Philippa Garson CLASS STRUGGLE As protestors converged on Seattle to rant their opposition to the effects of globalisation on vulnerable communities this week, similar mutterings of dissent were being echoed at a small but significant gathering of South Africans. Entitled Construction Site: Good Governance for New South Africa – A Quest to Reinvent or Strengthen […]

WHO IS … MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM? At the height of the Mengistu terror in Ethiopia, the families of people executed by militias attached to the Kebeles or street committees were forced to reimburse the state for the bullets used to kill their loved ones if they wanted to reclaim the bodies. Thousands of people were […]

Shaun Harris Lack of housing is a major issue facing South Africa. But it’s estimated that more than a third of the workforce is caught in the trap of earning between R1 000 and R5 000 a month – too much to qualify for the government’s R16 000 housing subsidy, but too low to get […]

MARIANNE MERTEN, Cape Town | Friday 11.30am. THE fraud case against high-flying mafioso Vito Palazzolo was postponed on Friday morning in the Cape Town Regional Court until February 11 next year. Palazzolo, out on R500000 bail, was arrested earlier this month by the elite Scorpions police unit for fraud relating to false information he gave […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni Police in the Eastern Cape are incapable of reaching crime-ridden villages because of bad roads in the impoverished province. Serious crimes like rape go unreported because communities are unable to get to police stations, which are mostly situated kilometres away from the remote areas. But this situation is expected to change […]

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. […]