David Shapshak The first time I heard daiko (Japanese drums) was at a performance by a group of Kobe elementary school children performing their school’s songs. It sounded like a full-blown adult symphony, not a bunch of 12-year-olds taking turns at the drums because there weren’t enough to go around. Such is the power of […]

friend Mungo Soggot Hlengiwe Mkhize, the truth commissioner tipped to win a major government diamond contract, this week likened her prospective job of assessing the value of rough diamonds to that of compensating torture victims. Mkhize chairs the local arm of a consortium masterminded by a Belgian diamond broker which is the favourite in the […]

John Stremlau : A Second Look Democratic gains in this month’s congressional elections should enhance South Africa’s leverage in dealing with the United States on issues of importance to Africa. The unexpected defeat of Republican conservatives has given moderates in both political parties a stronger hand in foreign policy. And this new majority is likely […]

Mail & Guardian reporter The Human Rights Commission (HRC) has thrown out a complaint of subliminal racism laid against the Mail & Guardian and Sunday Times newspapers by the Association of Black Accountants and the Black Lawyers Association. The request for an investigation was turned down “because the issue of racism in the media is […]

Donna Block : Share World For the past few weeks, my four-year-old son, an addict of British satellite television stations, has been driving me crazy, jumping off the sofa and the walls singing a jingle from a United Kingdom toy advert. In a loud, off-key voice he proclaims over and over how, “It’s a great […]

Mungo Soggot and Sechaba ka ‘Nkosi The public protector tried to shield the disgraced rector of Vaal Technikon, who was fired after a commission of inquiry found him guilty of financial impropriety and abusing his position. The technikon’s council ousted Professor Aubrey Mokadi and attached several of his assets this week despite a threat from […]

Charlene Smith General Andrew Masondo, an African National Congress political commissar in Angola in the 1980s, this week apologised to the brother of the man whose execution he ordered in 1981. Masondo and Mzwai Piliso, the ANC head of security at that time, have widely been held responsible for letting conditions in Angolan camps get […]

funerals Nomboniso Gasa recalls the days when people turned their rage at apartheid against themselves The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report has captured the worst horrors of the apartheid era. Not all but most. But what we have not really seen are the everyday horrors, the systemic violence of apartheid. In 1985, when I […]

John Naughton There is a saying in the computer business that “only the paranoid survive”. The man who has taken it most to heart is Microsoft’s Bill Gates. The pace of change in the computing industry is such that if you blink you might not spot the threat. Gates blinked spectacularly in 1994, when Netscape […]

Joan Smith : First Person Why don’t women go cruising? When the media is full of the shortage of single men, why is this method of finding partners, briefly at least, unthinkable for women? The simple answer is danger. It is unthinkable for lesbians and straight women alike because we are so accustomed to recognising […]