Marianne Merten More than 200 people have heeded a Western Cape African National Congress call for members of the public to join the police reservists. Bright yellow posters calling for volunteers went up throughout Cape Town recently after the party pledged to National Commissioner George Fivaz that it would recruit 500 new volunteers by April […]

Friday night:Emeka Nwandiko Friday night and I’m at a loose end. Verbal sparring with the other half and the best laid plans for the evening are up in smoke. Or are they? I decide to head for a little- known nightclub called Sankayi. It is gem of a place tucked away between a diamond merchant […]

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 […]

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 […]

Mungo Soggot The company accused of paying a R1-million bribe for a Gauteng gambling licence, Tsogo Sun, is fighting a court order instructing the Mpumalanga gambling board to hand over tapes of deliberations which gave Tsogo a licence in Witbank. In a judgment that raises questions about the gambling booard’s conduct, Judge Brian Southwood ordered […]

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 […]

Studies show that forcing children to use computers is creating techno-anxiety and impairing the learning process. Louise MacLeod reports There may be a huge vault of health information on the Internet, but how healthy is using the technology itself? Researchers in the United States have recently reported that people who spend even a few hours […]

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 […]

Andrew Muchineripi Soccer National soccer coach Trott Moloto faces another no-win situation on Saturday in Gaborone where Botswana host Bafana Bafana in a Castle Cup Southern Africa championship first-round match. Given the lowly stature of the home team, who lie 133 places behind their opponents on the world rankings, Moloto will be expected to return […]

Howard Barrell The praise heaped on Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel for his budget by the African National Congress and its alliance partners relied upon the government’s determination to delay until after the election a number of politically awkward economic decisions it knows it must take soon. The South African Communist Party and the Congress […]