Wally Mbhele and Makhosini Nkosi There was stunned silence at an African National Congress national working committee meeting this week when Deputy President Thabo Mbeki announced his decision to axe both the Gauteng and Mpumalanga premiers. Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga was summoned to Mbeki’s Johannesburg office this week where he was told of his fate. […]
THE United Democratic Movement won its first by-election on Wednesday. The UDM’s Frederick Konstabel beat the African National Congress’s candidate by 258 votes to 148 in a by-election in Zoar in the Western Cape, UDM spokesman Dr Johna Steenkamp said on Thursday. The by-election was the third contested by the UDM. The New National Party […]
Review of the week Brenda Atkinson Much as Sigmund Freud’s theoretical and linguistic legacy to the Western world has slipped beneath the surface of a million conscious minds, Leonardo da Vinci’s mind- boggling contributions to the scientific and cultural workings of a millennial first world find us largely ignorant of their import. The long-awaited and […]
In 1835, the Xhosa King Hintsa was killed at Nqabara, near Willowvale in the Eastern Cape. The amaXhosa say that the king was treacherously cut down while escaping from a British army camp, where he had been negotiating terms of surrender after half a century of continuous war against the invading power. The British side […]
Ann Eveleth South Africa’s “other half” – the rural poor – will descend on the birthplace of the African National Congress this weekend to thrash out a new charter demanding their fair share of the economic pie. Delegates from rural communities across the country will meet at the national Rural Convention in Bloemfontein to draft […]
Sarah Ryle At last an economics professor has done something useful. He has worked out that punters who chose the six least popular numbers from the British National Lottery’s list of 49 stand to make an average weekly return of 11% on their stakes. The magic numbers – 36, 41, 46, 47, 48 and 49 […]
Hard on the heels of its recent decision that women who wear tight jeans cannot be raped (because the difficulty involved in removing them suggests compliance), the Italian Supreme Court has come up with yet another legal wowser. From now on, it will be against the law for couples in Italy to make love in […]
The David Gleason Column For many of South Africa’s larger companies the imperative to become globally competitive is compelling. There they are, rushing to establish themselves abroad, confident they can compete on equal terms with the world’s best. Well, maybe they can but they still need to be certain they are keeping clean yards back […]
The Rwandan government is preparing an extradition request for a senior UWC lecturer, writes Chris McGreal A Rwandan doctor wanted for murdering Tutsis during the 1994 genocide is to keep his job at the University of the Western Cape (UWC)because ”the charges against him are only allegations”. This is despite the fact that numerous witnesses […]
Ferial Haffajee CAPE TOWN: THE MAKING OF A CITY by Nigel Worden, Elizabeth van Heyningen and Vivian Bickford-Smith (David Philip) This is the history book I wish we had had at high school instead of the stiff set work that was so historically incorrect that it was laughable even to us teenagers. Cape Town, according […]