Ann Eveleth The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC)final report has found Inkatha Freedom Party leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi responsible for all the gross human rights violations committed under his leadership of the party, the KwaZulu government and the KwaZulu police. “Chief MG Buthelezi served simultaneously as president of the IFP and as the chief minister of […]

Paul Farrely: SHARE WORLD The irony is delicious. The despair in markets the world over has just made Wall Street’s biggest optimist very, very rich indeed. Last week, Abby Joseph Cohen, cool- headed chief investment strategist at Goldman Sachs and the United States’s most influential market guru, finally claimed one of the biggest prizes on […]

Wally Mbhele Winnie Madikizela-Mandela stands accused of being central to the formation and activities of the Mandela United Football Club, whose members were involved in at least 18 cold-blooded murders. In a harsh judgment on her association with the football club, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) final report said most Mandela United operations were […]

Oral poetry has always played an important role in South African culture, write Richard Bowker and Peter Makurube When President Nelson Mandela entered his birthday bash at Gallagher Estate in July, he was led in by the boy-poet Samkhelo Mcandi, waxing lyrical about Madiba’s greatness. All in impeccable Xhosa. He was following in the footsteps […]

enough Guy Oliver When Nomonde Calata speaks of the defining moment of her life – the death of her husband, activist Fort Calata, in 1985 – 13 years disappear as if they had never been. The moment has not been dulled by the grand designs of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In many ways, it […]

Cameron Duodu: LETTER FROM THE NORTH She never allowed the leaders of the Soviet Union to forget what horrible creatures they were. And she plotted, with her “virtual boyfriend”, Ronald Reagan, to bring down the Soviets’ “evil empire”. To listen to her waxing lyrical about the “values of the free world” you would have thought […]

as a 23-year-old French man A 13-year-old boy goes missing in San Antonio, Texas. Three years later, he is found, alive, in Spain, with an appalling tale of kidnap and a paedophile ring. His family is overjoyed to have him home safe. But things are not quite as they seem. Nick Davies reports Just more […]

deliver democracy Mahmood Mamdani A Second Look It is widely believed the root problem of the African state is the artificial nature of its boundaries. Were these boundaries not first arbitrarily drawn up at the Berlin Conference of 1884/85 and then imposed from the outside? This bit of conventional wisdom needs to be questioned for […]

Howard Barrell The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was ready to declare FW de Klerk “an accessory to gross human rights violations” before the former president brought an urgent court action to stop this conclusion being carried in the TRC’s final report, released in Pretoria on Thursday. The commission had provisionally concluded that De Klerk’s […]

The TRC has found that torture and executions occurred in ANC camps in exile. Some of those targeted were killed as a result of bad leadership, jealousies and paranoia, writes Charlene Smith Chris Hani was once sentenced to death by Umkhonto weSizwe’s (MK) high command in Tanzania for putting forward the grievances of MK cadres. […]