Belinda Beresford It’s all in the packaging! That, at least, is the hope of the Department of Health, which has decided that colour counts in the battle against Aids. In an attempt to make condoms more popular among the majority population, government-sponsored Condom Cans could soon be stocked with brown condoms as well as the […]

Jaspreet Kindra The tensions within the tripartite alliance are increasingly being blamed on President Thabo Mbeki, who is perceived by other alliance leaders as having systematically cut them off from debate on economic policy. Notwithstanding this view, expressed by several senior members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu)and the South African Communist […]

Ivor Powell As the world gears up to ban diamonds from conflict zones, the Canadian government is being accused of manipulating a United Nations humanitarian campaign against Africa’s so-called “blood diamonds” to the benefit of its own fledgling industry. The UN’s report, published earlier this year, was initiated and headed by Canada’s ambassador to the […]

Tim Radford Scientists claim this week to be on the track of a “universal” cancer vaccine. They have targeted a natural protein that makes tumour cells immortal and therefore lethal. The scientists have isolated part of the protein and used it to trigger immune system cells into killing both mouse and human cancer cells in […]

nnovations Standard Bank has come up with a new Internet credit card. Beans, schmeans. Even if you don’t give a toss for e-commerce, this one’s worth it just for the exceptionally competitive interest rates on their Mastercard-linked credit card. If you have an ordinary Standard Bank credit card, you have to have R100000 in your […]

THE Zambian kwacha is expected to slide further against the dollar in the final four months of the year amid huge corporate and retail demand for dollars and lack of central bank intervention, senior dealers said. They said the kwacha could close the year as low as 3500 against the U.S. unit, from 3250 now […]

Nawaal Deane and Ntuthuko Maphumulo Statistics show that over the past 15 years South African youth have been having sex at an increasingly younger age. Of sexually experienced children polled in the Beyond Awareness Campaign survey, 10% said they had had their first sexual experience at or below the age of 11 years. In the […]

Archaeologists are trying to find what really happened at the battle of Isandlwana Paul Kirk Amid the noise of the battle, the screams of the dying and the roar of a cannon, a desperate soldier of the 24th Regiment of Foot took shelter behind the two large boulders on the Isandlwana battlefield and poured five […]

Thuli Nhlapo The Free State town of Sasolburg was stunned this week by a horrific incident in which a black man was allegedly dragged to his death behind his white employer’s bakkie. Pieter Odendaal, the owner of a construction company, allegedly killed his employee, Mosoko Rampuru, apparently after the two had been drinking. A post-mortem […]

Howard Barrell Thabo Mbeki has led the African National Congress away from its past non-racist principles towards a narrow Africanism to hold the ruling party together, according to a Democratic Party analysis of ANC thinking on race. “Mbeki’s vision of ‘racial transformation’ [represents] a decisive break with the non-racial tradition of the party, as articulated […]