Sechaba ka’Nkosi The South African Communist Party politburo this week failed to reconcile its young radicals and its old guard on split nominations for the party’s highly contested leadership positions. On Tuesday, the politburo failed to come up with a single name for the party’s most contested position, that of the general secretary, between the […]

Pallo Jordan CROSSFIRE Jeff Greenfield, an American journalist, relates his grandmother’s response to the Rosenberg “atomic bomb spies” trial. As someone who had grown up in Tsarist Russia, where the framing of Jews on trumped- up charges was a byword for the authorities, Greenfield’s granny always believed that the Rosenbergs had been framed and were […]

theory Robert Kirby argues against the theory that South Africans lured Mozambican president Samora Machel to his death It is believed that between 80% and 90% of aviation accidents are due to human error. Refining the statistic a little further, it was found that out of a total of 28 000 aviation “incident reports” made […]

Andy Duffy A senior Western Cape police officer, found guilty by the police force of sexually harassing a female colleague, has been given a R1,6-million golden handshake, following a decision by the provincial attorney general to drop criminal charges. The former commander of the Woodstock police station, Mario Laubscher, walked off with his bumper retirement […]

The African National Congress will have to do better in the Eastern Cape if it wants to retain the support of one of South Africa’s poorest provinces, writes Lizeka Mda The African National Congress is fortunate the elections are still a year away because were they to be held tomorrow, it seems the United Democratic […]

The leading Maghrebian author, Tahar Ben Jelloun, attended this year’s Poetry Africa festival in Durban. He spoke to Stephen Gray Stephen Gray: How did you come to choose French above your home language? Tahar Ben Jelloun: I was born in Fez in 1944, in a modest and fairly traditionalist family, with Arabic as my home […]

Tangeni Amupadhi and Mungo Soggot Highway heists have become one of South Africa’s favourite crimes, with gangs of well-trained operatives pulling off a spate of audacious robberies involving tens of millions of rands. Police say they have arrested about 250 suspects, but a substantial number have escaped – as in the case of former African […]

Tracy Murinik On show in Cape Town I’ll admit to being a little sceptical when first hearing about the exhibition Childhood. Graffiti art in the Irma Stern Museum sounded gimmicky. Well, it isn’t. In fact, the collaboration between artists Gregg Smith, Mustafa Maluka, Ice and Sky 1 got me swallowing my words instantly. They have […]

Ann Eveleth The apartheid-era homeland system and rural “betterment schemes” were the worst causes of land degradation, according to a rapid appraisal of land resources conducted in the run-up to World Desertification Day on Wednesday. The study forms part of South Africa’s National Action Programme to implement the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. The […]

A special correspondent in Abuja There were few tears and fewer obsequies for General Sani Abacha, the late and brutal president of Nigeria. Wrapped in a sheet and carried to his home town of Kano in the cargo hold of a Nigerian air force jet, he arrived too late even to be buried before evening […]