Ivor Powell and Mungo Soggot Former state president PW Botha could face prosecution in connection with the grisly 1985 killing of eight East Rand youth activists by booby-trapped grenades. Botha has been named in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission amnesty application of South African police Commissioner Johan van der Merwe as having authorised what has […]

Howard Barrell Over A Barrel What gives politicians more sleepless nights than anything else? “Events,” according to Harold Macmillan, British prime minister in the late 1950s and early 1960s. “Events” are those often awkward occurrences with big consequences which governments can seldom foresee and over which they have little control, but which their electorate expects […]

WEDNESDAY, 8.45PM: BANKING representatives of the 12-nation Southern African Development Community on Wednesday formed the Southern African Development Community Banking Association which will form uniform banking legislation, practices and procedures in the SADC countries. The constitution of the new body has already been agreed on, with objectives to establish standards in-line with international practices, as […]

John Matshikiza With The Lid Off Haai, nee, man, julle, there you go again. Uncle Madiba has hardly gone into retirement than you’re starting to shout at each other and throw your toys around all over again. Long ago, it seems, Madiba stunned the world by placing reconciliation above bitterness in our country. Like Paul […]

Despite OAU efforts to solve the border crisis, there is little hope of an end to the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Audrey Gillan reports from Mekelle The Ayder school in Mekelle is little more than a collection of breeze-block huts, but it has become one of the Ethiopian government’s most potent propaganda weapons in […]

Cameron Duodu Letter From The North `Africa’s leaders, some of whom seized power in coups themselves, have decided, at the final OAU [Organisation for African Unity] summit of the century to ostracise any future African leader who takes power by force,” an OAU spokesman said. (Reuters) (Fast forward to January 1 2000. Military music is […]

South Africa’s Directorate of Covert Collections used a front company to make Swapo advocate Anton Lubowski appear to be a MI spy. Evelyn Groenink and Pierre Roux report South Africa’s military intelligence (MI) used a furniture transaction to make South West African Peoples Organisation (Swapo) advocate Anton Lubowski appear to be their spy. But the […]

A JOINT military commission to monitor the Democratic Republic of Congo ceasefire will be set up at a meeting starting in Lusaka on Monday. Zimbabwe’s Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge said on Friday that the meeting of ministers from countries involved in the conflict was also expected to discuss continued clashes in the DRC. “We want […]

Shaun de Waal British movie of the week Since the Sixties, left-wing director Ken Loach has focused on working-class life in Britain, using an uncompromising style of social realism to do it. He often uses non-actors, and he won’t let his cast see the whole script beforehand – instead, he gives it to them piecemeal […]

The most recent novel by Justin Cartwright -once a Wits rugby player -won the Whitbread Prize. He spoke to Nicholas Dawes `I was the Peter Mandelson of my era,” says Justin Cartwright of his years as spin- doctor-in-chief to Britain’s Liberal- Democratic party. He’s joking, of course, but then the Lib-Dems did slip rather rapidly […]