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 […]

Alex Sudheim Pavement may well be the rock’n’roll darlings of the postmodern age, but as they themselves sing: “It’s a brand new era and it feels great/It’s a brand new era but it came too late.” The open-endedness of these lyrics is very much in keeping with the band’s oeuvre, which can be read as […]

Alois Brunner sent at least 129 000 Jews to the death camps. Serge Klarsfeld, the French lawyer who helped track down Klaus Barbie, is determined to bring him to trial. Jo Glanville reports Many people remember Alois Brunner. Philip Vock saw him yelling in the yard of Drancy transit camp, on the outskirts of Paris, […]

Pierre Buyoya: President from 1987 to 1993 and from 1996 to the present day. A wily operator who enjoys being president but is nonetheless apparently sincere in his efforts to give it up to the Hutu opposition when he judges the moment to be right. Commands the loyalty of the army though not unconditionally. Many […]