blind Anthea Jeffery Crossfire To most South Africans, the word “racism” probably has its conventional meaning – connoting intentionally disparate treatment founded on race. Given our apartheid history, it refers to laws that deprive black people of the vote, or bar them from owning land, or exclude them from “white” schools and hospitals. It also […]

Iden Wetherell South Africa is being asked to firm up its support for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s beleaguered regime by putting in place credit lines and trade incentives to help revive its northern neighbour’s ailing economy. But realities on the ground across the Limpopo could put paid to the best of intentions by Pretoria’s planners. […]

The wicketkeeper’s desire to play for South Africa is in contrast to other players’ apathy Peter Robinson You really have to hand it to Nic Pothas. After waiting for what must have seemed like most of his life to play for South Africa (or most of the 1990s, anyway) he was finally given his chance […]

Philip Machanick For almost as long as anyone can remember Apple has been promising to deliver a great new operating system. An operating system is the software that controls basic functions of a computer: allowing multiple programs to run without bumping into each other, organising information on a disk into documents and applications … in […]

David Beresford Another Country If there is a touchstone to the long-running controversy over Aids in South Africa, it surely lies with case No GA51345 heard by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), J Hiemstra presiding, in July last year. The case was essentially a labour arbi- tration between the Department of Health […]

AFRICAN EYE NEWS SERVICE, Mbabane | Friday DISGRUNTLED subjects in eastern Swaziland are boycotting this weekend’s Umhlanga Reed Dance, an annual pageant at which the king picks a new bride, in protest against a chieftaincy row that may see them being evicted from their ancestral land. Residents of Macetjeni, near the Mozambican border, resolved during […]

Steven Friedman worm’s eye view We continue to mention race in public, but not to talk about it. For those of us who have argued that we do not acknowledge race publicly as much as we should, the clash between President Thabo Mbeki and opposition leader Tony Leon should, in theory, be a breath of […]

Gilingwe Mayende crossfire The article by Prof Ben Cousins last week (“Didiza’s recipe for disaster”), attacking Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza on a range of issues, cannot go unchallenged. Cousins essentially argues that Didiza is undoing a lot of good achieved in the Department of Land Affairs during the tenure of her […]

Tracey Farren A small group of residents is trying its best to halt what is otherwise an extremely successful housing project in Vrygrond, the Western Cape’s oldest squatter settlement. It is not completely clear what the motive is behind the murders and threats that mar the steady stream of brick houses going up among the […]

Ebrahim Harvey left field The black left-leaning Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) and the Pan Africanist Congress over the past few months have taken the first serious steps towards unity. This is part of the broader flux and ferment in South African politics, as seen by the merger of the New National Party and the Democratic […]