Robert D Hershey Jr If actions speak louder than words, the person many consider the United States’s most astute stock-market investor seems to be whispering “sell”. While Warren E Buffett, the decabillionaire “Oracle of Omaha”, has always argued that market drops provide chances to scoop up bargains, his proposed acquisition of General Re, the US’s […]

Bread Heidi Clark Staff at a school for 250 former juvenile delinquents and street children in the Eastern Cape won a court interdict last week, preventing an attempt by the project’s trust to close it down. The children were facing eviction at the end of September from the institution which has been both their home […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 5.00pm. JUSTICE Minister Dullah Omar has said that the the transformation of the judiciary must be speeded up. Speaking on Friday after the week’s outcry over the handling of the SA Rugby Football Union’s successful application to have a commission of inquiry overturned, Omar said the judiciary’s accountability should […]

William Boot Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s intervention this week in Lesotho’s election crisis may prove too little, too late to head off disaster in the beleaguered kingdom. Mbeki, Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfred Nzo and Minister of Defence Joe Modise secured agreement from both the governing Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) and the country’s major […]

Wally Mbhele A former African National Congress member who was convicted in 1988 of the gruesome murder of four women considers himself abandoned by his party. Of the six people convicted in the case, four – including the ringleader – were given political amnesty in 1991. Another, Absalom Kobela, was released on parole last year. […]

Suzy Bell One of South Africa’s most highly rated political cartoonists, Nanda Soobben, has just scooped a handsome grant from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology to produce a 20-minute docu-animation film, based on his political cartoons from the Eighties and Nineties. Soobben, who is a weekly political cartoonist forThe Independent on Saturday […]

HOWARD BARREL in Cape Town | Friday 8.00pm. THE African National Congress this week turned down a South African Communist Party request for a meeting between their leaders to discuss serious disagreements between the parties that emerged last month. The SACP had hoped the parties could get together before a two-day meeting of the ANC’s […]

Tracy Murinik On show in CapeTown I was sold, and then so was the painting. It said: “Narcissus daarling, it’s time to go home” . and the message on the back clarified, “dearest daarling, I love oysters. Yours forever . sign here”. And for the moment all I wanted was to sign. And then there […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Durban | Friday 5.00pm. UNITED Democratic Movement national secretary Sifiso Nkabinde on Friday expressed “shock” at Thursday’s closure of the Richmond police station, saying it is “strange” that the action was taken only after police officers accused of complicity in the violence demanded proof of the allegations against them. “The UDM finds it […]

Steve Smith The thing about a public sculpture is that it’s a lot like a tattoo. If you’re going to have one, best think long and hard about what you want. Once it’s there, it’s there. This was the responsibility placed on the judges in the recent Public Sculpture Competition organised by the Cape Town […]