Richard Calland

On Tuesday, the game of musical chairs known as floor crossing began at last. Not a pretty sight; but nothing constitutionally offensive with it either, said the Constitutional Court a week ago. When the music stops, in 10 days' time, what will be longer-term legacy of this judgement?

Heading from Kingston towards the sea you can take a route through an area called Olympic Gardens. Few do, unless they have to. It's a classic Jamaican "garrison": politics and drugs merge with dangerous consequences.

It was a clash of titans. ANC MP Thandi Modise in the one corner, Kader Asmal in the other. Modise wanted Parliament to have prospective oversight over arms exports; Asmal was having none of it.

All that was missing was the Number Six on the back. The Green Bok jersey has gone full circle. Thanks to Pieter van Zyl it is now back where it was before Nelson Mandela stooped, gathered it from the gutter of world political opinion, and proudly wore it in the minutes before and after the Rugby World Cup final in 1995.

BMW's South African workforce produces better cars than its German counterparts. That's a good story. A very good one, in fact. BMWs roll off the assembly line in South Africa with fewer faults than in Germany itself.

In its rather bleak and windswept way, the military test base at Arniston is a rather unlikely location for making political history. Yet it was the place where key negotiators in the Constitution-making process went in April 1996 to try and cut the deals that would write South Africa's final Constitution.

Bush's "war on terror" has provided cover for Sharon's brand of state terror. As we drove through Ramallah I will never forget how he changed. Jamal, our interpreter. A lean, bookish, quietly spoken man.

The north is, for now, off the president's back. The e-mail was to the point: "What is your man playing at? Does your government really support this lunatic Mugabe or is this just politics?" This from an old friend in London who gambles other people's money on the equities market.

The Department of Finance believes the rand could sink as low as R26 to the United States dollar by 2018, after dropping to...