Jackie Bennion When Internet darling Yahoo! announced its second-quarter earnings earlier this month, it not only sent Wall Street into a frenzy; it also made the founders of the Web search site, Jerry Yang and David Filo, the latest additions to the Billionaire Boys Club. Two weeks ago, Broadcast.com went public with the biggest opening […]
Ed Vulliamy in Washington : Basketball After six Naitional Basketball Association (NBA) championships – the latest won in an epic final series against Utah Jazz last month – Americans are accustomed to gravity-defying acrobatics from the Chicago Bulls. But not of this kind. Last Thursday afternoon, the Bulls managed a contortion which beats almost any […]
John Ezard Climactic warming has destroyed part of the gigantic Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica. Final disintegration and melting of the 19 500km2 shelf is now predicted within two years. The crack-up, disclosed by a satellite photograph taken on March 23, confirmed and sharpened nearly a decade of anxiety about trends in a region […]
Adam Haupt If you’re one of those people who thinks that Steve Newman and Tony Cox are the only acoustic guitar virtuosos around, you’ve been lied to. It’s no sordid conspiracy, though. It’s just that Leslie Jovan sees himself as a community worker and not a musician. To him music is a vehicle for other […]
Ferial Haffajee Membership of The Network is coveted. It’s the hottest club in town and counts the country’s leading business, intellectual and political talents in its midst. The Network has reportedly come out of the closet, partying last week to celebrate the appointment of Tito Mboweni as Reserve Bank governor-designate. It was as much a […]
Marion Jones is aiming for five golds in the 2000 Olympics. Duncan Mackay reports on an athletics phenomenon When Florence Griffith Joyner set world records for the 100m and 200m a decade ago experts predicted they were so far ahead of their time that they would stand for 50 years. But the emergence of Marion […]
Douglas Rushkoff : online Gathered together beneath the chandeliers of the Beverly Hilton’s main ballroom earlier this year, Hollywood’s best and brightest (dressed, anyway) had paid about $1 500 each to rub elbows with the interactive media-makers who would soon, they feared, replace them. Meanwhile, a demonstration floor crowded with technology from Compaq and other […]
Chris Gordon in Luanda and Howard Barrell in Cape Town Angola’s return to arms, which appeared inevitable this week, could spill into neighbouring territories and destabilise the entire Southern African region. In the line of fire are Zambia, which the Unita rebel movement continues to use as a rear supply base and which is bracing […]
Keith Henderson CD of the week What a job -putting together an album for The X-Files movie. According to director Chris Carter, none of the artists on the album had been given the opportunity to see the film before going into the studio to record. But then again, who needs to see the movie when […]
Looking at Ralph Steadman’s caustic caricatures you’d be forgiven for thinking that he is one of the world’s angriest men But, deep down, he tells Sally Vincent, that’s all because he’s only really angry with one thing: himself. Something terrible has happened. The air is full of inaudible squeaks of post-holocaust bats’ ghosts. I had […]
Andrew Worsdale Two movies open this week that show and show-up middle-class values. They savage the bourgeoisie as comfortable claptrap who, ironically enough, will be the ones who go to the art movie houses (where both films are being released) to see themselves being represented and slagged off. The first is The Happy War, a […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.00PM. THE Richmond killers have been identified as a five-man hit-squad with military backgrounds, SABC3 has reported. Their leader is known to speak Afrikaans fluently, and police have been searching for them for a year already in connection with previous massacres. Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi announced the news […]
Dan Glaister : First Person John Bayley has written a moving elegy to his wife, the writer Iris Murdoch, in the New Yorker magazine. It is a tale of two swimming trips to the same river near Oxford, United Kingdom. Two trips punctuated by a space of 40 years, and haunted by Alzheimer’s disease. “With […]
Geoffrey V Davis The death of Matsemela Manaka last Saturday deprives the South African theatre community of one of its foremost practitioners at a tragically early age. His many friends and collaborators overseas will join in mourning the loss of an artist whose remarkable career was distinguished by a delight in experimentation and innovation fuelled […]
Robert Kirby : Loose Cannon I never thought the day would arrive when I would want to see some no-nonsense killer censorship deployed. But it did arrive, quite recently, with the exhibition in Grahamstown of what a lot of people believe is little more than child pornography going as art. Alas, the head of the […]
Peter Frost : On show in Cape Town Despite all the prattle to the contrary, the ongoing debate about the evolution of theatre in South Africa still centres on the argument over which is preferable – a Eurocentric or ethnic approach. Many, like government, various NGOs and some arts bodies expect change, which means better […]
Tracy Murinik Whether you’ve been aware of it or not, if you’ve been living in South Africa within the past four decades or so, and if you’ve experienced any of this country’s major cities (and even some smaller towns), then it is likely that you have at some point encountered Revel Fox. Or his vision […]
Here is the eM&G’s guide to some of the most popular software titles available for download as shareware or freeware off the Internet. * Opera 3.21: From Oslo, Norway comes a speedy, award-winning browser. It’s compact, versatile and it supports the HTML 3.2 standard. Designed expressly to fly with older 386/486 machines, it includes a […]
Brenda Atkinson If you’ve been waiting to exhale ever since the grade-school camerawork of Avenues swung its way across SABC 3; if you’re still wondering why paying your TV licence seems the wrong thing to do; if you’re considering ditching your M-Net subscription, don’t panic yet. e-tv, the hot and politically sound channel that snatched […]
Heather Connon The publishing industry could be transformed by the Internet in the same way that the music business was revitalised by the compact disc in the Eighties, according to Michael Lynton, president and CEOof Penguin. Sales of books through the Internet have been growing rapidly. Amazon.com, which created the market when it launched in […]
Mercedes Sayagues Copycat land invasions are spreading in Zimbabwe, six weeks after villagers first moved on to four commercial farms in Marondera, near Harare. Across the country hundreds of families have peacefully and briefly occupied land on dozens of farms. The harvest is over; there is a lull in farm work. A donor land conference […]
Andy Capostagno : Rugby There is a lot to be said for relaxation. In the next millennium we are told that working hours will shrink to about 30 a week so we’ll all have to get used to more time at home, more time on the golf course, more time. But rugby events on opposite […]
Venus, Goddess, Chocolate and Rasta Queen are the sizzling, street-smart, breed of girl band, set to shoot some pride into the sistahood, writes Adam Levin Half the Ghetto Luv crew still live with their folks. The other half live in a once- grand Art Deco building in Yeoville, in a flat without a door. Don’t […]
Movies and television make kids illiterate, say the experts. Don’t you believe it. Colin MacCabe on some amazing findings Television and reading are opposed, right? What parent has not thought that a few episodes less of Sesame Street or Hercules would turn their children into veritable bibliophiles, at home with Dickens as well as Tolkien, […]
Marthali Brand : Spending it United States President Bill Clinton is still regretting the day he told the world he never inhaled. But if he had been speaking about cigars, he would not only have avoided embarrassment, he’d have won points for doing the right thing. Not inhaling is one of the golden rules of […]
Howard Barrell : Over a Barrel What is one of the cleverest people in South Africa doing indulging so assiduously one of the vainest? Why has Deputy President Thabo Mbeki taken to bowing and scraping before Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Inkatha Freedom Party leader and minister of home affairs? Why has Mbeki been calling him Shenge, offering […]
Mail & Guardian reporter Job-seeking graduates tempted to put a “willing to do anything legal for cash” ad in the classifieds, take heart: the Mail & Guardian graduate recruitment fair will make sure your expensive education takes you further than waiting tables. The fair, to be held at Cape Town’s Good Hope Centre from August […]
Ferial Haffajee and Stuart Hess You can teach an old dog new tricks, as a legion of former apartheid spies, torturers and key dirty-tricks operatives are showing. Many are the frontmen of business’s push into Africa and are leaders in the private security industry, which is worth billions of rands. A former general, for example, […]
Nation Heidi Clark The United Nations this week awarded First Nation status to one of South Africa’s oldest peoples, the Griquas. Plettenberg Bay councillor Sammy Jansen, a member of the Griqua political party, the Executive National Conference, says this is the UN’s acknowledgement of his nation as among the first inhabitants of South Africa. It […]
Anne Holmes went on an unusual trip to get books to deprived rural schools in KwaZulu- Natal Red mud churned madly on a remote hillside in KwaZulu-Natal. Men shouted instructions at each other, and passing schoolgirls shrieked and giggled at the unusual spectacle. It was certainly not your typical rural scenario. A dilapidated minibus bogged […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 11.00AM. WITH the expiry on Friday of World Cup rugby contracts, Springbok rugby players on Thursday meet South African Rugby Football Union CEO Rian Oberholzer to discuss new pay packages. Bok coach Nick Mallett, captain Gary Teichmann, vice-captain Joost van der Westhuizen, James Dalton and Andrew Aitken sit down […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Sri Lanka | Thursday 11.30AM. THE monsoon-soaked tour by the South African A cricket team to Sri Lanka finally saw its first full day’s play on Wednesday. After a false start at Kandy a week ago, the sun finally came out at the De Soysa stadium in Moratuwa on Thursday to give the […]