Peter Makurube You would need to be an incurable optimist to believe you’d ever see Philippe Troussier smile. But he did, when Bafana Bafana played Denmark. If you blinked you probably missed it. You’d have to be as much of an optimist to have believed that Tananas, one of South Africa’s best and most successful […]

Scholar Apollon Davidson is a living link between Russia and South Africa, writes Shaun de Waal The histories of South Africa and Russia are curiously intertwined, going all the way back to Jan van Riebeeck. In his journal, the first official colonist expressed the desire for help from a Russian with experience in the exploitation […]

Mukoni T Ratshitanga Golden Miles Bhudu, the outspoken president of the South African Prisoners’ Organisation for Human Rights (Sapohr) and a former member of the African National Congress, has crossed the political floor to join Bantu Holomisa’s United Democratic Movement. Bhudu joined the ANC in 1991, but has not renewed his membership since, although he […]

leaders SACP Gauteng: RIGHT TO REPLY Sechaba ka’Nkosi’s article, “SACP split over who will lead” (June 19 to 25) uses the politburo meeting held on June 16 as a basis for so-called disunity. From our understanding of South African Communist Party procedures, nominations start at branch level, then go to districts and are finalised at […]

Phillip Kakaza Nico Phooko is a versatile young man. He is an artist and a musician. Although his focus is on his art, one cannot separate his artistic output from his professional skills and insight as a musician. “If I find difficulties in singing a song, then I take a paintbrush and depict the emotions […]

Swapna Prabhakaran A quiet and mostly unseen battle has been raging for months around KwaZulu-Natal’s waste dumps. Two waste dumps were officially closed down last year and another collapsed in a disaster that left the province with a hazardous waste-disposal crisis. The chaos began after floods and mudslides last September wreaked havoc with the province’s […]

Jack Lundin: PERSONAL HISTORY Until a few weeks ago you could have seen him on the corner of Pretoria Street and Quartz: filthy dirty, stinking of glue, begging from cars. Twelve years old and one of the small army of Hillbrow street urchins. My notes on Elias start at 9.50 am on October 1 1996, […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Disillusionment with the African National Congress and hopes of pulling off surprises in next year’s general election made up the vision that guided the United Democratic Movement at its springboard first national congress at the weekend. It became evident that while the black leaders of the party would launch a battle to lure […]

Anastasia does for history what Bambi did for nature – simplifies it beyond reality, writes Nicci Gerrard I have a dream: that Karl Marx – whose Communist Manifesto was published almost exactly 150 years ago – should come with me to see Rupert Murdoch’s 20th Century Fox’s latest offering, Anastasia, which launches Fox Animation Studios, […]

Sherilee Bridge Accusations of espionage in the cellular industry have done little to fuel confidence in the two network operators, MTN and Vodacom. They have been slammed for “petty infighting” while the market cries for reduced service costs. In a bid for market leadership just months before the possible introduction of a third network operator, […]