Howard Barrell President Thabo Mbeki said this week that the crisis in Zimbabwe was the result of a failure to redistribute land in the country – rather than a violent manipulation of a grievance for electoral purposes by Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe. In an address to the nation on Thursday night, Mbeki also rejected calls […]

Khadija Magardie A DAUGHTER OF ISIS by Nawal El Saadawi (David Philip/Zed) Islamic feminism is a virtual candy jar of typologies, incorporating pragmatists, radicals, secular feminists and even “neo- Islamists”. With the backdrop of Islamic laws and traditions, the different camps have one common concern – the empowerment of women within a rethought Islam. What […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, New York | Friday 8.50am. THE United Nations was in touch with major military powers on Thursday to bring its peacekeeping force in Sierra Leone rapidly to full strength after rebels there took more UN staffers hostage. “We are in discussions with the British and the Americans and I also raised this issue […]

Ivor Powell The Office of the State Attorney has stopped providing legal assistance to victims of apartheid atrocities appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) amnesty hearings and is instead funding only the torturers and policemen applying for amnesty. The decision hits victims currently employed by the state – mainly former Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) […]

Hypertext has had a huge effect on creative writing, pushing it to places it has been trying to go for decades Karlin Lillington When Apple decided to supply a copy of a little program called Hypercard on all Macintosh computers back in the 1980s, it prepared the way for what would become the Web’s most […]

Jaspreet Kindra President Thabo Mbeki has organised a top- level meeting with traditional leaders aligned to the Inkatha Freedom Party to address the amakhosi’s concerns that their power base in KwaZulu-Natal will be eroded by new local government structures. The traditional leaders, who have been pressing Mbeki to hear them for several months, are to […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Senior members of South Africa’s biggest vigilante group, Mapogo a Matamaga, want the notorious organisation to abandon its hallmark policy of viciously sjamboking suspected criminals. The Mapogo members have accused its controversial president, Monhle Magolego, an enthusiastic proponent of corporal punishment, of behaving like a dictator. They say the unlawful beating […]

Without funds from the provincial government, some farm schools in the region have been forced to close Lynda Gilfillan Schoombee Trust School is one of the luckier farm schools in the Eastern Cape. It’s still open. But throughout the province schools are closing because the provincial education department has paid neither boarding nor transport subsidies, […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.00am. NEGOTIATORS in close contact with Muslim rebels holding 21 people hostage in the Philippines, including two South Africans, said on Friday that all the hostages are still alive. They have apparently been moved to a single location after being split into smaller groups earlier this week. Negotiators said medical […]

John Hooper in Berlin The former head of East Germany’s Olympic programme went on trial this week in what will be an unprecedented public examination of the project to produce super women athletes by feeding them steroids without their knowledge. Opening the trial of Manfred Ewald, once head of the Gymnastics and Sports Federation, the […]