoli … like Pantsula … like Mshoza, makes some essential observations about how dance culture has provided an antidote to misery in bad times. Conceived and directed by Thulani Nyembe, for last year’s Barney Simon Young Directors Festival, it was acclaimed as the hit of […]

THE Cape Town Magistrate’s Court will decide on Friday whether to send for psychiatric observation a man who confessed to planting the New Year’s Day bomb at Cape Town’s Waterfront. Charles Manamela (25), a Nigerian who is a naturalised South African, was arrested on January 12 for a spate of bomb hoaxes in Cape Town. […]

Howard Barrell Over a Barrel An anarchic British pop group of the 1970s – called, I think, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Daa Band – used to play a time-travel trick on commuters on the London Tube. It involved the band getting hold of the newspapers from a particular day, say 20 years earlier, and then stepping […]

Julian Borger Basketball `Please say it ain’t so”, pleaded the headline in the Chicago Tribune. But the moment the city prayed would never come has arrived. This week Michael Jordan, arguably the best basketball player of all time, retired. The 1,95m gravity-defying Chicago Bulls phenomenon, who seemed to float high above opposing defences, his tongue […]

Gideon Nieuwoudt has been refused amnesty for the killing of Steve Biko. Peter Dickson describes the career of one of apartheid’s most ruthless killers He is the last non-impersonator alive with Elvis Presley sideburns. His face is lined with untold stories you don’t want to know. Before the prospect of prison and the seekers of […]

Iden Wetherell The detention by military police this week of a Harare newspaper editor could signal the beginning of a media crackdown by President Robert Mugabe, who has been angered by press reports of misrule and setbacks in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Following renewed flak from Zimbabwe’s independent media and a drubbing in the […]

SOUTH Africa’s Elana Meyer became the first woman in the world to break the 67-minute mark for the half marathon as she clinched victory at the Tokyo City 21,1km on Friday morning. The Stellenbosch athlete set a world record at 66min 44sec in freezing 5 degrees Celsius conditions, beating Kenya’s Ester Winjiro by five seconds. […]

THE United Nations has evacuated its observers from the north-western Angolan province of Zaire, the national news agency Angop reported on Wednesday. It said UN peacekeepers deployed in the provincial capital, Mbanza-Congo, to protect equipment for the UN Mission in Angola were evacuated to Luanda, on Tuesday following an escalation in fighting in the area. […]

Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD `She was my baby,” wails Bobba Rosenbaum at the graveside. The bowed octogenarian leans shakily on her walking stick. “I loved her so much. Oh Sarah, I’m really going to miss you …” The thin voice breaks with emotion. Rosenbaum’s daughter, Sonia Abrahams, stands beside her over the freshly […]

SOUTH Africans tuned in to watch the launch of South Africa’s first satellite from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA, were disappointed on Friday when controllers ruled the launch a “no-go” at the last minute. This was the second attempt to launch the satellite named Sunsat, which was built by the engineering faculty […]

allegations Thokozani Mtshali A doctor in Piet Retief, Mpumalanga, has filed a charge with the police against faceless culprits who are spreading allegations that he injected patients with HIV-infected blood. The police believe the rumours were started by people who are jealous of Dr Phillip Pretorious’s thriving private practice. Pretorious (50) has laid a charge […]

force Chris Gordon Details are beginning to emerge of a vast resupply operation carried out by Unita, as the rebels strike at the north-west of Angola. Jonas Savimbi’s rebels are now better armed than in 1992, the Angolan government claims. It is a claim borne out by Unita’s new tactics and reports of the type […]