Staff Reporter

Cocaine, whisky, grass, Dunhills, whisky, cocaine… Staying up all night with the bad boy of US literature is a trial. Marianne Macdonald lived to tell the tale Hunter S Thompson’s big things have always been raising hell and taking drugs, and though he is now 61, neither hell nor ill-health will stop him. He holes […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Randburg’s public prosecutor struggled this week to determine whether he could prosecute the managing director of Legacy Merchant Bank, Douglass Fliess, on the bizarre charge of stealing a garden. Charges relating to the theft of plants and malicious damage to property were laid against Fliess by property agents Gary Bruyns Properties on behalf […]

Tim Radford It is lunchtime in Europe or breakfast in New England and you are probably in middle life, maybe a great deal older. You are also a chemist, a physicist or a researcher who did something unequivocally important in medicine and physiology. Or you could be an economist, a politician or perhaps a writer, […]

Marianne Merten A key figure of the Cape Town gang and drug underworld has moved out of town in the face of new anti-organised crime legislation to clamp down on the profits of illegal dealings and assets bought with illicit profits. For some time Colin Stansfield, head of the drug cartel, The Firm, has been […]

Review of the week Brenda Atkinson There are several possible responses to turn-of-the-century ennui, most of which involve an element of exhausted backlash and sudden nostalgia for other, better times and simpler cultural manifestations. I, for one, am aware of a growing yearning for time-honoured and outdated rituals like thought, beauty and big-band ballroom dancing. […]

spring fever Friday night Genevieve Cutts Remember the days when it was a mission to find something to do on a weekend in Johannesburg? Well, those days are over. My Fridays now begin (please note I say begin) vegged out on my couch in front of the TV as I am e-ntertained and e-nthralled by […]

hemp You’ve heard of lager, pilsener, draught and stout. Now there’s hemp beer. It’s called Hanf (“hemp” in German), made by Wdi Bru in Switzerland, and it’s finally available in South Africa (Cape Town and Gauteng only). At the third birthday party of Pretoria pita bar and reggae club Tings an’ Times on October 10, […]

Bart Luirink A bronze bust depicting Dutch Nazi collaborator Jacob van Tilburg has been consigned to oblivion in the basement of the University of Pretoria (UP), but controversy is still raging about his art collection on display on the campus. The collection was in all likelihood stolen from Dutch Jews deported from Holland during World […]

Andy Capostagno Rugby With The Truman Show about to overrun our cinemas there will be those who look upon the final weekend of log fixtures in the Currie Cup as another example of media manipulation. Griquas play the Falcons, Western Province play Natal and the Blue Bulls play Free State. In terms of log positions, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Friday 4.15pm. THE Zimbabwe Tourism Authority, a parastatal meant to boost the country’s international tourist business, is to confront President Robert Mugabe on his tendency to commandeer state-owned Air Zimbabwe aircraft at short notice, leaving passengers stranded. A number of industry players, including the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority and the Zimbabwe Tourism […]

South Africa Michael Metelits International research organisation Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) plans to drop Malaysia from its emerging markets free index on November 30, a move which could benefit South Africa. MSCI’s move will increase the weighting of other emerging markets in the index. South Africa has the second largest weighting in the index […]

Andrew Worsdale Movies of the week Film release patterns are very strange. One week there’s a host of movies and film festivals opening, and the next there’s virtually zip to write about. This week sees only four new movies being released, in comparison to last week’s seven along with the feast of films featured in […]

He is wanted in Italy and the US, but the SAPS can’t reel in Vito Palazzolo, writes Chiara Carter Red tape stands between convicted Mafia money launderer Vito Palazzolo and an Italian courtroom. The Ministry of Justice said this week that Italian authorities asked for Palazzolo to be extradited earlier this year on the basis […]

Ferial Haffajee This week’s rate cut is a drop in the ocean. Wednesday’s decrease in the repo rate will have little significance for wider South Africa because commercial lenders are unlikely to follow suit immediately. But the small cut – one-quarter of a percentage point – in the interest rate at which the Reserve Bank […]

Patrick Bond Share World `It is interesting that at times like this Mr [John Maynard] Keynes is again resurrected,” remarked South African Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel at the meeting with his Commonwealth counterparts in Ottawa at the end of last month. “There is a recognition that the standard prescription for macroeconomic stability and growth […]

FRANCOIS CASTERAN, Harare | Friday 7.30pm. HEAVY fighting between Angolan government forces and rebel Unita troops has been reported in northern Uije province, where Unita has surrounded the town of the same name. Uije was the last town taken by government forces before United Nations-sponsored peace accords were signed in Lusaka in November 1994 between […]

Steve Gordon South African musicians at home and abroad will be saddened to learn of the death last week of guitarist Russell Herman, who died in London, where he had been living since the early 1980s. Born in Cape Town in 1953, Herman grew up in District Six, and was an integral part of the […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer When a team is hanging on to the slenderest of leads in a two-leg cup tie and has conceded an away goal, the last place in South Africa they want to go is the Independence Stadium in Umtata. The Eastern Cape ground is not going to be a contender when – hopefully […]

Angella Johnson It was not the welcome South African backpacker David Martin (23) expected when he tried to enter Morocco during his 16-month adventure-packed tour across the continent. Despite having a valid visa, the University of Cape Town graduate was stopped at a military border post, marched through a minefield and forced to wait four […]

Rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo scored an important victory this week in capturing the town of Kindu, which Laurent Kabila’s government was trying to use as the launch pad for a counter-offensive against the rebels. But the victory merely underlines why that long-suffering nation cannot afford a military solution to its problems. What […]

Hanekom The chief land claims commissioner says he is being made `a sacrificial beast’ as his remarks in Parliament embarrassed his minister, writes Wally Mbhele Chief land claims commissioner Joe Seremane broke his silence this week over tensions that have gripped the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights, saying that Minister of Agriculture and […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Pretoria | Thursday 8.00pm. STATE witnesses in the Bronkhorstspriut heist trail were offered cars, houses and salaries to testify, counsel for three of the accused suggested in the Pretoria high Court on Friday. Fifteen men are have pleaded not guilty to charges of murder, attenmpted murder, robbery and car theft. The court heard […]

battleground On October 23 1942, the battle of El Alamein began. James Ambrose Brown, a young soldier, carried into battle a diary in which he recorded the horror of all he saw This year there will be no old soldiers at the graves of comrades who died at the battle of El Alamein. Like those […]

WL Webb ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN: A CENTURY IN HIS LIFE by DM Thomas (Little, Brown) Somewhere in her great biography of her murdered poet-husband, Nadezhda Mandelstam quotes a 19th-century sage to the effect that “Russia exists to teach the rest of the world a lesson”. Whatever Freudian glosses one adds to his motivation, there is no […]

A peace monument in honour of those killed in conflict in Thokoza is to be unveiled, writes Thokozani Mtshali Four years ago the East Rand was the scene of widespread political violence between supporters of the African National Congress and the Inkatha Freedom Party. Open gun battles raged between IFP-aligned hostel dwellers and ANC-aligned township […]

Robert Mugabe is desperately trying to shore up the teetering Laurent Kabila, write Howard Barrell and Iden Wetherell Congolese rebels, flushed by their victory this week over thousands of government and foreign troops in an eight-day battle for the key town of Kindu, are regrouping for a two-pronged assault southwards on the diamond-mining centre of […]

Wally Mbhele The African National Congress says the credibility of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report will be questioned if the commission continues to refuse to meet the party before it releases its findings. ANC officials are demanding a meeting with the commission to discuss the report’s implications for the party. The commission has […]

Howard Barrell and Stuart Hess Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma has vigorously defended her decision not to allow the state to pay for pregnant HIV-positive women to be treated with AZT, an expensive drug that could reduce the risk of their children being born with the virus. The decision by Zuma and the nine provincial […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 3.30pm. THE new United States ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday voiced US support for President Laurent Kabila, and slammed Rwanda and Uganda for their “military interference” in the country. The comments made by William Swing on national television are the first to be made by a […]

fears Barry McIntyre She may have healthy green eyes and a vibrant pink complexion, but this model female head could prove to be a headache for the cellular phone industry. The unchristened head, packed with probes and sensors, will play a key role in a 500 000 European Union- funded study to measure the electromagnetic […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube Two local programmes gave me the worst case of dyspepsia in the past week. First came Top Billing, which has a certain jolliness about it -but it then confronted us with a profile on Edith Venter. Many readers outside Gauteng will be muttering “Who dat?” – which would undoubtedly depress […]

Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH As you read this, many of my Nigerian friends who had gone into exile to escape from the wrath of the brutal dictator, General Sani Abacha, have either returned home, or are about to do so. Among them is Wole Soyinka, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in […]