Smoking cigarettes can prevent breast cancer in women carrying rare genes that predispose them to the disease, suggests a highly controversial new study. An international team, co-ordinated by Steven Narod of the Women’s College hospital in Toronto, looked at the relationship between lifestyle and breast cancer in more than 300 women with inherited mutations in […]
Phillip Kakaza Jazz A brand-new Cosac Jazz Inn, in the heart of Yeoville, Johannesburg, promises to bring back some vibrancy to Rockey Street, an area doomed as a hideout for the “lost generation”. It’s a controversial street that, through the years, saw many such clubs fading away, leaving jazz enthusiasts floating around in search of […]
Mungo Soggot A Canadian mining company has accused De Beers of trying to hijack its rights to mine a lucrative diamond field in the Northern Province. The company, Southern Era Resources, also believes old-guard government officials have conspired against its bid for a mining permit at the Marsfontein field. De Beers apparently passed over the […]
FRIDAY, 4.30PM: A SHORTAGE shortage of cash for the maintenance of Eastern Cape schools has resulted in the loss this week of St Johns College Hostel by fire, and a second school being closed as a health hazard. The Daily Dispatch reported this week that the hostel was a result of the pupils having to […]
Iden Wetherell A banking crisis is followed by economic collapse. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) steps in with a harsh rescue package. Student-led anti-corruption protests precipitate the fall of a dictator whose rule has only recently been praised as providing regional stability. Zimbabwe may at first glance appear far removed from Indonesia. But recent events […]
Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon Say what you like, the African National Congress is proving itself a paragon of what many modern democratic governments should strive to become. No more so is this ranking emphasised than in the ANC’s great resilience and, with that, fortitude, vision, determination, tenacity, sheer nerve and, when all else fails, that […]
Ruaridh Nicoll He may be yellow, non-existent and have deformed hands, but Bart Simpson, cartoon dude most excellent, is one of Time magazine’s 20 most influential artists and entertainers of our century. The American news magazine has released its second top 20 list, this time looking at the arts, in the run- up to naming […]
Ann Eveleth The highest bidder for resort parastatal Aventura instructed attorneys this week to force Minister of Public Enterprises Stella Sigcau to back down from her decision to choose the buyer before a parliamentary debate on the sale. Parliament’s public enterprises portfolio committee this week also accused Sigcau of “pre-empting the activities of Parliament” and […]
Jacques Pauw, who implicated Ferdi Barnard in the murder of David Webster, reflects on the failure of the law to put away those who sent him to kill It was in the autumn of 1992 that I came face to face with Ferdinand Barnard for the first time. I had stood outside his Roodepoort home, […]
Bongani Siqoko World Cup fever has hit South Africa harder than the Sydney flu, and businesses are cashing in on the frenzy of fans. When Bafana Bafana open their World Cup campaign on June 12, they will be one of the best-dressed teams in the tournament, says Kappa South Africa marketing director Sthe Buthelezi. The […]
John Reader’s Africa: ABiography of the Continent is one of the titles shortlisted for The Sunday Times’s Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction, the winner of which will be announced on Friday June 5. The other shortlisted titles are From Protest to Challenge, Vol V, by Thomas Karis and Gail Gerhart, Mokoko: The Makgoba Affair by […]
ruins Amid Renamo ruins At sunrise, Chief Nchiri invokes the ancestors. Sitting with the chief around a sacred pakassa tree are seven men, barefoot and bare-chested. Nchiri has a white cloth draped around his waist. Nchiri explains to the ancestors that builders from Beira want to demolish the ruined houses of Maringu. Many people died […]
Poverty, abuse, addiction and fear drive many women to sex work, writes Swapna Prabhakaran Durban in autumn is viciously deceptive. The sun still shines as if it were summer, but the wind comes in off the ocean, picks up grit and sand, and stings like ice-cold splinters wherever it touches flesh. On Durban’s beachfront there […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby When Geoff Cooke was England’s coach in the glory days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he had a phrase that used to come out whenever journalists believed that a player had been unfairly discarded. “The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” he would say. It is interesting to speculate whether […]
Shaun de Waal Ken Barris has won the R50 000 M-Net Book Prize in the English category for his novel The Jailer’s Book, published by Kagiso. The win was somewhat unexpected by the author, who said, “Iwas surprised – and grateful for the acknowledgement, bearing in mind how long it took to get the book […]
Tim Radford A heredity that helps some mountaineers breathe easily at Everest heights and keeps young soldiers at peak fitness could soon answer questions about heart disease and stroke. A team of British scientists revealed last week that in life’s genetic poker game, they may have identified the Ace hand for athletes. Ace stands for […]
Adam Haupt On show in Cape Town There are many truths out there which still have to be told. Some of these truths never make it through official channels and are lost forever. But District Six Museum’s organic connection with Cape Town is seeing to it that the tyranny of the master- narratives of history […]
Alex Dodd Backing down whiskies in preparation for provocative choreographer Robyn Orlin’s Orpheus … I Mean Euridice … I Mean the Natural History of a Chorus Girl, I overhear embarrassed whispers: “What did Orpheus do again? My mythology’s so kak.” About one minute into the show I guess that a refined understanding of Greek mythology […]
Andy Capostagno The row over who really won the Super 12, the Canterbury Crusaders or the referees, refuses to die down. It seems that whereas in the past, a chorus of “Who’s the bastard in the black” to the tune of Guide Me Oh Thou Great Redeemer was deemed sufficient to let the man in […]
Ferial Haffajee The title might be A Grave Called Home if the homeless who make their shelters in city graveyards could sell their script to a movie-maker. Their stories range from the macabre and heart-wrenching to the downright comical – like that of the squatter couple who made headlines last week when they were spotted […]
row Cotton is the only cash income for peasants in Maringu. A farmer who grew the average of 300kg per hectare earned about R450 last year. With this, families need to buy whatever they do not grow or make themselves. As the cotton is being harvested, expectation hangs in the air. Families picking the crop […]
Krisjan Lemmer With less than a year to go before the centenary of the Anglo-Boer War, there has been muttering in the Dorsbult Bar about the belated discovery by the Brits that Lord Herbert Kitchener, the war hero, was a bit of a cad. The BBC’s Reputations series appears to have stumbled upon the fact […]
Nedlac has come to the negotiation table with a proposal which could keep teachers in their classrooms, reports Sechaba ka’Nkosi A last-minute proposal tabled by the National Economic Development and Labour Council (Nedlac) to the government and the South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (Sadtu) could prevent the country’s biggest teacher strike next week. The strike […]
Ferial Haffajee The bid to challenge the country’s first private television licence hung by a thread this week. The powerful Free to Air consortium has lost the support of Primedia for its court battle, and the industry is speculating that two other shareholders will withdraw their support. Rival bidders for the lucrative licence earlier indicated […]
Mungo Soggot The state tea company has quietly axed its managing director after a disciplinary inquiry headed by a retired high court judge found him guilty of financial impropriety. Sapekoe suspended Mike Cherry three months ago and fired him last week. The low-profile company has clung to its apartheid-era penchant for secrecy and sought to […]
Neil Manthorp Cricket As far as records show, there were no Bears in the South African touring sides that sailed for England in 1924, 1929 or 1960, the only three occasions on which South Africa have played England at Edgbaston before. In 11 series against the colonisers, the colonised have won just three – and […]
Charlene Smith Winter is here, time to escape, and there are a number of excellent travel deals available whether you want to stay in South Africa or travel abroad. Seekers Travel says Nationwide Sabena is offering fares from Johannesburg to Cape Town almost half those of its competitors, at R906 return, while to Durban and […]
The prospect of state schools closing their doors to the nation’s children next week is undoubtedly the biggest crisis this country has faced in four years of democratic government. The signs are everywhere that education has come off the rails; should there be a strike now, this schooling year might just as well be written […]
John Hooper Human rights observers were last week given a rare glimpse into the workings of one of the world’s least known – and least savoury – regimes. In Malabo, the capital of theEformer Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea, 117 people went on trial accused of separatist violence. The defendants, many of whom face the […]
theNet Mukoni T Ratshitanga A Singapore-based agency which sells customers “camouflaged” bank accounts, driver’s licences and college degrees is also selling “Southern African passports and identity documents” on the Internet. The agency, Expat World Special Services, offers in the June edition of its monthly newsletter “an official Southern African Government Immigration Program” which gives permanent […]
warfare Stewart Dalby It is my wife’s birthday soon, and going through a catalogue from the London auctioneers, Bonham’s, has given me an original idea for a present. I work at home and look after the children. My wife goes to the office. In the evenings I moan about bringing up children without help and […]
Tangeni Amupadhi Superintendent Jan Brink religiously abides by the proverb that the early bird catches the worm. He says it is the only way he can catch crooked cops napping. So he was up before the crack of dawn on Wednesday morning, travelling to Soweto, Roodepoort and Krugersdorp. His team arrested police in a surprise […]