2009

Champions — Chelsea The master plan of Roman Abramovich has been threatening for three seasons now and with the Blues under the management of Carlo Ancelotti, they might just have the bottle to take the Premier League title away from United, who in turn will have to cope without the magic of Cristiano Ronaldo. There […]

Had it not been for the 13-or-so million lives involved, one could almost feel sorry for Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe. It seems the old man has had it with foreign donors only getting off their wallets for NGOs active in his country, rather than having the cash mainlined fresh into Zimbabwe’s porous state coffers. Lest […]

It may be somewhat surprising when you think about how, in over 13 decades of cricket’s well-documented existence, we only have one known way to judge cricketers — batting and bowling averages. The void that this leaves is quite huge. Measuring cricketers only through their averages is liable to give skewed and unreliable results. Averages […]

Now that we are almost 20 years into the new free and democratic society, perhaps it’s time we asked: who and where are the authoritative African voices in the arts, especially theatre? When the smouldering issues of content, style, meaning, relevance, presentation, design and other matters that pertain to the stage are discussed, there are […]

In the run up to the ANC Polokwane conference in December 2007, Jacob Zuma’s fervent supporters demanded that as deputy president of the ANC he was Thabo Mbeki’s natural successor. The ANC constitution is silent on succession but it has been accepted practice that the deputy is the natural successor. Zuma had criss-crossed the country […]

Wathint’abafazi, wathint’imbokodo! (Now you have touched the women, you have struck a rock.) This phrase has come to represent women’s courage and strength. Women’s Day is commemorated in South Africa on August 9 in memory of the women who marched in 1956 to protest against apartheid and has become a symbol of women’s resistance to […]

The greatest and most exciting league in the world will be kicking off this coming weekend and as always it will have its own twists, turns, lows and highs. How do you think it will pan out? Will Manchester United be crowned champions for the fourth time in a row without a certain Portuguese maestro […]

A flip through a KwaZulu-Natal newspaper the other day revealed former minister in the presidency Essop Pahad had been defending former president Thabo Mbeki’s legacy in front of a group of Durban students last week. Rather hard-pressed by, among other, a few combative researchers from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Centre for Civil Society, Pahad […]

The Premier Soccer League (PSL) kicked off this weekend with two wins and a few draws. There were some really good games I managed to get a glimpse of like the Free State derby between Bloemfontein Celtic and Free State Stars which ended in a 2-2 draw. This is going to be an intriguing South […]

On hearing about the journalist who was banned from attending Hillary Clinton’s SA visit the other day because of a quip about his bag containing an “explosive notebook” when asked whether it contained anything at a security checkpoint, I both giggled (yes, men do that too, it was a very strong manly giggle, I promise) […]