Belinda Beresford and David Shapshak The Department of Health has reassigned the posts of more experienced hospital medical officers to make way for inexperienced interns for its community service programme. Senior doctors charge that funding cutbacks have meant that rather than creating new posts in areas deprived of medical care, the community service plan for […]
Andy Capostagno Cricket And so it’s 4-0 and pretty soon now, highveld summer weather permitting, it will be 5-0. We have already run out of excuses for the poor performances of the West Indies and gone through adjectives with which to describe them. About the only thing we haven’t done is to take a serious […]
Characteristics that distinguish us from apes may have been forced on our ancestors by the presence of water, writes Ruben Mowszowski If the proponents of a revolutionary theory of human origins are correct, our ancestors abandoned the trees not for the savannah, but for the water – and humans share more physical traits with dolphins […]
Friday night: Alex Sudheim The water in the bath has turned cold, clammy and grey. I’m blissfully asleep when violent explosions rip through the silent night. In an instant I’m on my feet, skidding dangerously in the slimy tub and sending swampy waves slopping over the edge. Clinging to the towel rail, I peer out […]
Thokozani Mtshali Arrive Alive’s billboard campaign to reduce deaths on South Africa’s roads this holiday season has been greeted with scepticism by many motorists. The campaign was launched 14 months ago in conjunction with traffic departments, the Ministry of Transport and the South African Police Service (SAPS) in a bid to reduce road fatalities. But […]
OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.15am. ONE in three South African schoolgirls are victims of sexual abuse, according to a study published on Thursday by a non-government organisation, Community Information Empowerment and Transparency. Of the victims, two out of three had never previously spoken of the abuse, the study of 1500 black and white youths […]
Andrew Worsdale Movie of the week American independent films have that intelligent edge that has been missing from Hollywood productions since the late 1970s. Not even Francis Ford Coppola has made a really decent movie since Apocalypse Now, and that was in 1979. Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66, which opens at cinemas this week, is a […]
against Aids David Gough in Dar es Salaam Mashaka is the best-known truck driver in Tanzania, and his exploits are famous. He spends most of his time on the roads of East Africa, rarely sees his wife and has a girlfriend in every town. Mashaka became ill a few weeks ago and Tanzanians are holding […]
THE ALL-TRUE TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES OF LIDIE NEWTON by Jane Smiley (Flamingo) Jane Smiley is best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, A Thousand Acres, and in her new book she returns to rural life in the United States’s Midwest. This time, though, she goes back in time to the years leading up to the […]
Bram Posthumus takes a look at what lies at the heart of Angola’s misery A snapshot, taken in Kuito two months ago on Angola’s 23rd birthday. The crowd in front of the bullet-riddled government buildings at the Praa de Vergonha (Shame Square) listens impassively to the music and speeches and then walks away. There’s not […]