Brett Hilton-Barber Racial differences between people may be a more recent phenomenon than was previously believed. In a paper presented to the Dual Congress of Human Biology and Palaeontology at Sun City this week, renowned academic Dr Christopher Stringer suggested that white skin colour probably emerged only 30 000 years ago. This is some 30 […]
Brenda Atkinson On show in Pretoria Fernando Alvim speaks a language not readily associated with contemporary South African art. For one thing, it seems not to be artful. It is aware of theory, of art history, but bounces back to these only for cursory back-up of an emotional point. It is lyrical, expressionist, if you […]
Anastasia does for history what Bambi did for nature – simplifies it beyond reality, writes Nicci Gerrard I have a dream: that Karl Marx – whose Communist Manifesto was published almost exactly 150 years ago – should come with me to see Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox’s latest offering, Anastasia, which launches Fox Animation Studios, […]
Paul Martin Wimbledon The weight of Wimbledon has, literally, frustrated Wayne Ferreira’s quest for glory on what should be his best surface – grass. He is complaining not so much about the weight of his own expectations, but rather about the heaviness of the tennis balls now being used in the men’s game. This is […]
Swapna Prabhakaran A quiet and mostly unseen battle has been raging for months around KwaZulu-Natal’s waste dumps. Two waste dumps were officially closed down last year and another collapsed in a disaster that left the province with a hazardous waste-disposal crisis. The chaos began after floods and mudslides last September wreaked havoc with the province’s […]
South African Airways (SAA) flights on the London route appear to be full of fun. First there was the couple copulating in business class. Now there is the strange story of the berserk poet. A court in the United Kingdom has been hearing evidence of how the poet, one John Bagwell, aged 42, erupted into […]
Scholar Apollon Davidson is a living link between Russia and South Africa, writes Shaun de Waal The histories of South Africa and Russia are curiously intertwined, going all the way back to Jan van Riebeeck. In his journal, the first official colonist expressed the desire for help from a Russian with experience in the exploitation […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby What do you say about South Africa 96, Wales 13? It’s difficult to get a true sense of perspective when one team has scored 15 tries and yet is disappointed about not cracking the 100 barrier. Perspective comes with distance and on Saturday I was not at Loftus Versfeld, but at the […]
Andrew Worsdale Grey Hofmeyr is a great guy, and honestly, I’m not sucking up (I had a cameo part in Suburban Bliss). Straight and to the point with an affable and very South African manner about him, he sits behind a large desk in Henley Studios at Auckland Park, with a monitor beside him. He […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon When your weekend newspaper starts to depress your spirits, don’t just reach out automatically for the brandy bottle or the Prozac, there are easier ways to shed the gloom. An excellent selection of low comedy is to be enjoyed merely by turning to the Appointments section in the paper. Reading through […]
Mercedes Sayagues A SECOND LOOK The news of Alioune Blondin Beye’s death in a plane crash found me writing in my mind an angry letter to the Mail & Guardian, prompted by its latest stories on Angola. My anger was not about the stories nor directed to Beye (although nothing bad is said about the […]
Oxford University Press (OUP)has relaunched its paperback World’s Classics series, a handsome and sturdy set of the best of Europe’s voluminous literature (with some American and Asian works thrown in, too). The titles reach back to Mesopotamia thousands of years ago and forward to James Joyce’s Ulysses. The series features sacred texts such as the […]
How was Wired magazine to have known that Godzilla would prove such a flop? With a three-month lead time, the United States’s pre-eminent futurists are bound to make a few wrong guesses. Putting Godzilla on their June cover, in anticipation that the flick would live up to its hype, probably seemed like a good bet. […]
leaders SACP Gauteng: RIGHT TO REPLY Sechaba ka’Nkosi’s article, “SACP split over who will lead” (June 19 to 25) uses the politburo meeting held on June 16 as a basis for so-called disunity. From our understanding of South African Communist Party procedures, nominations start at branch level, then go to districts and are finalised at […]
Leonard Doyle John Sweeney and Peter Beaumont Algeria is the winner of an alternative world cup – for the worst abuser of human rights. The garland of dishonour emerges from findings in The Observer’s Human Rights Index, launched to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With the backing of a […]
Angella Johnson: VIEW FROM A BROAD Me, jump out of a plane at 3 000m? You must be joking. No way! Not this side of life. I could not have emphasised the point more strongly when my editor suggested, with an evil grin, that I try skydiving for this column. I gave him one of […]
Suzy Bell On show in Durban Never has Jung been so playful, and yet so arresting. Last Tango in Heaven, produced by Durban’s pioneering Backlash Theatre Company, was written by that most underrated Pretoria playwright, Mario Scheiss. He wrote the play in four days and then, dramatically, on June 2, at the age of 64, […]
Peter Makurube You would need to be an incurable optimist to believe you’d ever see Philippe Troussier smile. But he did, when Bafana Bafana played Denmark. If you blinked you probably missed it. You’d have to be as much of an optimist to have believed that Tananas, one of South Africa’s best and most successful […]
Charl Blignaut On stage in Johannesburg Pieter Toerien’s Alhambra theatre is the perfect setting for a South African staging of Alan Ayckbourne’s classic Absurd Person Singular. It’s a trademark Ayckbourne nudge-nudge wink-wink; “oh-don’t-worry- about-Tom-he’s-out-there-playing-with-Dick kind of farce”, and the three couples that inhabit the three kitchens during three Christmas eve parties in the play are […]
Elaine Showalter This year a television cartoon character named Stressed Eric has been appealing to the modern psyche as the new Everyman. Hamlet had melancholy, Jimmy Porter was an angry young man and Eric has stress. From the time he gets up in the morning till he collapses in bed at night, Eric is pressured, […]
Wonder Hlongwa A former mayor of Pongola in KwaZulu-Natal has been made to pay King Goodwill Zwelithini a fine of 25 cattle to apologise for referring to him as “a certain man”. Derrick Sutherland, a Pongola businessman, delivered the cattle to the king’s Khangela palace in Nongoma this week to apologise for “not respecting the […]
Shaun de Waal On tour On the new Tic Tic Bang! album, Low Riding, two of South Africa’s best young singer- songwriter-guitarists combine their talents to create what could well be the local album of the year. Matthew van der Want and Chris Letcher have meshed to make a multifaceted work full of surprises, an […]
Who is . . . Sarah Amin? Nick Hopkins and Giles Foden The last time Sarah Kyolaba Amin commanded this much attention, her life was different. As the fifth wife of the former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, she lived in splendour and travelled the world meeting dignitaries. She was even granted an audience with the […]
Sherilee Bridge Accusations of espionage in the cellular industry have done little to fuel confidence in the two network operators, MTN and Vodacom. They have been slammed for “petty infighting” while the market cries for reduced service costs. In a bid for market leadership just months before the possible introduction of a third network operator, […]
FRIDAY, 8.30AM: DEPUTY President Thabo Mbeki on Thursday added his voice to Wednesday’s criticism by President Nelson Mandela of the South African Communist Party. Addressing the SACP’s 10th annual congress, Mbeki berated the party for the ease with which it has levelled “charges of treachery” against the African National Congress, adding that the ANC does […]
President Nelson Mandela’s comments at the opening of the South African Communist Party conference that the growth, economic and redistribution (Gear) stratety is the fundamental policy of the African National Congress and that he will brook no opposition to it is just the latest sign of the ANC’s irritation at public criticism from its own […]
Brenda Atkinson I am no fan of sport. I don’t give a toss for its nation-building bumf, I begrudge it its unreserved corporate support, and it brings out the misanthrope in me. But put Bafana Bafana on the box and I’m all patriotic pride and good humour. I get butch and yell things like, “Why […]
South African photographer David Goldblatt’s exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this month. Alex Dodd speaks to him about the structure of things now and then The thing that sticks in my mind about that first conversation with photographer David Goldblatt is his insistence on the absence of a colon. […]
Neil Manthorp Cricket The stomach churns, the vision blurs periodically, the fear of a failure so instant, and finite, paralyses the instincts and movements that have been second nature for years. Very few men, at any senior level, have opened the batting without experiencing these emotions. Many have suffered worse. It is quite possible to […]
Donna Block European markets jumped ahead. Asia hit an 11-year low. The Athens exchange has a positive outlook ahead of privatisation, while the Heng Seng has lost 2% of its value. Welcome to the stock markets of the world. What does it all mean and what is the Heng Seng anyway? The Heng Seng is […]
Brett Hilton-Barber `I’m an expert in dating early man,” said an American woman. She looked around the conference room where hundreds of scientists were mingling amid fake rocks and designer bushman paintings, and caught the eye of her palaeontologist husband. “That’s my early man,” she smiled. “You could say we’re still dating.” The couple were […]
FRIDAY, 5.00PM: THE South African Broadcasting Corporation on Friday confirmed that it fired newly appointed broadcasting strategy CE Govin Reddy on Thursday following an angry meeting with the SABC board on Wednesday. Although there was an indication on Friday morning that Reddy is planning to take legal action against the SABC, spokesman Marj Murray on […]