Staff Reporter

Experts are aiming to tap Africa’s massive underground resources to tackle the continent’s water crisis.

US attorney Ed Fagan said he planned to initiate a class action lawsuit in the US against Switzerland’s two biggest banks and a US bank on behalf of victims of South Africa’s former apartheid regime.

Ian Tasman It’s that time of year when people take stock, be it in the form of a year-end bonus for the lucky ones or, for the others, just a general look at their mental and physical health. Amazingly, another year has come to an end, and as we slowly move from the office to […]

music Alex Sudheim 330, 330 Point Road. Durban’s legendary nightclub keeps the serious dance faction in business with the heaviest rig and the wildest parties in town. On Friday December 21 cult international electronic outfit Kosheen perform, featuring special guests Simon Mills and Nail Tolliday from Bent playing their world-famous DJ sets. Kosheen come from […]

Sex, suicide, scandal and defecation on the Big Brother set. It’s been business as unusual in the cultural industries this year February 14: Piano genius Moses”Taiwa” Molelekwa is found hanging from a beam near his wife and business partner Florence Mthoba, also dead but without visible injuries. Friends and associates reflect how”he could not conquer […]

Watching sport was put into perspective by the September 11 attacks Gavin Evans Any history of 2001 has to start with September 11, and so it is with sport. The impact of three aeroplanes on two towers and one military command centre may have no connection with fairways and fields, baseball diamonds and boxing rings, […]

music Miles Keylock 0932, 79 Main Road, Green Point. On Sunday December 23 join Pam Demenezes and her quartet Kevin Gibson (drums), Andrew Lilley (piano) and Darryll Andrews (bass). On December 30 Afro-jazzy world-music combo Tsunami features some of South Africa’s future jazz icons, including Max Mikula on guitar, Brendan Ou Tim on bass, Peter […]

How many of the year’s events can you remember? 1 Name the new”peace park” straddling the Kruger National Park, Mozambique’s Coutada 16 and Zimbabwe’s Gonarezhou? 2 In what cities would you find the eThekwini, Msunduzi and Tshwane councils? 3Which club from South Africa won the 27th edition of the African Cup winners’ cup, also known […]

There are many stories about the whims of Czar Nicholas I. One of them concerns the railway line between St Petersburg and Moscow, which was opened in 1851, towards the end of his reign, and is still in use today. The line was remarkably straight except for a pronounced kink about 160km from St Petersburg […]

Phaswane Mpe on life in Hillbrow You alight from a minibus taxi in Noord Street, Johannesburg, for the first time in your life. Suddenly, you feel that there is a problem. Only, you are not sure whether you are the problem or the problem is around you. You remember what you were told when you […]

Fiona Macleod In the reality game that people play on the planet, South Africans have evicted more than 50 species and nominated hundreds more for eviction. We also have a fair number of popular favourites voted to win the survival race. An ambitious report being prepared for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development shows […]

South Africa and the global economy Andrew Feinstein When I arrived at the University of Cambridge to undertake postgraduate studies in economics, a famed post-Keynesian professor asked me where I had done my undergraduate economics. I responded that I hadn’t, that my first two degrees had been in clinical psychology.”A far better training for studying […]

Suzan Chala meets Funky Ngobeni, one of thousands of young children forced to support their family Every second day after school 13-year-old Joe Ngobeni fetches water for villagers from a well an hour and a half away. Funky his mother called him that charges 50c for 25 litres of water. He says he carries about […]

There are, these days, supposed to be no victims no living ones, anyway. There are only survivors. There are rape survivors, Aids survivors, racism survivors, assault survivors you name it. I am an African National Congress survivor. Only the dead, it seems, can now respectably lay claim to having been victims. And the dead, as […]

SOCCER Ntuthuko Maphumulo It’s an African Champions’ League final that has all the ingredients of greatness. If Sundowns can upset the form book and get a victory in Egypt on Friday they will earn the respect of the whole continent and pocket more than R10-million. To emulate Orlando Pirates the only South African club so […]

RUGBY’SYEARIN REVIEW Andy Capostagno A traumatic year for Springbok rugby began with a false dawn. The Sharks and the Cats played each other in the semifinal of the Super 12, a fact that not only prompted talk of South African teams having finally come to terms with the competition, but guaranteed one of them a […]

channel vision Robert Kirby This is the last column of the year and, as is the habit of columnists, I take a fearful look across the year behind us to see what really stood out in television. No prizes for guessing that the coverage of the World Trade Center attacks was the winner in a […]

It has been a war fought like no other hi-tech,one-sided and very rapid. The Afghan campaign will revolutionise the way we think about conflict Paul Harris and Gaby Hinsliff in London, Ed Vulliamy in New York, Peter Beaumont in Quetta and Jason Burke in Jalalabad Hamid Karzai stood outside the ancient walls of Kandahar and […]

Maggie Davey On certain days when all is right with the world, and the sun tilts at a fine angle, it can make sense to know that Frank Sinatra’s favourite colour was orange. Or that practically every item in the TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century had rounded edges and art deco design […]

David Macfarlane and Mungo Soggot Kanthan Pillay, a top executive at e.tv, has lodged a criminal defamation charge against noseweek editor Martin Welz for an in-depth analysis entitled”Backstage with the pricks and big dicks at e.tv”. Among other things, the article broached the alleged sexual antics of e.tv bosses, and the station’s allegedly dictatorial and […]

Batting rather than bowling is now South Africa’s strength Peter Robinson Herschelle Gibbs started the year with a duck. He ends it with more than 1 000 Test runs to his name (and still two Tests against Australia to come in this calendar). In many respects the re-emergence of Gibbs has mirrored a gradual shift […]

Derek Bauer (47), left, whose savage cartoons elevated the tone of The Weekly Mail for many years, died at the weekend in a car crash near Kleinmond on his way to deliver presents to friends. An artist who worked with ad agencies, he joined the Mail six weeks after its launch in 1985. “He gave […]

comment John Stremlau With the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the United States has begun to think seriously about the next phase in its global war against terrorism. This should spur all other countries with stakes in the anti-terror campaign to review their options. For South Africans three issues stand out. l What action […]

… From pantos to Boney M. Thebe Mabanga on what we can look forward to this season Bad entertainment is as much a feature of the season to be merry as is long-distance travelling and expensive wine in celebrating the birth of a Jewish boy who changed society in only 33 years. In subtle form […]

Thabo Mohlala The National Intelligence Services and the South African national gliding team are involved in a row after the NIS cancelled a booking made by the team ahead of the world championships in Mafikeng in December. Team manager Quintin Maine says this threw their plans into disarray. He says as the host nation and […]

Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot Cell C was tight-lipped this week about its settlement with three businessmen who in a bizarre lawsuit accused the cellular operator’s Saudi owners of not paying them a $2-million”success fee” for helping to secure its licence. The settlement with Cell C’s owner, Saudi Oger, was struck with Alfred Oosthuizen, formerly […]

Soccer administrators must play the game Ntuthuko Maphumulo South Africa’s soccer fortunes will fall faster than the rand next year if South African Football Association (Safa) and Premier Soccer League (PSL) administrators do not act fast. The cracks are already showing within Safa over who signed the deal that gave all marketing rights of Bafana […]

Who is this Father Christmas guy, and how is it that he exerts such hypnotic power? asks John Matshikiza I don’t know where the whole thing started. But it would be discourteous, in this season of good cheer, to point fingers at any other member of the family. Suffice it to say that, somewhere between […]

We need to start listening to the world anew. Our survival may depend on it, writes Natasha Mostert Among the many grotesque edicts of Afghanistan’s Taliban mullahs, the ban on music ranked as one of the most incomprehensible. The idea that someone could be flogged for whistling a tune or clapping to a beat boggles […]

Pat Hopkins A nude reclines on a palm-fringed beach. Another plays the sax for leering men. A lap dance. A blow job. A village orgy. In each of these murals is a khuwana a beer-pot. The N1 the Great North Road from Cape to Cairo winds through the affluent eastern suburbs of Pretoria before straightening […]