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 […]

Many whiteys prefer Soweto to Sandton. Tangeni Amupadhi and Thokozani Mtshali talk to the township’s paler inhabitants Soweto’s majita (the guys) wave at Rudolf “Thokozani” Blignault as he travels the township selling coal for household use. Blignault is well known in large parts of the country’s biggest township, not only because he works there but […]

South Africa supports the aims of Jubilee 2000, but it seems we don’t qualify for debt relief. Ann Eveleth reports Each year the South African government spends as much money paying interest on its R338-billion debt as it does on education, but the Department of Finance insists there is no easy way out. Jubilee 2000 […]

Friday night: Martin Nel I had intended spending my weekend club- hopping, and was psyching up for (some) Therapy in Braamies, and was crossing Rockey Street in Yeoville when I got highjacked by Tony from Rockerfellas, bursting to show me his new club in Picadilly Centre, for “black queers”. His last statement confused me, but […]

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s prison comrades have been freed. But they are still struggling to come to terms with the horror of ordeal, reports Alex Duval Smith Aa ke, Aa ke Pya Ogoni aa ke Iilee yira na ko Yoo-ue a zia-i Arise, arise, Ogoni people arise We shall no longer allow people to cheat us – […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

Things are changing at Nasa. In October it saw the launch of a spacecraft with an engine that thunders with all the force of a small piece of paper resting on your hand. But, according to researchers working on the mission, the almost imperceptible thrust of this ion drive could be the key to the […]