Stewart Dalby Spending it It used to be said that television would see an end to newspapers, but newspapers are still with us. Similarly, the computer was supposed to herald the paperless society. What use pens, then? In fact, pens are very much with us and vintage fountain pens are now highly valuable and collectable […]
You may be surprised to learn that Africa’s stock exchanges have outperformed most other emerging markets in the year to date in dollar terms – and that’s despite war in the Congo, bombs in Kenya and Tanzania and the general perception of the continent as a haven for corruption and chaos. You may be further […]
KZN fraud probe Wonder Hlongwa Senior government officials in KwaZulu- Natal could soon face prosecution for their alleged involvement in a fraudulent cheque scam involving millions of rands. The province’s deputy attorney general, Chris de Klerk, said the police investigation into the matter is finished. Police have told him they will hand him the docket […]
Robert Kirby ONE MIRACLE IS NOT ENOUGH by Rex van Schalkwyk (Bellwether) About a quarter of the way through Rex van Schalkwyk’s very disquieting book I had moments of a curious temporal shift. So much of what I had been reading could well be the Kafkaesque testimony presented to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission of, […]
Carolize Jansen The Sports Information and Science Agency conducted an extensive and enlightening study on the participation of women in sport last year. The main objectives of the study were to obtain the number of women participating in various sports in South Africa, segment the number of these participants in categories according to, for instance, […]
Gavin Evans Boxing When you combine the words Namibia and sport, the only connection that springs to mind is Frankie Fredericks. There is, however, another young man – a close friend of the track star as it happens – who believes he’s on track to equal the achievements of his brilliant homeboy: Harry Simon. This […]
South Africans are embroiled in both sides of the war in Congo. Khareen Pech, William Boot and Ann Eveleth report South African mercenaries and private military companies swooped into strife-torn Central Africa this week to clinch deals and sharpen the Angolan-led military front in support of the embattled Congolese leader, Laurent Kabila. A Mail & […]
Neil Finn: Try Whistling This (Parlophone) The erstwhile Crowded House/Split Enz singer-songwriter could, as the clich goes, sing the phone book and sound good. His eternally yearning tones set him apart from other melodic late- thirtysomethings – though he also happens to write lovely, inexplicably underrated songs. His first solo effort brims with the usual […]
Wonder Hlongwa The absence of street names and house numbers in some townships and informal settlements is a permanent inconvenience for both residents and service providers. Companies like Telkom and ambulance services rely on locals for directions to their destinies. It can be a dangerous dependency in criminal- infested townships. For residents, the inconvenience is […]
disarray Howard Barrell Politicians from all major parties and some international relations experts are worried by what they see as disarray in South African foreign policy exposed by the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They believe the impasse is undermining the country’s interests in the region and could mar President Nelson Mandela’s hosting […]
Charl Blignaut `I’m a bit of a tart,” says Marianne Fassler as I settle against a plastic blow-up cushion embedded with pink flowers on a big old chair in her elegently kitsch Johannesburg lounge. “I think I know how to promote myself in the media. Put it this way, I’ve always had good press. But, […]
It is perhaps not politically correct to draw sustenance from the “poet of Imperialism”. But as one surveys the international and domestic scene at the moment, the famous words from Rudyard Kipling’s poem, If, spring inevitably to mind: “If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs …” We are living […]
Matthew Krouse Johannesburg’s Newtown cultural precinct’s rather tarnished image as the social hub of the great African city has been amply lambasted. Suburbanites now bypass the city centre, believing it has fallen apart – especially Newtown, with its derelict buildings crowded with squatters, revelling township drunkards and stoned teenage ravers. So a visionary new scheme, […]
Adam Mars-Jones GUT SYMMETRIES by Jeanette Winterson (Granta) This novel (now in paperback) from a commendably retiring writer – it is known that she doesn’t read reviews of her work – repeats a number of themes from previous books:the deathliness of habit and the everyday, sexual triangles, a city viewed as phantasmagorical, the serviceability of […]
Swapna Prabhakaran The tale of Cato Manor has always been a tragedy – an old South African tale haunted by the horror of forced removals and the ghosts of families split asunder. Old men remember it with nostalgia as a once special place and a community which was crushed to nothing under the weight of […]
One of the best goalscorers the game has produced has quietly joined Wrexham as player/ coach. Ian Ross hears how a Liverpool legend plans to dip his toe in the managerial waters It is generally accepted that anyone who has the misfortune to live out their life in the public eye can judge their continuing […]
Economists may need a crash rethink of the basic tenets of economic orthodoxy, writes Larry Elliot Another normal week for the global economy. Russia’s on the point of financial meltdown, the Chinese government is battling to stave off devaluation, bankruptcies are up 35% in Japan, stock markets are down almost everywhere, the biggest industrial merger […]
Michael Finch Athletics South Africa’s dreams of hosting the World Cup soccer competition in 2002 could well be decided in Johannesburg from September 11-13 when the athletics version of the World Cup takes place at the Johannesburg stadium. The event will be more than just the third biggest track and field festival in the world […]
Adam Sweeting CD of the week Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have apparently taken umbrage at the fact that the Pearl Jam song Given to Fly vaguely resembles Led Zeppelin’s Going to California. If anybody’s going to lift chunks from the Zep catalogue, which of course bears no resemblance to the work of any bluesmen […]
Niki Barker The Dukuduku State Forest near the St Lucia estuary in northern KwaZulu- Natal used to be the largest and best- preserved remnant of lowland coastal forest in Southern Africa. It is now an important component of the Greater St Lucia Wetland Park, a proposed World Heritage site. But it is being cleared and […]
off air Ferial Haffajee Just as viewers were starting to get used to presenter S’bu Khumalo doing his cool and chatty thing on Sunday nights, the long-awaited television arts programme, aRt, has been taken off air. aRt played out for the last time on Sunday night and will be replaced in October by a new […]
Small is not just beautiful, but dutiful. Tim Radford reports on the coming of the almost invisible machine The new machines are millimetres big at the most. Their moving parts are microscopic: the size of pollen grains. The first may have already saved your life on the road and the latest may already be saving […]
Shaun de Waal What the Americans call “sell-thru” video -videos for sale -is beginning to take off in South Africa in a big way. The rampaging success of Disney titles such as The Lion King and The Little Mermaid, which appear to be addictive to children, spearheaded the influx into South Africa of an ever- […]
Wally Mbhele The credibility of the police and the prosecution – led by the Transvaal Attorney General, Jan d’Oliviera – has come under heavy assault from lawyers defending three African National Congress members who were convicted for the 1993 Eikenhof massacre. Fresh evidence pointing to prior police knowledge of the identity of the real perpetrators […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby There was a moment when it became clear that South Africa could win the 1995 Rugby World Cup. It was the moment that Stephen Hilditch blew his whistle to signal the end of the match between Swansea and the Springboks on Saturday, November 5 1994; bonfire night. The final score was Swansea […]
The winds of change that have blown through the SABC seem to have bypassed the commissioning department, writes Ferial Haffajee It is 1976 and television has just hit our shores. The Broederbond has decreed that it be a totally bilingual operation. But the problem is there is nary an Afrikaans producer in sight. The commissioning […]
Gavin Evans General Lothar Neethling has not had a particularly good year; nor such a hot decade either, come to think of it. Previous allegations that he was apartheid South Africa’s poisoner-in- chief have been confirmed at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and he has emerged as a key player in the former regime’s biological […]
Marlene Burger The alleged plot to assassinate United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjld 37 years ago was the brainchild of at least two British security agencies – MI5 and the Special Operations Executive – and the CIA, top-secret documents show. For once, apartheid’s dirty tricks brigade appears to have been falsely accused of involvement in […]
I was at cocktail party last week when I heard the terrifying news. A notice in Scientific American reported that video games change brain chemistry. In a study conducted at the Cyclotron Unit of Hammersmith Hospital in London, Dr Paul Grasby and his fellow researchers determined that playing video games triggers the release of dopamine […]
Sarah Penny INTO THE HOUSE OF THE ANCESTORS by Karl Maier (John Wiley & Sons) EATING THE FLOWERS OF PARADISE by Kevin Rushby (Constable) Last year Nelson Mandela made the following statement: “The time has come for Africa to take full responsibility for her woes and use the immense collective wisdom it possesses to make […]
Alex Sudheim `After 10 minutes time you’ll forget you’re watching a screen and you’ll feel like you’re in the same room,” promises Krish Moodley of his unique new venture, the 3-D Picture Palace on Durban’s beachfront. Whether or not you actually want to be in the same room as several dozen grunting, sweating, copulating people […]
pull-out John Grobler Insurance companies operating in Namibia are threatening to pull out before the implementation of controversial legislation analysts say will spell the beginning of the end of Namibia’s market economy. The Long-Term Re-Insurance Act will require the companies to pay increasing amounts of their income on premiums to the government. Sanlam (Namibia) managing […]