In his first column for Smart Money, David Gleason surveys gold and wonders why Barlow sold investment company PGM for so little Is this a good time to buy gold shares? The evidence supporting the view that gold may be on the verge of a better period (not fantastic, you understand, just modestly better than […]

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 […]

`Woza Friday, my darling!” went the chorus from a traditional song by migrant workers in the olden days. Emerging from their miserable underground life they only looked forward to two things – traditional food, and rest. With no African eateries on the mines, they prepared their sumptuous African meals themselves. These included umgodu (tripe), samp, […]

In the week the TRC released its final report, Penuell Maduna was trying to hide the name of an African politician who enjoyed the National Party’s largesse, writes Mungo Soggot The bizarre saga of how the apartheid government bankrolled the election of a West African president by inflating the South African taxpayers’ crude oil bill […]

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 […]

smoke Mungo Soggot The National Intelligence Agency (NIA)destroyed key state documents as late as November 1996, complementing the wholesale destruction of state records undertaken by the previous government from 1990. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC)final report says in a section on South Africa’s gutted archive that the NIA destroyed records from the intelligence services […]

Sharon Hammond The Kruger National Park will present its much-awaited proposal for a new policy on managing its elephant population on Saturday. This follows decades of highly emotional criticism for culling the animals in an effort to keep the population in the park at a fixed number of between 7 000 and 7 500. “We […]

David Shapshak Debt relief topped the agenda at the Second Tokyo International Conference on African Development between October 19 and 21, when Japan announced a grant bail-out for some African countries. This was perhaps the most significant and concrete achievement of the conference, which adopted an ambitious “agenda for action” to halve the present levels […]

Ferial Haffajee `The owner needs the cow because of its milk. The cow needs the owner because he provides it with hay. But when the cow ceases to produce milk, the owner may well decide to slaughter it. The cow cannot do the same to the owner.” This is what Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano said […]

Johnny Masilela MY WARRIOR SON by Mary Anne Fitzgerald (Penguin) This is the story of the relationship between Mary Anne Fitzgerald – who grew up in the United States and South Africa – and Peter Kepaeka, a Masai lad, allegedly an orphan, whom she adopted. She was working as a foreign correspondent in Kenya at […]