The intricate workings of the brain require a neurotransmitter called serotonin to function properly – too little leads to depression, too much causes unreal feelings of bliss Laura Grant DEPRESSION has been called the common cold of emotional life and Prozac, with worldwide sales of more than $2-billion and popped down the gullets of an […]
FIVE lucky readers of the M&G’s books pages are winners in our giveaway of Edmund White’s brand new novel, The Farewell Symphony, published by Chatto &Windus. They are:Rose Cohen, Killarney; YFrame, Riviera; RHLloyd, Botha’s Hill; Mahluli Mngadi, Seapoint; and Kopano Ratele, Rondebosch. Congratulations and happy reading -your books are on their way to you. Look […]
SOCCER: Andrew Muchineripi JUST one month after the leg-weary footballers of South Africa were given a long-overdue break, the call to action has been sounded for the annual Iwisa Charity Spectacular at FNB Stadium on Saturday. Title holders Kaizer Chiefs face Sundowns in the first semi-final at 10am, followed by Orlando Pirates and Moroka Swallows […]
Muslim and Jewish leaders are united in their interpretation of this week’s petrol bombing in the Cape, report Rehana Rossouw and Gustav Thiel THE petrol-bomb attack on a Cape Jewish centre succeeded this week in uniting local Muslim and Jewish leaders in the belief that the culprits used a bizarre incident in Israel as a […]
Government ministries have to develop a comprehensive jobs plan in time for the October summit, reports Madeleine Wackernagel WHILE the furore over the Basic Conditions of Employment Bill continues unabated, the Minister of Labour Tito Mboweni will have his hands full in the next two months with an additional task: overseeing the development of a […]
FRIDAY, 10.25AM: THE Springboks will tackle New Zealand in the Tri-nations rugby match at Ellis Park stadium on Saturday. South Africa has won only three of the 10 matches they have played against the All Blacks since their readmision into international rugby in 1992. “That factor is playing more on the minds of the experienced […]
Now that the lights have been turned off and the circus has left town, it’s time to take a stone-cold sober look at the 1997 Standard Bank 1997 Standard Bank National Arts Festival. What went down in G’town … Gwen Ansell AFRICAN music started to look like hot property at the Grahamstown Festival – but […]
ON any scorecard of the death sentence, the late Judge B O’Donovan handed down more death sentences than any of his colleagues. In a three-year period he sent 25 prisoners to be hanged, and in his career he handed down 39 death sentences. On the other hand, one judge, NM McArthur, never sent a single […]
close Gustav Thiel GROOTE SCHUUR Hospital’s famed heart transplant unit could close down within months if government and private funding continue to dry up. Its existence is endangered because the cardio-thoracic unit, of which it forms a part, is under the financial whip. The government is concentrating on primary health care, and discussions about wider […]
listening The wind-up radio is finally available in SA after being produced for export only, reports Madeleine Wackernagel THE story of the wind-up radio is one of ironies. It took a South African company to realise its potential after its British inventor had no luck selling his idea in the rest of the world, but […]
FRIDAY, 10.50AM: The four rebel rugby unions who opposed the new Super-12 system accepted it on Thursday, ending the crisis in the competition. SA Rugby Football Union president Louis Luyt met the four unions’ presidents — Keith Parkinson of Natal, Harold Verster of Free State, Hentie Serfontein of Northern Transvaal and Ronnie Masson of Western […]
FRIDAY, 12.30PM FORMER British MP Emma Nicholson, who has been sheltering Katiza Cebekhulu, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela’s kidnapping co-accused who was abducted and carried to Zambia to prevent him testifying against Madikizela-Mandela, said this week in London that she is to travel to SA in September and offered an interview to the truth commission. Nicholson, who has […]
FRIDAY, 8.30AM THE National Party lost control of Pretoria City Council — once the party’s bastion — when 10 councillors including former mayors Nico Stofberg and Piet Olivier resigned from the party on Thursday. The 10 said they will join Roelf Meyer’s New Movement Process, as they “have now finally come to the conclusion that […]
A new generation of central bankers, unfamiliar with the perils of high inflation, could prompt a new rush for the security of gold if the present obsession with paper money turns sour, warns Dan Atkinson in London THE scramble out of gold by the world’s central banks is not novel. We have sat through this […]
THESE considerately crafted little numbers come from Waldeck Studios – a 3-D design company founded by artist Ian Waldeck. The company designs and crafts anything from sculptural objects to architectural components, to the odd pair of handcuffs. These particular toys were commissioned, says Waldeck, by a friend in engineering, who asked him to assemble something […]
Journalists in Somalia have to be wary … before publishing by photocopier. ALEX BELLOS reports from Mogadishu THE press in Britain is often referred to as the fourth estate. In Somalia – where uniquely there has been no government for six years – it is definitely the first. Mogadishu is an unlikely place to have […]
FRIDAY, 3.30PM The editor of the Kinshasa daily newspaper La Reference Plus has been interrogated by authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo after the paper reported splits within the new regime. Andre Ipakala was released on Thursday, one day after being detained. He said he underwent a lengthy interrogation over the report on an […]
FRIDAY, 8.00AM DEPUTY PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki called on Johannesburg to become a “truly African city” on Thursday when he launched a R2 billionrevitalisation plan called “Masakhane”, aimed at reversing urban decline and the flight of business from the inner city. Mbeki said the renewal strategy for southern Africa’s largest city should “shift resources from the […]
THE United States helped train the troops who spearheaded the overthrow of Mobutu Seso Seko. US defence and state department officials revealed this week that crack US troops had begun training the Rwandan army in 1994 – just after the rebellion which led to the ascent of that country’s Tutsi-dominated government. The Rwandan army went […]
The EU is happy to sell its highly subsidised products to Africa but is less happy if Africa asks for a similar free- trade deal. Lynda Loxton outlines Alec Erwin’s battle TRADE and Industry Minister Alec Erwin left for Europe this week determined to persuade the European Union (EU) that any trade deal with South […]
ATHLETICS:Julian Drew FOR Frits Potgieter it was never a matter of if but rather when he would break into the big time – and that moment arrived somewhat unceremoniously at a low key athletics meeting in Sheffield, England on Tuesday night. Potgieter added more than two metres to his previous personal best of 61.98m in […]
Andrew Worsdale AT a home-spun award ceremony this week held at the SABC, Mail & Guardian Television’s Harriet Gavshon, Dingaan Thomas Kapa and miner Lucky Mnceke, as well as SABC1’s commissioning editor for documentaries Pat Kelly, were presented with awards by acting manager of SABC1, Theo Erasmus. Ghetto Diaries, that enabled ordinary people to record […]
FINE ART: Brenda Atkinson TITUS MATIYANE stood in the middle of the gallery at a microphone, turned his lips into a pitifully squeaking trumpet, held a tune with his vocal chords and delivered a stinging parody of both South African national anthems. Knowledge to the Visitor opened at the Rembrandt van Rijn Gallery with a […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM THE Workers’ Mouthpeace, the trade union involved in a running war with the National Uniuon of Mineworkers at Anglo American Platinum Mines that has so far claimed eight lives, may have been set up as an elaborate insurance scam. The union, which first appeared after the crippling illegal strike at Amplats last year […]
With Nigeria’s elections dead before the voting has even begun, Wole Soyinka warns the world against falling for the hoax of `democracy’ propagated by Sani Abacha RARELY has so much self-deception been hidden behind doublespeak, as we have been made to marvel at, in the business of commentators on General Sani Abacha’s record in power […]
Hazel Friedman SO what’s a scumbag Eastender like yourself doing in a place like this? I don’t actually get around to asking this of world-famous photographer David Bailey. But on eyeing his jet-lagged lids I get the feeling that he’d much rather deal with inane queries than those of the gee, gosh, wow kind. But […]
Peta Thornycroft STORIES are emerging about the dying days of Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and how South African mercenaries and desperadoes tried to make a quick buck out of the tottering regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. As rebel leader Laurent Kabila’s men prepared their final march on Kinshasa, Mobutu loyalists were in […]
Burundi’s government calls it `regroupment’, but to the thousandsof Hutus chased from their land these places are concentration camps. Chris McGreal reports from Nyarurama, Burundi AMELIE MUVUNI is not a prisoner in the conventional sense. There is no fence to keep her confined to the squalid, overcrowded hillside camp she was herded into by Burundi’s […]
FRIDAY, 10.30AM TRANSPORT Minister Mac Maharaj and his Public Enterprises counterpart Stella Sigcau on Thuesday announced a shortlist of three for the position of adviser on the restructuring of parastatal Airports Company. The shortlisted candidates are: SBC Warburg in partnership with accounting and consulting firm Gobodo; Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank with Morgan Stanley and […]
FRIDAY, 11.00AM: SOME 800 000 Liberian voters head for the polls on Saturday to choose a parliament and a president to govern Africa’s oldest republic, ravaged by a bitter seven-year civil war that has killed more than 150 000 people. A huge West African peacekeeping force from 10 nations has been stationed in Liberia since […]
Deciding on a Gauteng premier is likely to be a nerve-racking process, writes Wally Mbhele TWO candidates are tied in a neck-and-neck challenge for the premiership of Gauteng – and the final outcome is expected this weekend at a meeting of the leaders of the province’s African National Congress and its alliance partners. Arriving at […]
The office of the auditor general has come under attack from the old guard as well as the new – for doing its job properly. Henri Kluever is standing his ground, reports Mungo Soggot THE auditor general, Henri Kluever, has not had much luck with the Ministry of Mineral and Energy Affairs. As he took […]