Swapna Prabhakaran Environmentalists and researchers from around the world converged on Durban’s International Convention Centre this week to share ideas on global air pollution. It was the first time the World Clean Air and Environment Congress, holding its 11th conference, has been held in Africa. It provided an opportunity for valuable information exchange, bridging the […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Sunday 11.45am. SUNDOWNS were stunned on Saturday when they went down 2-1 to Bloemfontein Celtic in a shock Premier Soccer League defeat at the Free State Stadium. Sundowns missed many opportunities that could have seen then take the match, but Celtic opened the scoring in the 25th minute through Stoffel Nikane […]

Ian Whittell The TV stations are the hardware, the sports teams the software. That is the cynical but realistic jargon in an American sports world in which media companies are taking hold. “The long tentacles of media conglomerates are something we have to watch very carefully,” said Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball. And […]

Chiara Carter The Pan Africanist Congress is spelt “Pat” in several townships and platteland towns in the Western Cape. PAC MP Patricia de Lille’s involvement in bread-and-butter issues is helping the party make inroads into coloured communities in the Western Cape – and attract a handful of white members. This weekend the PAC will launch […]

The voyeurist counsel Mail & Guardian reporter There is a certain irony in the fact that the independent prosecutor who reportedly sings hymns on his morning jog and keeps a calendar with daily scripture verses at home should be the author of the United States’s latest publishing sensation. The 440-page report produced by Kenneth Starr […]

A small church is reuniting the uprooted residents of Kofifi, writes Peter Makurube When former residents of Sophiatown talk about their beloved Kofifi, they overdose on nostalgia. They’ve forgotten nothing – the music, the gangsters and the community spirit. However, the story of Sophiatown would not be complete without mentioning the tiny church on Ray […]

Shirley Kossick The shortlist for this year’s Boeke Prize – the annual Exclusive Books marketing device – has something for everyone, from the lightweight to the very serious and from serial murder to genocide. A mixed bag indeed, which makes it all the more difficult to choose a winner since the six novels are so […]

Chiara Carter Achmat ”Boeta” Davids, Cape Town community worker, writer and academic, was the first cultural historian to reclaim Afrikaans as a language of the slaves rather than the colonisers. Davids died of a heart attack at the Muslim radio station Voice of the Cape earlier this week and was buried from Cape Town’s Long […]

Sudan is suffering the worst famine in its history. And it is caused not by drought but by civil war. The aid agencies are pouring in relief, which enables the combatants to carry on fighting. Kevin Toolis argues that Western governments should call a halt to a policy that’s failed There was no song in […]

Fiona Macleod Criminal charges will soon be laid against animal dealer Riccardo Ghiazza, who recently kidnapped 30 baby elephants from the Tuli bushlands in southern Botswana. Ghiazza is holding the elephants near Hartebeespoort Dam, with the intention of selling them to zoos and animal trainers. Rick Allen, manager of the wildlife unit of the National […]