As the euro reaches its first birthday, it’s clear it has freed European capital to move smart and fast, writes Giles Keating For its detractors, the creation of the euro was the forced linkage of disparate economies, storing up trouble ahead. For its proponents, it was just one building block in a broader reconstruction of […]

EDITOR of the Durban-based Daily News Kaizer Nyatsumba is suing a security company for R1-million after security guards allegedy assaulted him at Gauteng’s Eastgate shopping centre on Thursday. The guards who work for Baron Security apparently accused Nyatsumba of stealing an old Ford and abandoning it in the parking area. The guards allegedly tried to […]

David Gough in Nairobi Sweeping a stray dreadlock under his cap, Nyaga wa Muhika sprinkled the herbs on the red-hot metal plate and placed a funnel over it to catch the smoke. The patient pressed his mouth against the nozzle and inhaled as many deep breaths of the acrid smoke as he could bear. When […]

Peter James Smith Why do we handle our supposedly prestige award ceremonies so badly? Last week I attended the Diners Club Winemaker of the Year Award at Cape Town’s Mount Nelson Hotel. Each year, the winemakers are required to submit a particular cultivar or style and this year it was a “Cape Blend”, which excluded […]

Mercedes Sayagues This week, the Mozambican government revoked the controversial concession of 236 000ha granted in 1996 to American James Ulysses Blanchard III, who died in March this year. Officially, Blanchard paid nothing for the land stretching south of Maputo to KwaZulu-Natal. The area is likely to be declared a World Heritage Site for its […]

Composer Phillip Miller finds his music on the township streets, writes Alex Dodd Press play. Slowly the room is filled with spirits and memories. Geographies shift: now an empty Johannesburg, now a misty Warsaw. Here an empty leather suitcase, there a red silk dressing gown left on a chair. A violin stretches heavenwards thinly, sadly, […]

Planned public hearings into the Department of Welfare’s re-registration drive for grant beneficiaries have been called off. Peter Dickson reports Human rights campaigners in the Eastern Cape are up in arms over a decision by two provincial legislature committees on Tuesday to deny the disabled a voice by calling off planned public hearings into the […]

MORE than 2500 people employed by chiefs in the Northern Provicne have been on strike for 18 days, demanding to become public servants, but the provincial administration is not budging. The strikers are members of the Trade Union of South African Authorities(Tusaa), represented in 780 tribal authorities. They are demanding to be registered as public […]

Stefaans Brmmer Some of South Africa’s high and mighty may well be quaking after alleged mafia boss Vito Palazzolo’s arrest a week ago. Palazzolo is out on R500 000 bail pending his trial, due to start on December 3, on charges of “lying” in a 1994 citizenship application. The offence is a relatively minor one, […]

Fiona Macleod A ranger shooting a rhinoceros in the world-renowned Kruger National Park goes against everything national wildlife reserves represent. Hunting and poaching are forbidden in these reserves, and one of the rangers’ jobs is to protect endangered wild animals like rhinos from people who want to shoot them. But what about a ranger who […]