millennial deal Alan Henry Grand Prix Michael Schumacher will become the richest Formula One driver of all time after signing a new contract which could net him almost 150-million by keeping him at Ferrari until the end of 2002. The 29-year-old German, who won the 1994 and 1995 world championships in a Benetton, earns about […]
Nick Varley CD of the week Way back, when The Smiths were emerging as the greatest English talent of the Eighties, they took another Manchester indie band out as support on tour. Now, 13 years later, all those who have come across James in a subsequent incarnation – from much-lauded indie kids to derided, alleged […]
Tamar Mason Right to Reply Visualise the following scenario: bored and out-of-scandal journalist sits at an airport and notices the only eye- catching tail design on the tarmac. He takes a closer look. Ah, an unusual sounding name. Further investigation reveals that the artist is none other than a San woman. Immediate conclusion: she’s been […]
Has Apple turned the corner at last? Leander Kahney sees Mac fans swoon in the face of the greatest showmanship The 2 500 Macintosh devotees who packed the opening session of Macworld Expo in New York earlier this month were expecting Steve Jobs, Apple Macintosh’s acting chief executive, to deliver a short pep talk via […]
Iain Banks writes books about sex and drugs. Iain M Banks is a sci-fi nerd. Are they related? Phil Daoust investigates on the eve of the author’s visit to South Africa What the hell are you doing in a place like this? It’s a question you have to wrestle back down your throat when you […]
Andrew Worsdale Russell Thompson says he’s not a shy person. “Hell, I’ve been known to take off my clothes and scream loudly from the tops of tall buildings,” he tells me over a demure coffee in Melville. It was a pleasure meeting the man – should I say director – who at 39 has the […]
Mungo Soggot About a year ago at the Land Bank it took 13 signatures to authorise a cheque for R1 500. Non-menial staff at its Pretoria head office were all white, women had to wear uniforms and there were several married couples. The men in these couples were never managers, because of a rule which […]
controversy Twenty-four years have passed and Cyprus appears to be no closer to finding a solution to its problem. Tracy Spencer reports Annita Georgiou can remember the fragrance from the lemon trees which used to drift through her home town, Famagusta, when she was a child of seven. Today Georgiou is 31 and the lemon […]
Coenraad Visser Escapism, or realism. Pretty girls in pretty dresses singing pretty, or the glamourless homeless, evicted from land and love. These are the opera choices in Gauteng this week. The Three Sopranos is, above all, a feast of glitz. Producer Tibor Rudas, the man behind the ageing three tenors extorting vast sums of money […]
Who is . . . Graa Machel?
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg In the year 2013 AD, planet earth will witness that old nuclear havoc: the final, inevitable, apocalyptic spectacle of destruction. A blinding flash, pandemonium, rancid corpses twisting with the hot breeze . But all will not be lost. No siree. Because way above the messy implosion there rests a […]
FRIDAY 3PM: MPUMALANGA’S sacked deputy speaker, Cynthia Maropeng, and two senior suspended legislature officials had their passports confiscated on Friday morning after being arrested on nine cases of fraud and theft in Nelspruit, Justin Arenstein reports. The visibly surprised suspects were granted R5000 bail each by magistrate Willie Wilkens at a hastily convened court hearing […]
Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD Let me establish one fact from the outset: I am not an animal-loving person. I possess two beautiful mink coats, adore wearing ivory and my dietary maxim is: if it moves, kill it, cook it and eat it. So why, you might ask, have I opted to partake in […]
A new superfast transistor is set to revolutionise computer chips, writes Michael Brooks Researchers at Yale University have developed a transistor so sensitive that it can watch single electrons moving along a wire. The presence of one electron in the transistor switches it on, and it switches on and off 1 000 times as fast […]
charge Sechaba ka’Nkosi Inkatha Freedom Party moderates have bounced back to centre stage in championing the party’s election campaign for next year. As the IFP grapples with its image as a Zulu-based provincial outfit, its national council has carefully avoided choosing people associated with violence in KwaZulu- Natal and Gauteng in the 1990s to lead […]
David Coldwell It may be little consolation if you lose your job, but those at the top argue that downsizing is a management tool, to be distinguished from redundancy. Redundancy occurs as a result of sudden large-scale economic crises, or when large industries are no longer able to compete, for example, the decline in the […]
Paul Martin in London Golf `Justin Rose is Bloomen Brilliant,” read the hand-written (and misspelled) banner unveiled by 10 English schoolgirls on the sixth tee at the British Open last Sunday. It’s testimony to the way Britain has taken this 17-year-old golfing phenomenon to their hearts. It wasn’t just the astounding closeness to glory achieved […]
Wetsho-Otsile Seremane Personal History The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s decision not to hold public hearings on human rights violations by some African National Congress members in Quatro and other camps (“TRC ducks Quatro”, June 26 to July 2) is shocking, to say the the least. It is a slap in the face for those families […]
Phillip Kakaza and Alex Dodd preview the Gift to the Nation Concert celebrating Nelson Mandela’s 80th birthday Gift to the nation indeed! And the nation is duly looking forward to tonight -Friday July 24 -at Kingsmead Stadium in Durban and Saturday night at the Johannesburg Stadium, like good children look forward to Christmas. Set to […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby It is something which the Americans realised early. If you’re going to play games regarded as little more than school-yard pastimes in other countries, best you instil a sense of tradition sooner rather than later. The Superbowl is all of 30 years old, yet it is spoken of with awe, to quote […]
Consider comfort as well as cost when you choose an airline, writes Belinda Beresford Legs all the way up to heaven may be considered desirable in some quarters, but they are a definite problem when it comes to flying. Cramped legroom ranks up there with the lousy food and disgusting toilets in economy class. Given […]
Mail & Guardian reporter The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has come a teeny bit closer to determining which date it should set for South Africa’s second democratic elections. It’s not firm yet – but the IEC said this week the Constitution provided for the National Assembly elections to be held within 90 days of the […]
redistribution’ Derek Hanekom Ann Eveleth’s article “Land reform targets are far, far away” (Monitor, June 5 to 11) ignores the remarkable progress we have made in the past four years and the complexity of land-reform processes. The central argument is that we will never meet “the reconstruction and development programme promise to redistribute 30% of […]
Superficially, the former minister of law and order, Adriaan Vlok, may appear to be deserving of some credit for his performance before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week. Unlike his former colleagues (Magnus Malan, the former minister of defence, is one name which stands out starkly), he at least had the guts to face […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week In 1947 Vladimir Nabokov started writing what he dubbed “a short novel about a man who liked little girls”. Seven years later he finished it but it was rejected as pornography by American publishers and was finally published in Paris by Olympia Press. After a rash of glowing reviews […]
Douglas Rushkoff Online So far, only my Melbourne sponsors have let me keep the original title of the talk I’ve been giving around the world this month: Why Futurists Suck. I shouldn’t have been so surprised that 500 concerned Australians would fill the cavernous Malthouse Theatre to participate in a free exchange about our collective […]
David Beresford It was j’accuse flavoured with a dash of mea culpa when Adriaan Vlok this week appeared before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to explain how he contributed to “law and order” by blowing up office blocks and cinemas. Vlok, who was minister of law and order between 1986 and 1994 – the most […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon It has taken France – at long last – to realise Oscar Wilde’s famous parody of a dreary Victorian homily. Wilde turned the phrase around and made it: “Work i s the curse of the drinking classes.” What French bureaucracy is now doing is realising controversial legislation that will reduce the […]
totters The Asian Tiger’s once seemingly unstoppable roar is now a meow. The economic meltdown that started a year ago with the devaluation of the Indonesian baht has had a devastating effect on the economies caught in its wake. Stock markets in the region were decimated. The trouble was that few saw it coming. During […]
Phillip Kakaza Live in Johannesburg Difficulties with the political situation at home in Kinshasa, Zaire, prompted them to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. Their first stop was Cameroon, second Kenya and then Namibia. They later settled in South Africa where, on arrival, they were faced with humiliation. But The Fantastique Guys, a 12-piece band, never […]
Ferial Haffajee As former law and order minister Adriaan Vlok came clean before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week, a smaller act of absolution was happening in Potchefstroom. Willem Boshoff, a destitute 58-year- old, has apologised to journalists Laurence Gandar and Benjamin Pogrund for his role in a trial which chalked up a dark […]
Anthea Garman experienced the !Xoe Site Specific exhibition around Nieu Bethesda in the Karoo `Do you have a believable sense of place?” is the simple, cheeky, and only bit of written information about the first installation we stop to see outside Nieu Bethesda. This is artwork number five by Marco Cianfanelli and we’ve chosen to […]