Shaun de Waal reviews three nonfiction books by Ruth Hopkins, Philippa Garson and Tom Eaton
In an age in which people assume character by observing idiosyncrasies, Bob Woolmer’s laptop had taken on profoundly different meanings for fans spread out across the vast spectrum of the game’s politics. Many admired it as a sign of his openness to change, and his attention to detail. Others derided it gently in public and viciously in private.
<a href="http://www.mg.co.za/specialreport.aspx?area=cwc_home"><img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/300732/Icon_CWC.gif" align=left border=0></a>That is what hosting the 2003 Cricket World Cup taught us. Forearmed with this charitable knowledge, those insomniacs who watched Sunday night’s jubilation in Montego Bay would have forgiven the West Indian organisers, and elected to believe the reports of those who were actually there who said that it was quite a shindig.
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/ 24 February 2006
Has Mark Boucher unwittingly unleashed a tidal wave of vaudeville on an unsuspecting Australian cricket team? This was the question on every drama queen’s glossed and outlined lips this week after the Frodo Baggins of South African cricket was quoted in an international magazine urging local fans to give the tourists hell at every opportunity.
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/ 20 January 2006
Has the party you voted for in 1994 started taking you for granted? When was the last time your premier wrote you a love letter or ate strawberries out of your navel? Got an urge to slip something into the ballot box, but just can’t seem to maintain an election? Would you get back together with your ex for one more X? Would you cross the floor — on all fours?
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/ 13 January 2006
The little Dutch family was translucently white where it stood gazing out to sea from the Promenade. They had swaddled themselves in linen to look like albino Touareg nomads, and submerged the child in the pram in some sort of heliocidal balm, but still they squirmed under the African sun.
<img src="http://www.mg.co.za/ContentImages/41909/10-X-Logo.gif" align=left>If Thabo Mbeki wants to live to see his third term, he should reconsider the tactic of pressing the flesh at traffic intersections. Popping one’s head through the windows of SUVs is fine in New Hampshire, but in Gauteng you’re asking to be blown away by a twitchy motorist who’s been hijacked once too often.
It’s been a confusing few months for world-weary observers of African elections, as they’ve sat and watched South Africa and waited for the smoke to rise. Where’s all the razor wire? This isn’t an election campaign, it’s a queue. And no one is cutting in. Frankly, this year’s election campaign has been decidedly dull.