Staff Reporter

Deion Sanders is a great footballer, a mean baseball slugger, a reformed womaniser, a born-again Christian (surprise) and a top shoe salesman. Hes nursing a bad divorce |and a worse injury. George Kimball reports on a hectic start to the NFL season On a recent Sunday morning the parishioners of an Atlanta church were the […]

Sarafina II Minister of Housing Sankie Mthembi- Mahanyele blithely claimed this week that the auditor generals report on the Motheo housing project scam cleared both her and her department of any wrongdoing. Her interpretation suggests that either she didnt actually read the report or she chose to overlook its salient features. The auditor general found […]

Amway has arrived in South Africa. Its products may work but the marketing is a minefield for the uninitiated, warns Andrew Worsdale On June 20, at 3.13pm, my household (or at least my PC) received unsolicited e-mail from Australia. Id never heard of the correspondent, nor sent unbidden cyber-mail to him. It said: I am […]

jackpot David Davies : Golf Mark OMeara, who at 40 has never won a major championship and yet is riotously rich, thinks players should be paid for playing in the Ryder Cup. The American, who in eight games in three Ryder Cup matches has won twice, said in Paris this week: I think the whole […]

Chris McGreal in Nairobi It was all so familiar to more sceptical Kenyans. Under pressure from a disgruntled electorate at home and suspicious governments abroad, President Daniel arap Moi appeared to give away the store by agreeing to sweeping reforms before this years general election. The government talked of a great moment in Kenyas history. […]

Raincoats are the only protection schoolchildren in Meadowlands have from the clouds of dust that blow off a disused slimes dam, writes Ferial Haffajee The children wear raincoats. Not to keep out the rain, but to ward off the dust. It blows and then settles everywhere. In the ceilings, on the rose-bushes and in the […]

Dan Glaister What makes a movie star? Not glamorous looks, acting ability or charisma, according to the readers of the film magazine Empire. In a massive poll to choose the top 100 movie stars of all time, they plumped for the laconic attitude and sloppy charm of Harrison Ford. The list favours actors who are […]

Greg Bowes Im whisked off without a notebook and completely unprepared to meet New Yorks deejaying legend Frankie Knuckles. Inside Johannesburgs South Station Stuart Hs opening set thunders along like a steam train and the kids parade around in expensive labels and somehow still manage to look completely bland. In a room behind the DJ […]

FRIDAY, 3.30PM TRUTH and Reconciliation Commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu and new National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk met for an hour on Friday morning to discuss relations between the NP and the TRC, although there was no immediate out of court settlement. However, both men described the meeting as constructive and said discussions will […]

An international research group, including South African astronomer Dr John Menzies, has discovered what may be two Jupiter-like planets circling suns thousands of light years away. The Planet team, which involves observatories all over the world, measures the variations in brightness of selected stars near the centre of our galaxy. Certain kinds of variations, called […]

One of the longest-standing puzzles of the universe could soon be solved, writes Marcus Chown In the 1960s, American spy satellites stumbled across something that no Pentagon strategist had ever predicted: a mysterious signal coming from the depths of space. The satellites, in orbit to catch the Russians if they violated the test-ban treaty by […]

Maria McCloy : In your ear There are signs that Gautengs second Muslim radio station, The Voice, is very different from South Africas other Muslim stations. Two stations in Cape Town have proved extremely popular, while Durban has a couple in the pipeline and Gauteng boasts Radio Islam. Shamima Shaikh, chair of The Muslim Community […]

The war in Angola is over, and the rebuilding has supposedly begun. But the people of this vast country are a long way from normal life, writes Mercedes Sayagues Such an odd sight: a woman pushing a brand- new, lavender-coloured, padded pushchair, more at home in a Johannesburg shopping mall than in a dusty quartering […]

Steve Morris : Rugby It is one of the enigmas of the game of rugby that sides with all the potential and all the resources do not necessarily turn out to be the winners. This is certainly the case with this seasons Currie Cup. There are any number of individual cases to choose from that […]

Robert Kirby : Loose cannon The last time I risked entering a South African airport lavatory without wearing protective clothing was at Port Elizabeth and it was the business class one. Not too bad. Before that was about seven months ago and was at Johannesburg International Airport. Remember that famous foul bogger in Trainspotting? Well, […]

FRIDAY, 12.00NOON: GAUTENG Lions and Gauteng Falcons meet in a Bankfin Currie Cup match at Ellis Park Stadium on Saturday. Many believe the match will be like a reunion of Rand Afrikaans University (RAU) as both teams have a number of RAU players in their team lists. There are 11 RAU players in the Lions’ […]

FRIDAY, 12.00NOON: FORMER Zimbabwean national goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar and Hans Segers could face life bans after being charged by the UK Football Association on Thursday with breaking football’s betting rules following the evidence they both gave at their trial on match-fixing charges. Grobbelaar, Segers and Aston Villa striker John Fashanu were last month cleared of […]

Swapna Prabhakaran meets Jean Franois Duroure, choreographer with a mission A Frenchman walks into a hostel in Jeppe, Johannesburg, and asks the Zulu workers there to show him how they dance. It sounds like the beginning of a Van der Merwe joke but Jean Franois Duroure, a dancer- choreographer with a mission, did this one […]

Holidays in hell: Profits count more than life and limb for some tour operators Ellen Bartlett World Leisure Holidays, the package tour division of Sun International, describes Les Comores as ?magical, mystical … the last of the unspoilt islands?. No doubt they are, or would be, were it not for the minor matter of simmering […]

Wally Mbhele With less than a week before Winnie Madikizela-Mandela faces a special Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigative inquiry, it has emerged she is linked to 18 cases of gross human rights violations including abduction, assault and murder. The subpoena summoning her to the in-camera hearing at a secret venue in Johannesburg next Thursday calls […]

FRIDAY, 3.00PM ONE of the country’s most wanted men was arrested on Friday morning in connection with a series of murders and other acts of violence in the Richmond area of KwaZulu-Natal, police said. Spokesman Director Reg Crewe confirmed that Skumbuza Patrick Ndlovu, 30, known in the Richmond area as “Comrade Bob”, was arrested at […]

Hadass Segal : Unspoilt places The road from Chipata to Zambias South Luangwa National Park is both a blessing and a curse. Just as you dislodge your stomach from your mouth, another pothole puts it right back for you. But it certainly is worth getting there. The fact that only 4x4s and overland trucks can […]

Gustav Thiel A special task team investigating murder, corruption and cover-ups by police in the Northern Cape say their efforts will come to naught because they implicate the commissioner of police, Johan Deyzel, in their report. The most serious allegation probed by the team involves 1994 claims by policemen that a disused Kimberley mine-shaft which […]

Harry Joyce in Oslo and Ian Black in London The United States has spurned intense pressure to back a worldwide ban on anti- personnel landmines, saying its security would be compromised if it signed a treaty hailed as a victory for humanity and a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales. The treaty, negotiated in the […]

Gustav Thiel The contention by Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi that serious crime has decreased has been challenged by the Institute for Security Studies, which says there is undoubtedly a rise in crime. Mufamadi based his optimism on crime figures for the first six months of the year, released last week. The figures […]

Christopher Zinn An odd sign adorns the entrance to the small national park on Norfolk Island, a tiny island in the middle of the South Pacific. It reads: ?Yorlye Cum Look Orn,? which, in the rich Norfolk language of 18th-century English and Tahitian, means: ?Do come and have a look.? And well you might, for […]

The ANC in the Western Cape did not jump. It was pushed. Andy Duffy reports The African National Congress in the Western Cape is struggling to justify a decision that has opened the door to the partys eviction from the provincial Cabinet. Senior party members are putting a positive spin on the ousting, talking about […]

Glenn Adler Cosatus fifth national congress is its most important deliberation since the federation was founded in 1985. It is undertaking a comprehensive, quite critical review of its affairs while debating innovative strategies for achieving its long-standing goals in a new democracy facing the pressures of a global economy. At the centre of the discussion […]

Ann Eveleth Dotted around South Africas exclusive suburbs a string of modern cubic compounds luxurious villas set in flowering gardens house the elite of Mobutu Sese Sekos Zairean kleptocracy. Tucked away with their extended families and domestic entourages behind high walls and electric gates in Sandton, Pretoria and Cape Town, at least 20 of the […]

Brenda Atkinson : Style Faith Popcorn may have a silly name, but this is the woman who coined the term cocooning way back in the 1980s to describe a lifestyle trend that would hit the upwardly mobile in the beleaguered 1990s. Popcorn predicted that in an increasingly confusing and often hostile urban environment, people would […]

In 1982 The Star newspaper published a story exposing the Reverend Allan Boesaks affair with an official of the South African Council of Churches. The story was based upon information fed to it by security police. To justify its decision, the newspaper claimed that it was an expos of the security branchs dirty tricks. Yet […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga and Bongani Siqoko Apartheid?s architect, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, would be turning in his grave. The hospital named after him is now headed by a black woman. Dr Zola Njongwe is chief medical superintendent of Pretoria Academic Hospital ? renamed in April after being HF Verwoed Hospital since the death of the former […]