Loan sharks and micro-finance offices have mushroomed in South Africa’s inner-city centres. The lure is attractive – borrow R10,000 and create your dream life by growing your business. But in a country where half the population lives in poverty and much more live in debt, a greater understanding of how they use money could lead to more appropriate financial services. By MANDY DE WAAL.

A story published by the Sunday Times in October last year may have been planted by friends of beleaguered crime intelligence chief Richard Mdluli. The paper has denied that the journalists who wrote the story took money to write the story. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

What is the one thing you would do if you could go back in time? In Stephen King’s latest blockbuster, 11.22.63, his protagonist tries to prevent the assassination of John F Kennedy. The book flags a little – unlike the perpetual attraction of time travel. By REBECCA DAVIS.

A day of sticks, stones and broken bones as seen by our photo-reporters.

Johannesburg-based photographer Ilan Godfrey has won the inaugural OPENPhoto Award for the essay Legacy of the Mines, his intriguing and evocative series of square images depicting people on the fringes of the commodity world. By staff reporter.

Horst Faas, 1933 – 2012. By GREG MARINOVICH.

Kickstarter, the website which allows artists, designers and inventors to crowd-source funding for their projects, seems to be coming of age. In the past few weeks, two major cultural figures have taken to the site to raise money in order to bypass record labels and film studios. By REBECCA DAVIS.

African journalists are very familiar with the “big stick” – the unmistakable threat of violence that haunts their work. To help them get around this problem, and other difficulties dogging the progress of the media in Africa, a new prize looks to encourage innovations that can revolutionise the African media landscape – and organisers have brought out the much less familiar “big wallet” to do just that. By SIMON ALLISON.

ANC makes major changes to Secrecy Bill.

He might have taken the most defining photograph of the struggle against apartheid, but this 78-year-old prefers to live in the village of his youth. There is no running water there. Sickness and diseases are a constant threat. Life has not turned out the way Sam hoped. By KARYN MAUGHAN.

Vanity Fair. The reportage and features are still among the best in the world, but the editor is making more than his allotted share of mistakes where the covers are concerned. For one thing, the faces are almost always white, for another, the lies are starting to creep through. By KEVIN BLOOM.

Joss Whedon is the nerd uber-prince, and the closest thing fan boys have to a voice of their generation. In his new film– called The Avengers – he has fulfilled the promise of the capitalist corporate entertainment complex. And planet Earth couldn’t be happier. By RICHARD POPLAK.

The author and illustrator of more than a dozen children’s books – including the all-time classic Where the Wild Things Are – died in Connecticut on Tuesday. His enduring gift to the world will always be his facility for allowing kids to confront the monsters in their own souls. By KEVIN BLOOM.  

Photographer Thapelo Motsumi is one of many young South Africans who has worked with the Umuzi Photo Club to develop his artistic skills and engage his community. Now this “drop out” has had two exhibitions in London and has been entrusted with Mandela’s football jersey. By GREG NICOLSON.

Naspers’s Sunday paper has always been influential, but under the leadership of Ferial Haffajee this clout has grown considerably. MANDY DE WAAL looks back over 30 years of City Press and wonders whether the paper will be able to convert influence into audience in the tough weekend press sector.

A new photographic project by two Capetonians explores the world of commuter cycling in South Africa, giving us intimate portraits of bike riders and their trusty steeds. REBECCA DAVIS doesn’t ride a bicycle, but she might start after this.

Wanna be a big shot film-maker in China? Do ya, punk? Meet Han Sanping, and think again. By RICHARD POPLAK.

Sometimes you have to zoom out from an issue to see the bigger picture. Sometimes you have to zoom right in to see the magic of how its smallest components resonate with each other. But at some point you will realise that maybe, just maybe, there’s another way of looking at things. By GUY LIEBERMAN. 

What does Edvard Munch’s most famous painting mean? Why has it just set a record for the highest price ever fetched at an art auction? The answers aren’t definite, but they have something to do with the life of the artist and the tastes of contemporary culture. By KEVIN BLOOM.  

Kenya’s incursion into Somalia last October, dubbed Operation Linda Nchi or Protect the Country, signalled a renewed vigour in the war against Al-Shabaab. As part of the operation, officials also launched a crackdown in the North Eastern province of Kenya, intent on weeding out the Somali cell of al-Qaeda sympathisers. In the process, Kenyan Somalis and Somali refugees were arbitrarily arrested and gravely mistreated. By KHADIJA PATEL.

Want to eat at one of the 100 best restaurants in the world? You need go no further than Franschhoek or Woodstock: two of South Africa’s fine dining establishments in these locations made it on to this year’s list. By REBECCA DAVIS.

Against the backdrop of a shameful fall in South Africa’s media freedom rating worldwide, the report of the Press Freedom Commission – the second media freedom review process following the ANC’s calls for a media appeals tribunal – was published last week. JULIE REID takes a satellite view of processes, perspectives and possibilities.

Media headlines give the numbers and news of the HIV/Aids epidemic, but the human narrative is increasingly getting lost in faceless media coverage. Photographer Leonie Marinovich’s exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery challenges that narrative. By MANDY DE WAAL.

South African brands are prickly when it comes to comparative advertising. Yet a battle of the spoofs between insurance company Santam and fast food chain Nando’s has greatly benefited both brands. Maybe there’s a moral lurking there somewhere. By GREG NICOLSON.

Sibusiso Tshabalala is a name you’re likely to hear more of in the future. Selected by Google as one of 10 young people who are changing the world, Tshabalala is teaching the power of critical thinking to school children in Bloemfontein. The good news is that when he’s finished his law degree, this rational-thinking social activist plans to go into politics. By MANDY DE WAAL.

ANCYL spokesman Floyd Shivambu has officially apologised to a City Press journalist for insulting her. It took two years and an Equality Court hearing for Shivambu to admit he was wrong. Just another notch in the ANCYL’s recent history of incredible sensitivity when it comes to dealing with women who are critical of its policies and leaders. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.

Richard de Nooy’s second novel, The Big Stick (Jacana, 2011), reminds us we still live in dangerous times, writes DIANE AWERBUCK. Especially if our sexuality deviates from the norm...

As Google and Facebook grow, the two corporations increasingly assume mythic proportions in the public understanding. We need them, we use them, yet we fear them – for the information they have on us. REBECCA DAVIS checked out what kind of dirt the two tech giants had on her.