OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.00PM. THE Richmond killers have been identified as a five-man hit-squad with military backgrounds, SABC3 has reported. Their leader is known to speak Afrikaans fluently, and police have been searching for them for a year already in connection with previous massacres. Safety and Security Minister Sydney Mufamadi announced the news […]

Nation Heidi Clark The United Nations this week awarded First Nation status to one of South Africa’s oldest peoples, the Griquas. Plettenberg Bay councillor Sammy Jansen, a member of the Griqua political party, the Executive National Conference, says this is the UN’s acknowledgement of his nation as among the first inhabitants of South Africa. It […]

Roger Cohen in Abuja `Look, the human rights here in Nigeria are terrible,” Theodore Luttwak says, “but the opportunities are just fantastic … where else in the world do you have so much money?” Good question. Abuja, Nigeria’s capital- under-construction, is full of the whiff of oil money, and not just at the exclusive golf […]

Alex Dodd – Milan, Marseille, New York, Rotterdam A short, hard-hitting film about xenophobia in the heart of Johannesburg by local film- maker Zola Maseko has been playing to thunderous applause around the world. This is the first time a film by a black South African director has achieved such widespread international acclaim. The Foreigner […]

Tangeni Amupadhi The official police watchdog has obtained an affidavit from a person who claims to have seen two police officers coaching witnesses to finger people’s poet Mzwakhe Mbuli at an identity parade. At least two witnesses were shown photographs of Mbuli by policemen investigating a bank robbery in Waverley, north of Pretoria, last October, […]

Howard Barrell : Over a Barrel What is one of the cleverest people in South Africa doing indulging so assiduously one of the vainest? Why has Deputy President Thabo Mbeki taken to bowing and scraping before Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Inkatha Freedom Party leader and minister of home affairs? Why has Mbeki been calling him Shenge, offering […]

Dan Glaister : First Person John Bayley has written a moving elegy to his wife, the writer Iris Murdoch, in the New Yorker magazine. It is a tale of two swimming trips to the same river near Oxford, United Kingdom. Two trips punctuated by a space of 40 years, and haunted by Alzheimer’s disease. “With […]

Death was the uninvited guest at a wedding in Richmond this week, turning joy into grief. Sechaba ka’Nkosi reports Doyi Shezi came home to Esimozomeni in Richmond last week to prepare for his second-youngest daughter’s wedding. On Saturday, he performed all the traditional marriage rituals at his homestead and handed his daughter Nonhlanhla to her […]

Tracy Murinik Whether you’ve been aware of it or not, if you’ve been living in South Africa within the past four decades or so, and if you’ve experienced any of this country’s major cities (and even some smaller towns), then it is likely that you have at some point encountered Revel Fox. Or his vision […]

OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 10.30PM. THE South African Footplate Staff Association has agreed to suspend its strike of train drivers, ticket collectors and guards which left millions of commuters stranded around the country on Friday, and created chaos on the roads. The breakthrough was a result of intervention by the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation […]