Bennie Visser The notion that the Addo Elephant Park in the Eastern Cape may supersede Kruger National Park as South Africa’s premier reserve is one that very few would take seriously. Yet this is exactly what the powers that be on national level believe to be a very real possibility. They say while Addo will […]

THE search for bodies of four rafters still missing since flash floods hit the Storms River last weekend will be called off on Saturday morning. On Friday morning the body of one of the missing was found by a member of the public at the Storms River mouth — bringing to nine the bodies recovered. […]

Scientific knowledge is only ever provisional. Whatever the rigour applied in trying to establish it, it survives only for as long as it is not falsified or a better explanation for something is not put forward. So there is something to be said for the person who sets out to falsify all or part of […]

Khadija Magardie The Centre for Development and Enterprise (CDE), a policy think-tank, has called for the abolition of the quota system currently imposed on skilled labour coming into South Africa. This is in response to the government’s draft Immigration Bill, which promises a shake-up of the country’s migration laws. According to CDE director Ann Bernstein […]

MALWIAN Finance Minister Matthews Chikaonda pledged strict fiscal discipline and action against inefficient public leaders on Thursday in a bid to further boost economic growth in the country. In a presentation to parliament’s finance committee, Chikaonda pledged a reform of government spending priorities and better management of this poor, landlocked country’s scarce resources. Chikaonda said […]

The Maitisong Festival has been celebrated in Gaborone since 1987. Stephen Gray caught up on its 14th year Ending this week on April 1 is this year’s 10-day Maitisong Festival in Gaborone, since 1987 the huge event of theatre and other performing arts on Botswana’s cultural calendar. The line-up includes 180 (mostly local) performers appearing […]

Howard Barrell OVER A BARREL A problem with revolutionaries is that they tend to view themselves as indispensable. While they will say that the political change they helped secure was “inevitable”, they will nonetheless argue that their own intentional involvement was necessary to bring it about. By this curious reasoning, revolutionaries cast themselves as the […]

IN a remarkable upset of the form book unheralded Steve Basson shot a five-under par total of 66 to share a one shot lead with Vodacom Tour veteran Andre Cruse in the first round of the FNB Botswana Open at the Gaborone Sun on Thursday. The 21-year-old professional, in only his second season on tour, […]

Neil Spencer CD OFTHEWEEK Screaming out of nowhere, or rather Harlem, comes 20-year-old Kelis with an early claim to single of the year in Caught out There, better known as I Hate You So Much Right Now, a pounding tale of female revenge. Her debut album, Kaleidoscope (Virgin), suggests there’s more to Kelis than a […]

democracy John Seiler A SECOND LOOK Putting district councils rather than local councils at the pivot of local development reflects a planner’s fantasy: a predictable, uniform, when necessary controllable, and ultimately lifeless process in which basic change takes place quickly and without the awkwardness of competition among disparate economic, social and cultural interests. Yet this […]