SARAH BULLEN, Johannesburg | Monday 5.30pm. LOCAL markets had a strong day across the board on Monday, bouncing off stronger international markets that found touch with news of US support for an International Monetary Fund relief package. Dealers said the announcement that the United States Senate has passed an IMF plan to assist ailing economies […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Monday 6.50pm. THE Truth and Reconciliation Commission has blamed former South African army chief Lieutenant General Constand Viljoen, former air force chief RH Rodgers, and their political masters — the late prime minister John Vorster and defence minister PW Botha — for the Cassinga massacre of 1978, in which over 600 […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Dhaka | Monday 1.00am. SOUTH Africa’s cricket side continued its good run of form in Dhaka in Sunday, beating the West Indies to claim the Wills International Cup. South Africa finished at 248 for six in 47 overs, led by captain Hansie Cronje’s 61 and his astute leadership. The South Africans […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Johannesburg | Sunday 5.00pm. WEST African leaders ended their summit meeting in Nigeria late on Saturday night after failing to to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Guinea Bissau. The two-day leaders’ summit of the 16-member Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) had been dominated by the crisis […]

DENIS BARNETT, Johannesburg | Sunday 7.00pm. SHARP contradictions on Sunday undermined the ANC’s response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings that it violated human rights when fighting apartheid, highlighting differences between President Nelson Mandela and his deputy Thabo Mbeki. Mandela backed the report’s findings, saying that nobody could deny that people died in African […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT and AFP, Lumbumbashi | Sunday 7.00pm. ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe flew to the Democratic Republic of Congo for a one-day summit on Sunday in the wake of failed peace talks in the Zambian capital Lusaka last week. The summit, to be held in Lumbumbashi, is expected to be attended by leaders of three […]

Shirley Kossick OKAVANGO GODS by Anthony Fleischer (David Philip) CHILDISH THINGS by Marita van der Vyver, translated by Madeleine van Biljon (Penguin) In Okavango Gods, Anthony Fleischer tells the story of Pula Barotse, a Hambukushu youth who straddles the divide between Western modernity and the ancient beliefs and myths of his own “people of the […]

Jim McClellan meets a man who wants to sweep away the concept of the home computer Here’s a question to ponder: how many electric motors do you have in your house? Probably more than you realise. But you don’t think of them as electric motors. Instead, you just get on with using your food mixer […]

Alex Duval Smith in Lagos Never mind the military regime’s promises of free elections. Never mind the international community’s endorsement. What 100-million Nigerians want to know is: what would Fela Kuti have said? The hard-living, outspoken inventor of afrobeat, who died last year and would have been 60 this Thursday, left behind both a musical […]

CDs of the week: Phillip Kakaza Although this country still boasts a lively jazz tradition, so much of the best of it was shipped away to flourish abroad. The Blue Notes, founded by innovative pianist Chris McGregor, went to exile in 1965. Apartheid prohibited them from performing as a racially mixed band in South Africa. […]