Tony Leon CROSSFIRE Retiring United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once memorably observed: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” So, too, with Crossfire (“Democracy requires wisdom too”, September 22 to 28). In order to concertina my words into his argument, Firoz Cachalia is guilty, at best, of elliptical reasoning […]

REUTERS, London | Friday BRITISH chocolate makers are to investigate reports of widespread child slave labour on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast and insist they will take action if such “abhorrent practices” are discovered. Ivorian cocoa producers and international cocoa traders say a British television documentary exaggerates how West African children have been lured into […]

A collection of art works currently on sale offers a good opportunity to take another look at the African art debate Yvette Gresl With all the African art works flooding flea markets, roadside stalls and curio shops, regular mortals who’d like to collect such objects often wonder how one begins to distinguish between fakes and […]

ED STODDARD, Sasolburg | Friday BLACK protesters and police have clashed outside a Sasolburg court after a magistrate remanded a white man accused of dragging a black employee to his death behind a truck for psychiatric tests in a secret hearing. Businessman Pieter Odendaal, 44, had been scheduled to appear before a Sasolburg court this […]

ADE OBISESAN, Lagos | Thursday NIGERIAN President Olusegun Obasanjo, who has come under fire for failing to back his anti-corruption talk with action, will this week take his first major step to repair his country’s battered reputation by inaugurating an anti-graft commission. Many Nigerians, including human rights activists and local journalists, have criticised Obasanjo for […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday CONVICTED killer Ferdi Barnard has confessed to murdering anti-apartheid lawyer David Webster outside his Johannesburg home in 1989 on orders from the shadowy Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB). Barnard told a Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty hearing that he conducted the assassination with the help of colleague Calla Botha on […]

FOUR southern African countries have joined forces against an international syndicate of smugglers that is costing their formal economies millions of rands every year. Customs officials from Swaziland, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have agreed to work together to smash the syndicate, which smuggles a range of goods for sale at deflated prices in the […]

A HOME science experiment ended tragically when a teenage girl was electrocuted by a garden fence in Northern Province. Elizabeth Zitha, 14, of Giyani, touched the fence without knowing that it was wired to a wall plug in the house. A powerful electric current threw Zitha a few metres through the air and she was […]

THE former Sierra Leone rebel leader Foday Sankoh has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, a prison official said. Sankoh, who has been in custody since May, reportedly took ill some three weeks ago and his condition has been described as “critical”. Sankoh, who is believed to be around 70 years old, launched a bush war […]

ESKOM is to become a fully fledged company in the first quarter of next year in terms of a draft Bill debated in Parliament recently. Stakeholders have long been aware that Eskom will be converted from a commission to a company, but enabling legislation has been delayed because of union opposition based on fear of […]