Staff Reporter

Forget Viagra. There’s a natural alternative that’s bound to keep you up all night, writes Mercedes Sayagues If you live in Zimbabwe, you have probably heard the stories: of dusk-to- dawn erections that exhaust women; of non-stop sex and multiple ejaculations all night long; of formidable hard-ons that land men in hospital, even kill them. […]

Adam Haupt On stage in Cape Town Evita se Perron hosts the Hello, Darling Festival again this year and promises to provide much entertainment by way of theatre, concerts and cabaret. Whilst Pieter-Dirk Uys’s Tannie Evita Praat Kaktus and Ouma Ossewania Praat Vuil are proven drawcards, the festival has quite a few new and interesting […]

performance David Beresford `Castro is a lion,” sang the South African Communist Party choir enthusiastically. At 71, Fidel Castro cut a somewhat aged king of the jungle. Nevertheless, the comparison seemed a fair one as the Cuban leader, with grizzled mane and beard, clambered out of his Mercedes Benz in Soweto on Saturday and made […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 11.00pm. DELEGATES from the six countries discussing a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo have adjourned their meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, saying they are expecting “other parties” to join the talks on Friday. Sources at the conference would not say who the “other parties” might be. The meeting […]

The streets of Pretoria are becoming increasingly dangerous for sex workers, reports Tangeni Amupadhi Prostitutes walking the dark streets of Pretoria know that danger lurks around any corner. But they were particularly anxious this week, following the murder of a co-worker. The body of an as yet unidentified prostitute was found lying face-up in a […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Welkom | Friday 11.00PM. GRIQUAS continued their run of success in the Bankfin Currie Cup rugby competition when they beat Northern Free State 52-19 in Welkom’s North West Stadium on Friday night. Griquas did everything at a cracking pace and ran in five tries during the first 35 minutes to chalk up a […]

Alex Sudheim On show in Durban Fifty years ago, the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson began pioneering the concept of photojournalism as an art form. With his spontaneous and sympathetic images of everyday life on the street, he removed photography from the stuffy confines of the studio and breathed into it the energy and immediacy of […]

Andy Capostagno Rugby The Currie Cup originated in Kimberley and there is every chance that this year it is going back there. For Griqualand West, under the coaching of Andre Markgraaff, have progressed this season from worthy underdogs to pedigree contenders; you might say that the rough diamonds have been cut and polished, although their […]

Nineties? Douglas Rushkoff Online Maybe the news that the Internet makes people depressed shouldn’t have taken us by surprise. It’s what concerned cyber- reactionaries have been telling us since the beginning: the Internet renders us incapable of forming real relationships, isolates us in an empty electronic simulation and destroys family bonds. Now, the well-meaning killjoys […]

Attacks on farms have soured relationships between farmers and their workers. Swapna Prabhakaran visited a farm where mistrust has grown `The attacks are happening with such regular monotony, I don’t think any fence will keep them out. I know they’ll come back and this time they might kill me or my family,” Colin Reddy says […]

Robert Kirby: Loose cannon It seems we are doomed to yet another month or so of the dreary adventures of President Bill Clinton’s prick. And what a joyless escapade it has been. There is always available groupie- tail, like the banal Monica Lewinsky, hanging around senior politicians and public figures. Everyone knows that. When one […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maseru | Friday 11.30PM. THE commander of the Lesotho Defence Force, Lieutenant-General Makhula Mosakheng, announced his resignation with immediate effect on Friday night. Mosakheng said on Radio Lesotho that Brigadier-Commander Thibeli had taken over the running of the army. Mosakheng also announced that 26 senior officers had been dismissed “in the public interest”. […]

Chris Gordon Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has proposed a separate deal to Angola’s Jos Eduardo dos Santos to stand back from the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo – a move that could tip the civil war in the favour of the Congolese rebels and pave the way for a new regional order in […]

Nicholas Dawes Live in Cape Town Amampondo leader Dizu Plaatjies is one of the more popular teachers at the University of Cape Town’s College of Music, where he teaches African instruments and dance. The role is not one he sheds easily, and when “Madiba’s favourite band” played at the Drum Cafe in Gardens last Saturday, […]

Ivor Powell predicts that sparks will fly at the SADC summit when member states discuss the Organ on Politics, Defence and Security All has not been well for some time now in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). But things could get a lot worse at the regional conference’s annual summit in Mauritius this weekend. […]

Martin Thorpe Soccer Arsenal and Manchester United stepped into line last week by agreeing to discontinue talks with the proposed Super League and seek change to Europe’s club competitions through official channels. All 20 Premiership clubs agreed the same rules after meeting to hear Gerhard Aigner, United European Football Association’s (Uefa) general secretary, assure them […]

Maureen Barnes Down the tube Money, the SABC is always telling us, is the problem which prevents us from watching top-quality television – a fact which we silly viewers just can’t get into our heads. There’s not enough money from the government; there’s not enough money from advertisers and there’s not enough money from us […]

Emma Durden Dance in Durban The Kwa-Suka Theatre, usually home to Durban’s experimental drama offerings, is currently awash with rich swirls of tangerine, pimento olive and deep wine. Camino Flamenco is an exuberant hour and a half of traditional Spanish dance put together by Linda Vargas of the Spanish Dance Company and her husband, the […]

Mungo Soggot The state oil company’s efforts to discipline its former chief, Kobus van Zyl, took a bizarre twist this week when the company decided to abandon his disciplinary inquiry and replace it with an internal probe. The disciplinary inquiry’s head was from outside the Strategic Fuel Fund (SFF) and Van Zyl was allowed legal […]

Winning eight Lions at the Cannes awards this year, the South African advertising industry has shown it has the talent for temptation. Alex Dodd reports I exit the cinema feeling a bit like a latter day Phineas Fogg. I’ve seen the world and it’s taken me a whole lot less than 80 days. In more […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Dar es Salaam | Friday 11.30PM. TANZANIA has expelled five Iraqis and a Libyan who were questioned by the FBI and police in connection of the bombing of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania last month, a newspaper reported Friday. Immigration officials put Libyan Atif Issa Enhamed on a flight to […]

Simon Segal and Andy Brown The chips are down for leading black empowerment companies in the wake of the stock market crash. There are fears that many will not be able to repay their loans because their stock prices have declined and they are being crippled by high interest rates. Rate hikes could also cripple […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi The council of the Vaal Triangle Technikon was scrambling this week to stave off threats by Minister of Education Sibusiso Bengu to suspend its state grants and disband the council. Bengu sent a memo to the technikon last Friday, advising the council of his readiness to take such action if it does not […]

Andrew Worsdale `If I have to be really truthful, I can’t say a director can really know why he makes his pictures … On set, I prefer to go on like a blind man, following with the imagination of the picture to delude myself I am going in the right direction.” So said Italian film […]

Brenda Atkinson On show in Johannesburg The opening of the Wits group exhibition Histories of the Present was a beautiful moment in contemporary art history. As freakish French multimedia artist Orlan looked on in horror, Steven Cohen douched fake blood onto a cheesy thrift-shop painting of a serenely bare-breasted young girl. Later, Orlan – the […]

A Sussex link to a `routine’ US child abuse inquiry has led to the exposure of a global ring using KGB codes to hide in cyberspace. Stuart Millar reports Even by the increasingly sophisticated standards of Internet child pornographers, the Wonderland club operated on a technological and organisational level which shocked investigating authorities around the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Addis Ababa | Friday 6.30pm. A RIFT has developed in the Addis Ababa talks aimed at brokering a ceasefire in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both Uganda and Rwanda, accused by DRC President Laurent Kabila of invading the DRC, have demanded that the rebel leaders be invited to the talks. The DRC delegation […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 4.00PM. ZIMBABWEAN and Angolan troops are accused of killing dozens of unarmed civilians in the Democratic republic of Congo with “indiscriminate shelling of Kinshasa suburbs” in an Amnesty International open letter to Presidents Robert Mugabe and Nelson Mandela. Pierre San, the secretary general of Amnesty International, has written an open […]

Chris McGreal Jean Kambanda was bathing when soldiers burst through his front door four years ago. Rwanda’s genocide was starting and he was sure death was knocking. The soldiers nabbed him and offered him not a bullet in the head, but an invitation to lead the government – which came to oversee the slaughter of […]

Phillip Kakaza Feeling stressed out from switching on the radio and getting only hip-hop and R&B? Well, the Belgium-based Afropop group Zap Mama will dose you with acappella and rhythm at Arts Alive on Thursday. At last year’s festival we saw outstanding international acts, like Beninoise funk diva Angelique Kidjo. This year the French Institute […]

Who are . . . the Congolese Rebels? Ann Eveleth When Congolese rebel commander Jean- Pierre Ondekane vowed this week to “intensify” the rebellion against embattled Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila, he spoke with a confidence his opponent has never enjoyed. Unlike Kabila, whose 1997 Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of […]

Donna Block If miners and a few metals analysts are to be believed, gold is golden once more. They say the precious metal, up from 19-year lows, is poised for a major comeback. But the glitter might not be as bright as those who dig it out of the ground are hoping. Metal markets are […]