Andy Capostagno Golf The finest tribute that anyone could hand to the Nedbank Million Dollar Challenge is that since South Africa emerged from international isolation, it has got better. That is no small feat. Consider the crowds who used to flock to Newlands for the traditional festive season Currie Cup cricket match between Western Province […]

Ann Eveleth A white Hartebeespoort landowner staged a hunger strike this week to force the conservative local council to kick-start low-cost housing for about 50 000 black residents of this picturesque getaway outside Pretoria. Broederstroom smallholder Roger Roman launched his lone hunger strike and sit- in in front of the Hartebeespoort council offices on Wednesday. […]

jail Ferial Haffajee The only son of Freedom Front leader Tienie Groene- wald, is in jail in Lisbon facing espionage charges. Pieter Hendrik Groenewald, a former rightwinger and Wit Wolf – a spent far right-wing organisation – was re- arrested in August soon after being released after a failed extradition attempt by the South African […]

Evidence wa ka Ngobeni The rector of Technikon South Africa (TSA), Adriaan Buitendacht, is paid an annual salary of nearly R1-million. And he is scheduled to get a salary increase next year. Discontent is running high among workers, labour unions and senior staff at TSA about the “purported extravagant” salaries paid to top management, especially […]

Louise Viljoen VIR ‘N PERS HUIS by Karin Cronj (Human &Rousseau) Karin Cronj’s novel Vir ‘n Pers Huis starts with a scene in a supermarket. The narrator is overcome with disgust as she observes a woman who gorges herself on the Danish pastries she is loading into her shopping trolley, and cringes pathetically while selecting […]

Chiara Carter A campaign to fight xenophobia and raise awareness about refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants is to be launched next month. The campaign is part of a three-year strategy drawn up by a consultant commissioned by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). It is being spearheaded by the National Consultative Forum on Refugee […]

Robin McKie It is the Holy Grail of physics, and it has eluded scientists for the past 30 years. Now researchers believe they are on the threshold of detecting the most elusive force in the cosmos: gravity waves. But if they find the waves do not exist, that would still be significant: it would prove […]

readership Johnny Masilela DIPHORORO TSA BOPHELO edited by MV Shai (Heinemann Mamela Afrika Series) In his foreword, the editor and compiler of this Sepedi language collection of short stories, MV Shai, goes to great pains to explain what protest literature is all about. Were contributing authors asked to come up with political stories? The first […]

Loose cannon: Robert Kirby This looming Christmas is, of course, the second last of both the present century and millennium. There also remains little over a year until the founder of the Christian religion hits that big ol’ double whammy and becomes the religion’s first 2 000-year-old Saviour. As He starts His penultimate Y2K lap, […]

Andy Colquhoun in Dublin Rugby Imagine being lightly beaten about the body with baseball bats while running a 10km race – a race that you have to win – and you may have some idea of the mental and physical threshing machine through which the Springboks seem to have been passing every Saturday since the […]