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/ 31 October 2003
It’s hard to imagine what will be the final outcome of the Hefer commission. Will it produce new information, uncover some previously unnoticed subterfuge or harshly illuminate an existing one? The commission seems hardly able to get itself off the ground. In fact it doesn’t even seem able to find the runway.
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/ 31 October 2003
An eight-year-old Iranian refugee whose plight ignited a bitter immigration row in Australia launched a civil suit this week against the government, claiming that he suffered severe mental health problems caused by his time in detention.
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/ 31 October 2003
Now we know that the grounds on which the Iraq war was fought were false, we cannot be blamed for wanting to wallow in self-righteousness. As director Michael Moore might bellow: ”We were right and they were wrong.” That is true, but we cannot leave it there. We have to do better than that. We have to move on.
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/ 31 October 2003
Michael Howard emerged as the man most likely to be the third leader of the British Conservative Party in six years this week, after Iain Duncan Smith lost his battle to retain the Tory leadership by 75 to 90 votes cast by his fellow Tory members of the United Kingdom Parliament.
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/ 31 October 2003
”The more that policy changes in South Africa, the more it is the same.” These words are from Govan Mbeki’s seminal book on rural resistance, The Peasants’ Revolt. In the post-apartheid era white domination and its crippling legacies are under attack from progressive government policies, and Mbeki’s words no longer apply.
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/ 31 October 2003
French President Jacques Chirac ended two days of intense but fruitless talks with France’s main political leaders this week still facing one of the most painful dilemmas of his long political career: whether or not to call a referendum to ratify Europe’s new Constitution.
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/ 31 October 2003
An old Bill Tidy cartoon still raises a smile. The Oxfam truck has arrived in a scorched African desert carrying a load of red-and-white scarves. “I see Arsenal lost again,” sniffs a local. The humour might be lost on the premiership, where Arsenal do not lose that often, and indeed have yet to be beaten this season.
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/ 31 October 2003
Rudolf Straeuli’s time in charge of the Springboks has reached the sudden death stage. If rumours are to be believed (and since that’s about all that emanates from SA Rugby these days some credence should be given to them) Straeuli’s troubled reign will end if South Africa finish worse than third at Rugby World Cup 2003.
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/ 31 October 2003
A week ago, the prospect of a depleted Samoan side causing the greatest upset of the 2003 Rugby World Cup seemed highly unlikely. Then came South Africa’s lacklustre effort against Georgia in Sydney last Friday, a performance which will live uncomfortably in the memories of this generation of Springboks.
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/ 31 October 2003
Is it really 13 years since Craig Jameson and Naas Botha marched their sides on to the field at Loftus for the defining Currie Cup final of the modern era? On Saturday the two sides will meet again in the Currie Cup final, having somehow managed to avoid each other in the showpiece event of South African rugby since 1990.