Several paragraphs went missing from Lionel Abrahams’s review of Guy Butler’s Collected Poems last week. After “A major source of pressure and fire in his art is his deep experience of a world afflicted by division,” the review should have read: Articulating his own dilemmas, doubts and challenging insights, Butler foreshadows aspects of the new […]

Heather Hogan When Sergeant Hendrik de Klerk (26) used only his hands to arrest an armed bank robber outside a bank in Hillbrow earlier this year, he never imagined he would be awarded the Top Cop of the Year award. When the robber shot at him, he disregarded his own safety: his only thought was […]

Thebe Mabanga The South African music industry is littered with a lot of ills and has a long history of neglecting artists and compromising artistic integrity to make a quick buck. This has begun to change slowly with the emergence of small, independent record labels. With new approaches to development and a wealth of experience, […]

Steven Friedman WORM’S EYE VIEW If Thabo Mbeki is serious about African solidarity, he might try encouraging it at home. An important feature of the early Mbeki presidency has been its stress on Africa. Besides the “African renaissance’s” new status as a symbol, Mbeki has been far more concerned than his predecessor to encourage peace […]

John Matshikiza WITH THE LID OFF I am aware that there are those sceptics out there who believe that I make up most of the unlikely things that appear as gospel in this column. I can only say to them, “Keep enjoying the ride,” and I take refuge in the old maxim that says “the […]

Police have blamed the usual suspect, Pagad, but seem no closer to preventing a spate of festive season bombings in Cape Town, reports Marianne Merten Sunday’s bomb blast in Camps Bay again casts doubt over the state’s ability to deal with terrorism by a handful of people in Cape Town, despite having spent millions of […]

Jerry Richardson was this week back before the TRC’s amnesty committee, but no more coherent than during his last testimony, reports Piers Pigou Between November 1988 and February 1989, Jerry Vusimuzi Richardson and other members of the Mandela United Football Club went on a killing spree that resulted in his arrest, prosecution, conviction and 20-year […]

In 1972 a young woman living in England, just out of school and waiting to go to university, travelled to Zambia to work as a volunteer teacher at a mission school. She returned home to England via South Africa, catching a boat from Cape Town to Southampton. She only spent a few days in transit […]

Heather Hogan Bushy Molefe, Minister of Defence Mosiuoa Lekota’s personal assistant, will appear in the Pretoria Regional Court on Monday on charges of child abuse. According to the police, Molefe is charged with molesting the 11-year-old daughter of another official in the Ministry of Defence. The charge was laid at the Pretoria West police station […]

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 […]