PETER DICKSON, East London | Friday 12.10pm REPRESENTATIVES of the 1300 Volkswagen South Africa (VWSA) workers who were sacked in January are lobbying for international support, while troops this week patrolled the streets of Uitenhage to keep the peace in the wake of the strike. The employees from VWSA’s Uitenhage plant were axed after they […]

Robin Denselow in Makeni, Sierra Leone Just outside the little town of Lunsar, less than a 160km inland from Freetown, there is a roadblock where the rule of President Tajun Kabbar ends, and that of the rebel leader Foday Sankoh begins. From here on in, right through to the diamond fields in the east of […]

She’s young, black, British – and the first publishing sensation of the millennium Stephanie Merritt The hype began in late 1997. Zadie Smith was 21 and just down from Cambridge when her first novel was sold on a mere 80 pages for an advance rumoured to be in the region of 250 000. Some two-and-a-half […]

FIGHTING in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo between government security forces and a rebel faction claimed over 19 lives on Thursday, a rebel chief said. Jean-Pierre Bemba of the Congolese Liberation Movement, who heads one of three rebel groups fighting Kabila’s government, has denounced the attack as a “new violation of the […]

Antjie Krog’s new play is about dialogue – across colour and history, and paint Michael Rautenbach Viewing Antjie Krog’s play Waarom is Di wat Vr Toyi-Toyi Altyd So Vet? at Potchefstroom’s Aardklop festival last October, critic Stephen Gray noted it was “surely destined to become a classic in the repertoire”. Now translated by Krog into […]

The highly romanticised notion of what a journalist’s work is all about is responsible for the lack of representation of women in the media Khadija Magardie The Human Rights Commission’s (HRC) hearings into racism in the media produced an interesting, though not entirely novel offshoot. Both participants and prominent media persons testifying at the hearings […]

ANGLO American Platinum Corporation (Amplats) and the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) are in talks to end a dispute at the firm’s Rustenburg precious metals refinery. Some 120 NUM members at the plant have downed tools since the end of February over wages and working conditions. “The 8% wage offer is final … There will […]

favour in SA Nawaal Deane ‘Ichi, ni, san, shi [Japanese countdown],” wham, grunt, slap. These are the sounds of two sweating opponents slamming into each other. One pushes his forehead into the other’s chest while gripping him in a bear hug to force him out of the makeshift ring. The opponent is thrown in a […]

John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign:/’No more water, the fire next time!’” So run the words of the old Negro spiritual. The conflagration that consumed the bodies of some 500 members of an obscure Ugandan Christian cult which called itself the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments […]

DEPUTY Agriculture Minister Dirk du Toit is to lead a delegation to Britain on Saturday to inspect farms and abattoirs as a final step towards lifting a South Africa ban on British beef. The ban, imposed in 1998, was in response to an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or “mad cow” disease, among Britain’s beef […]