Fiona Macleod First they were blamed for the Cape fires, now they’re being blamed for the floods. Experts say the huge forests of alien trees planted in the catchment areas of Mpumalanga have exacerbated the flooding that ravaged the province this week. Mpumalanga produces 39% of the country’s timber. Commercial timber, mostly pine and gum […]

Reports by Jubie Matlou, Connie Selebogo, Evidence wa ka Ngobeni, Khadija Magardie and Sharon Hammond When she woke at 5am on Thursday to see her husband off for work, Nozipho Mjoli saw no danger in the stream that usually flowed about 100m from her shack. But a few hours later, after having returned to bed, […]

Khadija Magardie WHO IS … SALIM OULDSALEK? In the week President Thabo Mbeki limbered up for his State of the Nation address, he found time to meet an emissary from one of Africa’s more arcane conflicts. Salim Ouldsalek, foreign minister of the would-be Saharawi Arab Republic, is in South Africa to revive the long-standing ties […]

Deon Potgieter Boxing There is a two out of three chance that Lennox Lewis will be defending his “Universal” heavyweight world title against a South African later this year. Corrie Sanders, Francois Botha and David Tua have been named as three possible opponents for Lewis, if he successfully defends his title against Michael Grant in […]

Tangeni Amupadhi Pressure is mounting on the Namibian government to reverse a decision that has plunged the country into the middle of the Angolan civil war. Namibian churches have joined organisations and individuals who criticised the authorities for allowing the Angolan armed forces (FAA) to use Namibia as a launch pad for its offensive on […]

NORWEGIAN Prime Minister Kjell Bondevik was expected to arrive in South Africa on Thursday afternoon for a three-day visit. The prime minister, on his first official visit to South Africa, is scheduled to meet President Thabo Mbeki for bilateral talks on Friday, embassy and government officials said. Bondevik, accompanied by a high-powered business delegation, flies […]

A travelling exhibition focuses on history’s silent witnesses, writes Alex Sudheim The crowd: that swollen, seething animal, comes to life when human beings swarm together in a single unity of desire. As an organism the crowd works its seduction by promising the surrender of individual will to the mass. Individuals, no longer responsible for their […]

There was a good deal to commend in President Thabo Mbeki’s speech opening Parliament this month. But in one particular at least he fell woefully short of giving South Africans the reasoned leadership and guidance that the State of the Nation address is meant to embody. This is the issue of the HIV/Aids pandemic, identified […]

Patekile Holomisa A SECOND LOOK One of the ironies of post-colonial Africa is the ease with which its new rulers find comfort within the governance systems of their former oppressors, while they all invariably seem not to know what to do with the indigenous systems that have somehow managed to survive the colonial onslaught. There […]

There was a programme the other night about men and their penises. The previous week, there was one about women and their clitorises, which featured liberated dames spreading their legs before mirrors, solemnly admiring the “beauty of their vaginas” for the benefit of assembled academia and TV cameras. It was a bit strange watching that […]