Leonard Doyle John Sweeney and Peter Beaumont Algeria is the winner of an alternative world cup – for the worst abuser of human rights. The garland of dishonour emerges from findings in The Observer’s Human Rights Index, launched to mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With the backing of a […]

FRIDAY, 5.00PM: THE South African Broadcasting Corporation on Friday confirmed that it fired newly appointed broadcasting strategy CE Govin Reddy on Thursday following an angry meeting with the SABC board on Wednesday. Although there was an indication on Friday morning that Reddy is planning to take legal action against the SABC, spokesman Marj Murray on […]

President Nelson Mandela’s comments at the opening of the South African Communist Party conference that the growth, economic and redistribution (Gear) stratety is the fundamental policy of the African National Congress and that he will brook no opposition to it is just the latest sign of the ANC’s irritation at public criticism from its own […]

Kirby DJ Klatzow: RIGHT TO REPLY I read with some dismay the article, “Helderberg:The search for invisible blame”, by Robert Kirby (June 26 to July 2). The article, despite its length, carries a very small intellectual component, it is factually incorrect and, unfortunately, displays the prejudices of the author rather spectacularly. It is sad to […]

Andrew Worsdale Grey Hofmeyr is a great guy, and honestly, I’m not sucking up (I had a cameo part in Suburban Bliss). Straight and to the point with an affable and very South African manner about him, he sits behind a large desk in Henley Studios at Auckland Park, with a monitor beside him. He […]

Oxford University Press (OUP)has relaunched its paperback World’s Classics series, a handsome and sturdy set of the best of Europe’s voluminous literature (with some American and Asian works thrown in, too). The titles reach back to Mesopotamia thousands of years ago and forward to James Joyce’s Ulysses. The series features sacred texts such as the […]

South African photographer David Goldblatt’s exhibition opens at the Museum of Modern Art in New York this month. Alex Dodd speaks to him about the structure of things now and then The thing that sticks in my mind about that first conversation with photographer David Goldblatt is his insistence on the absence of a colon. […]

Michael Metelits Futures and options have a bad name in many circles. These financial “derivatives”, so-called because their price is derived from the price of another security, can make sensational amounts of money for the smart and lucky and lose equally spectacular amounts for the smart and unlucky. Crashes of traditional equity markets get blamed […]

Sherilee Bridge and Ferial Haffajee The stronger gold price is no guarantee the haemorrhaging of jobs in the mining industry will cease, although trade unions are likely to use it as a bargaining tool. The National Union of Mineworkers said this week it will begin to negotiate the recall of thousands of retrenched workers and […]