Zolile Machi and his family, in Durban’s Kwa Mashu township, had been caring for a cousin believed to have Aids. He describes how life changed when he arrived, and when he left A cousin from the South Coast arrived on our doorstep the other evening. He was carrying a huge but almost empty black Nike […]

Peter Makurube Music The last Standard Bank Jazz Festival of the century will be the biggest and the best. The line-up of stars billed for Moretele Park in Mamelodi on December 12 sizzles with the cream of African and American music. The senior citizens of sound – Hugh Masekela, Jonas Gwangwa, Miriam Makeba, Caiphus Semenya […]

JG Ballard CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE END OF TIME by Umberto Eco, Stephen Jay Gould, Jean- Claude Carrire and Jean Delumeau (Allen Lane) Is Britain’s Millennium Dome too small? Does it represent a failure of nerve of the kind described by the contributors to this discussion on the nature of time and the challenge of the […]

Neil Manthorp Cricket Ten consecutive home victories equals the all-time record set by India in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Like India, South Africa achieved these wins with the help of carefully under-prepared pitches that could only assist the home side. Indian batsmen play spin better than any other side, even if the ball […]

prosperity Africa is the chief victim of growing US stinginess, writes Karen De Young Americans have set a record for stinginess in one of the most prosperous decades in their history. For as long as people have kept track, never has the United States given a smaller share of its money to the world’s poorest. […]

declining Your articles (November 19 to 25) about the problems in tertiary education should have mentioned the declining standards in the quality of people who are being appointed as professors in our universities, and the lack of any professional body that can punish them for misconduct. A case in point occurred recently in Pietermaritzburg. An […]

Stefaans Brmmer and Mungo Soggot A Johannesburg-based German businessman recently named in the British press and in local intelligence reports as an arms dealer with pariah states says he is the victim of a plot by old-guard intelligence operatives. Rudolph Heinrich Wollenhaupt says that for several years he has been the target of an orchestrated […]

As the new mediator in the Burundi crisis, Nelson Mandela will have to work hard to convince the key players in the strife that they can benefit from peace.

Labuschagne Wally Mbhele A senior policeman who once targeted the present-day chief of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), General Siphiwe Nyanda, for assassination, and abducted and tortured Nyanda’s wife, was this week bluntly denied amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Amid strong opposition to his application from victims’ families, Senior Superintendent […]

Bob Woolmer FROM THE PAVILION No team likes to get beaten, and, on the whole, England’s management were happy to concede that South Africa had played very well in order to win the first Test by an innings. Normally it would end there. But there was a proviso. The English team and many of its […]