Situated in Sandtons Hyde Park suburb, this guesthouse offers bright rooms with free Wi-Fi. It has a bar and a garden with an outdoor pool. Free parking is...... more

Situated in Sandtons Hyde Park suburb, this guesthouse offers bright rooms with free Wi-Fi. It has a bar and a garden with an outdoor pool. Free parking is available on site.

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JOHANNESBURG Johannesburg is the commercial centre of South Africa. Since gold was first discovered, everything has revolved around money and...... more

JOHANNESBURG Johannesburg is the commercial centre of South Africa. Since gold was first discovered, everything has revolved around money and from the 50th floor of Africa's tallest building, The Carlton Towers, there is an all-engulfing view of the city's narrow streets and jungle of concrete and glass. The African Museum is a contemporary building and one of South Africa's most exquisite landmarks, it contains a large variety of geological exhibits and detailed accounts of the city's past surface mining that gave rise to the country's massive gold rush. The resistance to apartheid is also illustrated, as well as that of the history of Africa's native inhabitants who journeyed from present day Botswana to the south of the country. Gold Reef City is a large historical theme park that features the Johannesburg of pioneering times and focuses on the clothing, houses and entertainments of the country's golden years. On display are some of the old mining wagons that the workers used to transport the precious rock from the unforgiving mines and there's also a chance to see the liquid gold as it is turned into bullion and processed as gold coins. In contrast to Johannesburg, Pretoria grew at a calmer pace and has developed from a Boer farming municipality into South Africa's administrative capital. Located on a hill is the Vortrekker Monument that is a reminder of the Boers' Great Trek and, in 1830, the crucial battle in which they defeated the Zulus. Sun City is a magnificent fantasy world full of African ambience and the Sun City Hotel is the casino that made Sol Kerzner the richest man in South Africa, whereas the futuristic Cascades Hotel derived its name from its wonderful setting of waterfalls, pools and lush plant life. Johannesburg and this whole region of South Africa is THE sunshiny place to be!

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The market for financial derivatives - including currency swaps, stock options, and commodities futures - is far and away the largest and most powerful market...... more

The market for financial derivatives - including currency swaps, stock options, and commodities futures - is far and away the largest and most powerful market in the world, and it is growing exponentially. In 1970 the yearly valuation of financial derivatives was probably only a few million dollars. By 1980 the sum had swollen to nearly one hundred million dollars. By 1990 it had climbed to nearly one hundred billion dollars, and in 2000 it approached one hundred trillion. Created and sustained by a small number of European and American banks, corporations, and hedge funds, the derivatives market has an enormous influence on the economies of nations, because it controls the price of money. Derivatives bought and sold by computer keystrokes in London and New York affect the price of housing in Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, and Buenos Aires. Arguing that social theorists concerned with globalization must familiarize themselves with the mechanisms of a world economy based on the rapid circulation of capital, Edward LiPuma and Benjamin Lee provide a concise introduction to financial derivatives. LiPuma and Lee describe the derivative as the primary financial instrument of a global economy based on the circulation of a large, voracious pool of speculative capital and an extremely abstract notion of risk. Emphasizing the relation - or lack of relation - of derivatives to production-oriented, labour-based economies, LiPuma and Lee trace the implications of today's culture of financial circulation for the ongoing construction of democratic governance across the postcolonial divide. While regional crises and spectacular corporate failures - including the collapse of Argentina's peso and the demise of the Enron Corporation - periodically put derivatives trading in the news, LiPuma and Lee seek to catalyze sustained cultural analysis of its staggering social and economic effects.

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The market for financial derivatives - including currency swaps, stock options, and commodities futures - is far and away the largest and most powerful market...... more

The market for financial derivatives - including currency swaps, stock options, and commodities futures - is far and away the largest and most powerful market in the world, and it is growing exponentially. In 1970 the yearly valuation of financial derivatives was probably only a few million dollars. By 1980 the sum had swollen to nearly one hundred million dollars. By 1990 it had climbed to nearly one hundred billion dollars, and in 2000 it approached one hundred trillion. Created and sustained by a small number of European and American banks, corporations, and hedge funds, the derivatives market has an enormous influence on the economies of nations, because it controls the price of money. Derivatives bought and sold by computer keystrokes in London and New York affect the price of housing in Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, and Buenos Aires. Arguing that social theorists concerned with globalization must familiarize themselves with the mechanisms of a world economy based on the rapid circulation of capital, Edward LiPuma and Benjamin Lee provide a concise introduction to financial derivatives. LiPuma and Lee describe the derivative as the primary financial instrument of a global economy based on the circulation of a large, voracious pool of speculative capital and an extremely abstract notion of risk. Emphasizing the relation - or lack of relation - of derivatives to production-oriented, labour-based economies, LiPuma and Lee trace the implications of today's culture of financial circulation for the ongoing construction of democratic governance across the postcolonial divide. While regional crises and spectacular corporate failures - including the collapse of Argentina's peso and the demise of the Enron Corporation - periodically put derivatives trading in the news, LiPuma and Lee seek to catalyze sustained cultural analysis of its staggering social and economic effects.

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United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: 2-DVD...... more

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: 2-DVD Set, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Series of four documentaries, with the wide-eyed, inquisitive broadcaster examining different approaches to law and order. In 'Law and Disorder in Johannesburg', Louis travels to one of the most dangeous cities in the world, to see how the residents and authorities cope with the rising violence. In 'Law and Disorder Philadelphia', he joins the local police department as they patrol the streets, where spiraling drug use and violent crime account for 400 murders a year. In 'A place for Paedophiles', Louis visits the Coalinga Mental Hospital in California, where 500 convicted paedophiles are housed. Finally, in 'Crystal Meth', he examines the history of this highly addictive drug, and the debilitating effect it has had on affected communities. ...Louis Theroux: Law & Disorder - 2-DVD Set

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United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: 2-DVD...... more

United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 2.4 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital Stereo ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: 2-DVD Set, Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: Series of four documentaries, with the wide-eyed, inquisitive broadcaster examining different approaches to law and order. In 'Law and Disorder in Johannesburg', Louis travels to one of the most dangeous cities in the world, to see how the residents and authorities cope with the rising violence. In 'Law and Disorder Philadelphia', he joins the local police department as they patrol the streets, where spiraling drug use and violent crime account for 400 murders a year. In 'A place for Paedophiles', Louis visits the Coalinga Mental Hospital in California, where 500 convicted paedophiles are housed. Finally, in 'Crystal Meth', he examines the history of this highly addictive drug, and the debilitating effect it has had on affected communities. ...Louis Theroux: Law & Disorder - 2-DVD Set

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Switzerland released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL...... more

Switzerland released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: In Haiti, his country, Mario Benjamin is the leader of the Contemporary Art. Invited to take part in major events like the Biennial of Venice, Kwangju , Sao Paulo, Johannesburg and various prestigious exhibitions in the United States, he acquired an international stature. But who knows him apart from the small milieu of professionals? The Western media are ethnocentric like the market of art. This film explores his powerful, magical, and disturbing works. His house is a Baroque Installation, it recalls his artistic course and introduces us in to his inner world. Besides his singular talent, Mario Benjamin has another characteristic: Manic depression. During his fits, he reaches perceptions that some artists seek by the use of drugs. ...Mario Benjamin

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Afrikaans author Marlene Van Niekerk lived for a time in Triomf, the white working class suburb of western Johannesburg built on the bulldozed rubble of...... more

Afrikaans author Marlene Van Niekerk lived for a time in Triomf, the white working class suburb of western Johannesburg built on the bulldozed rubble of Sophiatown, once one of black South Africa's cultural heartlands. Whilst gardening she kept digging up its remnants, just like one of the characters in her novel Triomf, which excavates the lives of the impoverished poor white culture that superseded it. Sophiatown boasted names like Masekela and Mandela amongst its cultural riches but the Benades family inhabit a far from triumphant world of cheap brandy and coke, kaput cars, irreparable fridges and broken political promises.Mol, Treppie, Pop and Lambert Benades inhabit a crumbling government house that is all they own apart from each other. Mol, abused and ageing, is comforted only by her beloved mongrels, her numbed resilience as forlorn as her buttonless housecoat. Alienated, articulate Treppie, "a devil with a twist, a twisted devil", furiously turns his frustrated intellectual abilities against his family. Pop, shuffling bemusedly between sleep and waking, tries to remember his lies as he slips towards death. All of them protect the doltish, violent, voyeuristic Lambert, the epileptic progeny of parents who constantly reinvent fantasy stories, disguising a family secret that is a narrative time bomb waiting to explode into the heart of the novel. "We have each other and nothing else", is their refrain, a catchphrase for the survival of a demoralised family adrift from the tide of change, where incest has become a metaphor for the crooked logic of obsessive racial purity, just as the topographical layering of Triomf over Sophiatown becomes a guiding metaphor for the social architecture of apartheid.Triomf depicts apartheid racism with an uncompromising exactness that has sometimes been lost in white South African writing in English slanted towards a middle class perspective. As the Benades veer between aggressive passivity and directionless activity terrorising each other and their neighbours, Van Niekerk invites the reader to despise the narrowly ignorant sensibilities evoked by their racist vernacular, whose idiom is skilfully echoed in poet Leon de Kock's meticulous translation. Whilst the novel makes no pretences about the ugliness of racism, its radical success lies in the way it starkly realises the hard reality that the Benades' position as whites gives them few privileges. Van Niekerk tells their story in a bleakly hilarious mode of comic degradation that captures strikingly the unexalted expectations of a forgotten class. Theirs is the desperation of those who have nothing to lose, of an underclass who have only the vaguest recollection of self-respect and just treatment for others and themselves. For the armblankes (poor whites), she shows, notions of superiority were built on nothing but the detritus of another culture and the promises of betterment peddled in the weak Romanticism of blood-and-soil nationalism byoudentlik (proper, middle class) Afrikaners, empty illusions described by Treppie as, "the fine print of fuck-all." Although Triomf is a startlingly comic yet salutary reminder of the sustenance racism gives to class inequalities, it stops short of representing the social rehabilitation of South Africa's poor whites. In what is possibly the first truly post-apartheid novel by a white writer deserving the description, Van Niekerk opts wisely to leave the hopes of reconciliation beyond the boundaries of her fictional excavation of the suburbs of truth.--Rachel Holmes

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Switzerland released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL...... more

Switzerland released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: In Haiti, his country, Mario Benjamin is the leader of the Contemporary Art. Invited to take part in major events like the Biennial of Venice, Kwangju , Sao Paulo, Johannesburg and various prestigious exhibitions in the United States, he acquired an international stature. But who knows him apart from the small milieu of professionals? The Western media are ethnocentric like the market of art. This film explores his powerful, magical, and disturbing works. His house is a Baroque Installation, it recalls his artistic course and introduces us in to his inner world. Besides his singular talent, Mario Benjamin has another characteristic: Manic depression. During his fits, he reaches perceptions that some artists seek by the use of drugs. ...Mario Benjamin

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Afrikaans author Marlene Van Niekerk lived for a time in Triomf, the white working class suburb of western Johannesburg built on the bulldozed rubble of...... more

Afrikaans author Marlene Van Niekerk lived for a time in Triomf, the white working class suburb of western Johannesburg built on the bulldozed rubble of Sophiatown, once one of black South Africa's cultural heartlands. Whilst gardening she kept digging up its remnants, just like one of the characters in her novel Triomf, which excavates the lives of the impoverished poor white culture that superseded it. Sophiatown boasted names like Masekela and Mandela amongst its cultural riches but the Benades family inhabit a far from triumphant world of cheap brandy and coke, kaput cars, irreparable fridges and broken political promises.Mol, Treppie, Pop and Lambert Benades inhabit a crumbling government house that is all they own apart from each other. Mol, abused and ageing, is comforted only by her beloved mongrels, her numbed resilience as forlorn as her buttonless housecoat. Alienated, articulate Treppie, "a devil with a twist, a twisted devil", furiously turns his frustrated intellectual abilities against his family. Pop, shuffling bemusedly between sleep and waking, tries to remember his lies as he slips towards death. All of them protect the doltish, violent, voyeuristic Lambert, the epileptic progeny of parents who constantly reinvent fantasy stories, disguising a family secret that is a narrative time bomb waiting to explode into the heart of the novel. "We have each other and nothing else", is their refrain, a catchphrase for the survival of a demoralised family adrift from the tide of change, where incest has become a metaphor for the crooked logic of obsessive racial purity, just as the topographical layering of Triomf over Sophiatown becomes a guiding metaphor for the social architecture of apartheid.Triomf depicts apartheid racism with an uncompromising exactness that has sometimes been lost in white South African writing in English slanted towards a middle class perspective. As the Benades veer between aggressive passivity and directionless activity terrorising each other and their neighbours, Van Niekerk invites the reader to despise the narrowly ignorant sensibilities evoked by their racist vernacular, whose idiom is skilfully echoed in poet Leon de Kock's meticulous translation. Whilst the novel makes no pretences about the ugliness of racism, its radical success lies in the way it starkly realises the hard reality that the Benades' position as whites gives them few privileges. Van Niekerk tells their story in a bleakly hilarious mode of comic degradation that captures strikingly the unexalted expectations of a forgotten class. Theirs is the desperation of those who have nothing to lose, of an underclass who have only the vaguest recollection of self-respect and just treatment for others and themselves. For the armblankes (poor whites), she shows, notions of superiority were built on nothing but the detritus of another culture and the promises of betterment peddled in the weak Romanticism of blood-and-soil nationalism byoudentlik (proper, middle class) Afrikaners, empty illusions described by Treppie as, "the fine print of fuck-all." Although Triomf is a startlingly comic yet salutary reminder of the sustenance racism gives to class inequalities, it stops short of representing the social rehabilitation of South Africa's poor whites. In what is possibly the first truly post-apartheid novel by a white writer deserving the description, Van Niekerk opts wisely to leave the hopes of reconciliation beyond the boundaries of her fictional excavation of the suburbs of truth.--Rachel Holmes

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