Andrew Muchineripi Soccer comment One wag interrupted a prolonged perod of silence at Loftus Stadium in Pretoria on Wednesday night to ask a companion what the difference was between the Titanic and South African soccer. The Titantic cannot sink any further, came the sharp reply to much laughter, and while it may have been a […]

Paul Kirk Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini spent R92 500 – of taxpayers’ money – on fumigating his homes for cockroaches in the past year. The Mail & Guardian has invoices detailing the king’s expenditure, which includes R400 000 a month on a Lear jet, R16 000 repairing his jacuzzi and steam room and R12 000 […]

John Stremlau SECOND LOOK Whatever ails former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, his presence in a private Pretoria clinic carries a political disease that could weaken South Africa’s international image and the vitality of its foreign policy. Human rights define South Africa, domestically and internationally. It is the mainspring for the nation’s extraordinary prestige and […]

Khadija Magardie Educationists from across South Africa attended a three-day conference organised by the Council on Higher Education (CHE), which has told the government that there is no common vision on the future of higher education. There are severe problems related to availability of financial and human resources, inadequate higher education policy expertise and a […]

Stephen Gray Review of the week In 1981, Mbongeni Ngema himself, clandestinely in the alcove of what is now the Gramadoelas Restaurant at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, launched the wonderful protest cabaret, Woza Albert!. He had little in the world except talent to back it, but was going to go everywhere. One of the characters he […]

The way business approaches the Net is about to change radically, reports Neil McIntosh On the face of it, XML sounds dull. You won’t be able to see it, it will add no fancy animations or multimedia-rich content to your screen, and it doesn’t come with a metallic finish or colourful see-through skin. It’s a […]

As Cliff Richard’s pious dirge races up the charts, Stephen Moss explains why the Bible-bashing, sexless bore is still a star Cliff Richard is like the queen: always there, always in the papers, almost born famous. And yet we know next to nothing about him. He has made more hit records than anyone else, has […]

The agency set up to ensure all South Africans have access to a telephone is unable to deliver this mandate on its own, reports Ann Eveleth The Universal Service Agency’s (USA) ambitious plan to roll out hundreds of rural “telecentres” to connect remote areas to telephones and the Internet has virtually run aground in the […]

Peter Dickson Special courts are planned for the hearing next year of a backlog of more than 400 government-related fraud and corruption cases in the Eastern Cape. The decision was taken at the province’s first anti-corruption summit held in East London last week after Premier Makhenkesi Stofile asked for broader input on Bisho’s proposals. It […]

aGregory Mthembu-Salter CROSSFIRE Howard Barrell’s article last week painted a depressing picture of life in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It seems that Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is both micro-managing her staff and routinely bypassing them, jetting off at short notice for consultations in the Great Lakes region, the results of which are made known only […]