FIONA MACLEOD, Johannesburg | Friday THE head of Kruger National Park’s game capture unit, Douw Grobler, has been suspended and charged with misconduct relating to the sale of disease-free buffalo. Grobler is a vet who is world-renowned for his expertise in relocating elephants and other large mammals. He is in charge of the park’s Lowveld […]
Robert Kirby CHANNELVISION With the advent of satellite television, those with the wherewithal to buy and have installed dishes, decoders and all the rest of it are offered what seems at first to be a plethora of wonderful entertainment and information. It’s a far cry from the early days of South African television when the […]
Julie Burchill Body Language I don’t “do”, in this order: Germans, blond men, sportsmen or men called Boris. (“Give it to me, Boris!” You couldn’t, could you?) But, should I ever run into the blond German tennis ace Boris Becker, I may well or would, if I weren’t a married woman grab him by his […]
Neal Collins Jamie Bloem, the 30-year-old who captained South Africa at last year’s Rugby League World Cup in England, faces allegations of racial abuse after an incident with a black player in a reserve match. The Halifax Blue Sox utililty player he is a capable kicker used in the back row and as an outside […]
Andy Capostagno South African Rugby Annual 2001 edited by Andy Colquhoun (Sarfu and MWP) The South African Rugby Football Union (Sarfu) is a paranoid beast. So much so that on page two of this annual it states: “The views represented in this annual are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Sarfu.” This […]
Richard Williams For the second time in five days the sun shone on Liverpool’s attempt to win a cup final, this time breaking through in the early evening after cloud and drizzle had shrouded Westphalia all afternoon. Coming 16 years after the Heysel tragedy cast a deep shadow over one of Europe’s leading clubs, this […]
China’s record on human rights is unlikely to affect its chances of getting the 2008 Summer Olympics John Gittings ‘Of course we want the Olympics bid to succeed,” exclaims a Beijing resident. “That way we will get a clean environment and a city worth living in.” The prospect of China hosting its first global sporting […]
The new 112 number will cut across provincial and municipal boundaries and be able to reroute calls to the relevant emergency services Jubie Matlou In less than a year a three-digit telephone number 112 is going to be the country’s common number for the public to access emergency services. The new number will integrate all […]
David Beresford another country The defeat of the recent initiative to have Cape Town’s cathedral corner Adderley and Wale streets named after former presidents Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk comes as a great relief. Attempts to memorialise the living always smack of self-interest. Such tributes are also tainted by an appearance of indecent haste, […]
Mail & Guardian Reporter Banks and other financial institutions have no excuse to refuse loans to people in the low-income category, if survey results released by the National Housing Finance Corporation (NHFC) are anything to go by. The survey, conducted in five provinces, targeted people in the R1 000 to R6 000 monthly income group. […]
It’s almost certainly the beginning of the end for De Beers as a listed firm. But what of the Oppenheimer bid’s strange omissions to shareholders ahead of its victory? Stewart Bailey The bid by the Anglo/Oppenheimer-led DB Investments (DBI) consortium to take De Beers private seems a dead certainty after the South African Reserve Bank […]
whipping boy ‘Horseracing on its last legs” screamed headlines in The Citizen the day after newspapers announced the closure of Newmarket racecourse in Alberton. Yes, it was a slow news week, but the story is not entirely trumped up. Until recently, the cliques that controlled racing from their private dining rooms and bars, while charging […]
Nawaal Deane In a circus of events, Athletics South Africa (ASA) is embroiled in allegations of corruption, but documents handed to the Minister of Sport and Recreation, Ngconde Balfour, this week show only a paltry sum in comparison to original claims that R9-million is allegedly unaccounted for in the ASA account. The documents were handed […]
Jakkie Cilliers a second look White farmers and rural blacks perceive themselves to be under attack the former by what they consider to be a political campaign to drive them off their land and the latter by unemployment and, sometimes, racial assault. To be sure, our commercial agricultural system is under threat. Jobs are being […]
Bruce Whitfield The JSE Securities Exchange has found sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation by the Financial Services Board (FSB) into insider trading at listed furniture retailer Profurn. It has handed its file containing the outcome of its own probe into the allegations to the FSB, but it could take several months before shareholders discover […]
England vs Pakistan at Lord’s is the start of a 10-year world cricket championship Neal Collins The longest-lasting league championship in the history of the world started on Thursday with South Africa very firmly in the running for a brand new R350 000 trophy. When Pakistan turned out against England at Lord’s, the 10-year International […]
Robin Denselow CD OFTHEWEEK Now rightly established as a best-selling international star, Cesaria Evora has moved on from exploring the music of her home (the Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of West Africa), which fuses African and Portuguese styles, to explore that music’s links with other Afro-Latin styles across the Atlantic. On her new […]
Glenda Daniels The Office of the President is expecting the first application for a presidential pardon for a woman who killed her abusive husband. The application is currently with the Department of Justice. Four more applications will reach the president’s office in the next few months. Should these applications be successful, it would set a […]
Shaun de Waal review OFTHEWEEK Two enjoyable drag shows now on in Johannesburg cover the range from mainstream comedy to the engagingly trashy, with variable results. British Ceri Dupree is visiting the Civic Theatre with Eager Divas, a show of impressions of famous female figures such as Camilla Parker-Bowles, Tina Turner and Mae West. The […]
Guy Willoughby theatre Evita Bezuidenhout, aka Pieter-Dirk Uys, has been so much a part of our cultural landscape for 20 years as ever-present as death, corruption and taxes that it comes as a surprise to discover that (according to Uys’s programme notes) s/he has not had her own stage show since 1990. Perhaps that tells […]
Marianne Merten TELEVISION It’s a slice of real prison life not the Hollywood glamour lock-down peppered with special effects, nor the gold-studded rap glorification of being a bad “muthafucka”. It’s about the reality of violence, rape, beatings and gory facial tattoos behind bars where the prison numbers gangs have dominated since the turn of the […]
John Young The South African cricket team don’t spend a lot of their time reading the local newspapers so they won’t know that their first visit to Port-of-Spain caused quite a stir. On the day the cricketers’ plane landed, two days before the second Test, the Trinidad Guardian published as its Thought for Today a […]
The Face of Africa fashion show on May 26 will be a landmark in the career of acclaimed composer Zwai Bala Thebe Mabanga The music scene is littered with tales of acts it’s inappropriate to call them artists who promise much but fail to live up to the hype. The scene also has a number […]
Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The South African National Gambling Board, the statutory body charged with the regulation of the gambling industry, has spent hundreds of thousands of rands on developing legislation aimed at regulating Internet casinos. The gambling board confirmed this week it paid more than R900 000 to an Australian firm, DGS, to develop […]
Mboniso Sigonyela Turbulent stock markets and falling rand exchange rates ensured that the number of dollar millionaires in Africa remained flat. But the World Wealth Report 2001, compiled by Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, says South Africa has confirmed its position as the continent’s economic powerhouse. According to the report, South Africa […]
Having found ‘special’ players it is important to develop them Andy Capostagno It is traditional for Springbok selectors to produce at least one shock in every squad. In 1992 the first post-isolation touring team included the then unknown Western Transvaaler Botha Rossouw. In 1995 Kitch Christie took a chance on Transvaal scrumhalf Bennie Nortje, although […]
Marianne Merten Guilty of tax evasion? Call on the People for Justice to raise public support while your appeal is pending. Dozens of posters sprang up in the Cape Town CBD on Wednesday in support of reputed crime boss Colin Stanfield, who is out on R100 000 bail pending his appeal against a six-year jail […]
The PSL title looks destined for one of the two Soweto giants Ntuthuko Maphumulo The race for Premier Soccer League (PSL) title will not be over until the fat lady sings but the first notes sounded for defending champions Sundowns after their 0-0 draw with Orlando Pirates on Wednesday. The Mamelodi outfit still have a […]
Kathryn Smith FINE art One comment by a visitor to Alan Alborough’s Standard Bank Young Artist exhibition reads: “Totally incomprehensible. Which is kinda nice in a chin-stroking, art diploma kinda way isn’t this image a bit too myopic in its area of attraction? It’s too inaccessible to revolutionise but not sensational enough to excite. And […]
Ntuthuko Maphumulo baseball Having your child represent South Africa in a sport is a source of great pride to a parent but it can also come at a high price. The South African under-16 baseball team will be competing against the best in the world at the world youth championship in Mexico in August. The […]
The medical aid scheme is facing a moral backlash from doctors and patients who accuse it of making huge profits while its members die from a treatable infection. Chen Blignaut reports Aids specialists and lawyers have accused the country’s wealthiest private medical aid scheme, Discovery Health, of “handing down death sentences” by “duping” members into […]
The government denies that it aims to close down the University of Transkei, and says the retrenchments are part of restructuring Glenda Daniels and David Macfarlane The University of Transkei (Unitra) has been flung into crisis and conflict over the retrenchment of 300 staff members both lower-skilled workers and academics. Union sources say this is […]