Last week’s fresh fears prompted by the Brazilian debacle were replaced by a sigh of relief from world markets when Brazil allowed the real to float against the dollar. Indices and stocks which had surged after the new year and went into a dizzying tailspin when the failure of a minor Brazilian province to repay […]

Donna Block:SHARE WORLD Have you got nerves of steel, a cast- iron stomach and access to a computer with a connection to the global network? If so, then you can become part of a small but growing group of independent investors known as “day traders”. Unlike traditional or online investing, where investors hang on to […]

economy, stupid Beneath the triumphalism and euphoria, a deep unease pervades Middle America, argues Robert Kuttner Yes, in many respects life in the United States has never been better. But there are four notable soft spots in the American utopia: insecurity, holes in the welfare state, inequality and stress. First, insecurity: social critic Richard Sennett […]

Friday night: Brandon Edmonds Summers in Durban are like David Lean movies: long, epic and strangely alluring. They make you dream about backstroking through molten lava. At least dressing is pared down to essentials. Basically, as little as is decent. That most clubs and bars stick to Ralph Laurenesque colonial decorum, read “no shorts”, is […]

CLIVE WILSON, managing director of the Zimbabwe Standard newspaper was arrested on Friday. This follows the release on bail of Standard editor Mark Chavunduka and senior journalist Ray Choto on Thursday after being detained by the military for a story about an alleged coup plot against the government. More to come. 21

Angella Johnson VIEW FROM A BROAD `Hey, Angella. Your homies are being slaughtered,” chirped the Mail & Guardian’s sports editor as the West Indies cricket team crashed spectacularly in the fifth Test. I detected a generous delivery of schadenfreude in his comment. He was not the only South African in recent weeks to have joyfully […]

postponed Mungo Soggot The sacked rector of the Vaal Technikon, Professor Aubrey Mokadi, has told the institution’s council he is suffering from an “anxiety disorder” that justifies a postponement of his appeal against the disciplinary probe which fired him. Mokadi has sent the Vereeniging technikon a copy of a clinic’s letter that states he is […]

David Beresford: A SECOND LOOK There is something gloriously tragic about the story of the Afrikaners’ search for a national identity and a home to call their own: the flight from the Cape, the jubilant discovery of the Nile (wrong stream, but what the heck) and their arrival in their garden of Eden, only to […]

evict soldiers Peter Dickson Armed with brooms and a letter of demand, 30 residents of Mandela Park informal squatter camp in Umtata last week marched through the gates of the OR Tambo complex, which houses police and defence force units, and told officers they were trespassers who had until January 31 to clear out. The […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi reports that Lesotho’s fragile peace is at stake Lesotho is teetering on the brink of another crisis as relations among political parties in the Independent Political Authority (IPA) reached an all-time low this week. The impasse between the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) and opposition parties has cast doubts about the country’s […]