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/ 19 January 2007

Ten ways to tackle crime

President Thabo Mbeki this week came under fire when he said that, contrary to popular perceptions “crime was under control”. This week the South African Institute of Race Relations released statistics that showed Mbeki was right in some areas and wrong in others.

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/ 9 January 2007

Thinking the unthinkable

"We have thought enough. It is time for sloganeering." Is this the key message of once-proud Marxists within what once called itself the progressive youth movement? At the end of 2006 the Young Communist League expelled its deputy, Mazibuko Jara, while the African National Congress Youth League disbanded its Eastern Cape provincial structures.

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/ 21 December 2006

The fan: the very image of fidelity

French author and philosopher Albert Camus said: "All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football." I too owe everything I know about life, love and loyalty, pleasure and pain to having been a football fan. Everything I know about the inevitable turmoil that, from time to time, visits human life; and the powers and the possibilities of the human spirit that help overcome such times, I owe to having supported Orlando Pirates.

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/ 8 December 2006

Redemption match

There were moments in the past when the Soweto derby brought the entire nation to a standstill; clashes where the league championship was decided. But this Saturday’s match between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates stands out for one reason only: it is the last game to be played at FNB before the stadium is closed and extensively renovated for the 2010 World Cup.

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/ 4 December 2006

Good men who turn bad

A friend of mine called me from a police precinct the other day. He said it was the last call he was making before being locked up for domestic violence. He is a reasonable guy at the best of times. Never in the many years that I have known and socialised with him has he been violent, not even against other men.

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/ 20 November 2006

If you don’t get it, forget it

Branford Marsalis, McCoy Mrubata, Greg Georgiades and Paul Hanmer may not have planned things this way. But as sometimes happens in the Republic of Bohemia, they find themselves firmly the focus of debate at dinner tables, where conversation revolves around the question: What is jazz? Marsalis took Sunday Times journalist Bongani Madondo to task for […]

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/ 30 October 2006

Going his own way

Until two weeks ago, Tom Thabane was Lesotho’s minister of communication. Except for a three-year stint when he was living in South Africa, Thabane has served in every post-independence Lesotho government, either as a senior public official or as a Cabinet minister. Thabane had been seen as the heir apparent to Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili, but was sidelined in a recent Cabinet reshuffle.