THE South African under-17’s football team will face their Zimbabwean counterparts in a second round African Junior Championship qualifier at Orlando Stadium in Soweto on Sunday. A good win will be a big boost for the players’ championship hopes in this important outing. A good crowd is expected at Orlando for the 3pm match that […]

the Congo Howard Barrell The Angolan government has withdrawn most of its forces from the Democratic Republic of Congo in recent weeks, because they are needed in the war against Unita. This leaves Congolese President Laurent Kabila’s regime dangerously exposed to a new rebel offensive. Angola has pulled back troops, air support and logistics. This […]

After holding the number one spot on the World Music Charts for two months solid, Busi Mhlongo launches her long-awaited second album, UrbanZulu, at home. Bongani Madondo gets to the source of her sound Despite the sea breeze caressing my extra melanin-ebonied skin in a way no massage parlour can, on this particular Friday Durban’s […]

tion Howard Barrell:OVER A BARREL Try as I might – and try I have – I can find no upset or sensation in the electoral lists agreed by the leadership of the African National Congress last weekend (February 14). The party’s left wing appears happy and so, too, does the right. In that lies a […]

Bruce Murray Crossfire Last week’s article, “D’Oliviera affair’s shameful secrets”, got only half the story, as it took no account of the new documents now available in South Africa. These include Cabinet minutes unearthed for the truth commission. Two questions had remained unanswered: would the government have accepted Basil d’Oliviera as part of the Marylebone […]

The assumption that anyone who does well in one area of public life is some sort of “renaissance man” – able to turn their attention to any other field and succeed – is a fallacy to which South African society has recently shown itself unfortunately prone. Mr Justice Johann Kriegler performed admirably on the Bench, […]

Matthew Krouse Down the tube `Greetings to Germany from the youth of South Africa!” They could have been words on a corny postcard – a happy message to friends, from friends far away. But they weren’t. Rather, they were the prelude to an in-your-face cultural confrontation that, with the aid of advanced technology, will be […]

Wonder Hlongwa The family of Muzikayifani Zingubo say he was repairing the door of his shack when the commandos of Weenen, KwaZulu-Natal, arrived at the squatter camp. Assigned by the farming community to provide security, the armed commandos accused 49-year- old Zingubo of shooting dead Aleta Vanenberg and wounding her husband, Piet, on their Weenen […]

When I first walk into the Association for Visual Arts, primed to review Medina Morphet’s exhibition of abstract art, it’s disconcerting to first encounter the illustrative drawings of Bongi Bengu. There also seem to be two distinct crowds here tonight, a relatively bourgeois, middle class crowd who are attracted to Bengu’s narrative depiction, and a […]

Andy Capostagno Rugby There is a theory which states that northern hemisphere rugby will only improve if it changes its playing season to coincide with that of the southern hemisphere. There is another theory which states that this has already happened. (This paragraph with apologies to Douglas Adams). For how else can we explain the […]