real Dale McKinley Right to Reply It didn’t take Howard Barrell long, did it? Only just back in the country, he has wasted little time in regaling readers with his own peculiar brand of sarcasm, masquerading as informed opinion (”Pissing on the communists’ parade”, July 10 to 16). His target? Us poor old communists, whose […]

WEDNEDAY, 12.00NOON: CHERRYL KENNEDY, the white South African woman who has applied for political asylum in Australia on the grounds that she has been persecuted by affirmative action in South Africa, has lost her case. The Australian Refugee Review Tribunal on Wednesday upheld an Immigration Department ruling that she had no grounds for her claims […]

MONDAY, 2.00PM: DEPUTY Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad met a senior Palestinian Liberation Organisation official, executive committee member Faisal Husseini, in East Jerusalem on Sunday. The meeting followed earlier talks with Palestine’s planning and international co-operation minister Nabil Sha’ath and Palestinian legislative assembly speaker Hanan Ashrawi,as well as the Palestinian business association on Saturday. The […]

MONDAY, 5.00PM: AN Inkatha Freedom Party member convicted for murder for his part in the June 1992 Boipatong massacre testified on Monday before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Sebokeng on the murder of a nine-month-old baby during the attack. Victor Mthandeni Mthembu, 29, is seeking amnesty for his part in the massacre in which […]

Liese van der Watt On show in Johannesburg No one ever speaks of “alternative” English or “dissident” Xhosas. And yet, descriptive phrases about alternative musicians, rebel poets and dissident academics are still used wherever Afrikaners, and what is assumed to be their homogeneous culture, is a topic of review. The reasons for this are of […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi A single mother of three is conducting a lone mission to ensure that the largely masculine metal industry respects its female employees. So determined is Rain Chiya to prove that women are as capable of controlling massive machinery as men are, that she pushed her way into a position as a crane driver […]

GAY AND AFTER by Alan Sinfield (Serpent’s Tail) Towards the end of this riveting study, Alan Sinfield evokes “an almost forgotten moment, the early 1980s – when the pop charts featured Boy George, Divine, Marc Almond, Bronski Beat, Frankie Goes to Hollywood. You couldn’t get into Lesbian and Gay Soc discos (as we called them […]

Andy Duffy Truth and Reconciliation Commission chief investigator Dumisa Ntsebeza was fighting a rearguard action this week after a confidential letter he wrote to University of the Transkei (Unitra) principal Alfred Moleah swept across the troubled campus. Ntsebeza is chair of Unitra’s governing council. He says the lengthy letter – which begins “Dear Bro Alf” […]

It may be the cure for many sexual problems, but will Viagra get to the root of sexual relationships? Jennifer Steinhauer of The New York Times and David Shapshak report Viagra, the miracle impotence drug, may kickstart men’s libidos but it’s not the cure-all for dysfunctional relationships. While millions of men around the world have […]

trenches Wonder Hlongwa Churches were asked to “return to the trenches” this week to oppose the government’s growth, employment and redistribution policy (Gear) as it does little to assist the poor. The call was made by delegates to the South African Council of Churches’ (SACC) tri-annual conference, prompting the SACC’s former secretary general, Frank Chikane, […]