in Swapo death camp Melissa Jones and Michael Gillard Recurring nightmares of torture have haunted Emma Kambangula for the past nine years. “In one, I am naked and being beaten with bundles of sticks by three men, while two others are restraining my daughter, Freda, who is crying, screaming and trying to run to me,” […]
FRIDAY, 4.30PM: A SHORTAGE shortage of cash for the maintenance of Eastern Cape schools has resulted in the loss this week of St Johns College Hostel by fire, and a second school being closed as a health hazard. The Daily Dispatch reported this week that the hostel was a result of the pupils having to […]
Know your Mark Hughes from your Marcuse? With the World Cup less than a week away, even the intellectuals are muscling in on the beautiful game. Peter Lennon reports Predictably French philosophers, sociologists and literary critics are muscling in on the World Cup, peddling their cinq sous worth on the origins, motivation and significance of […]
Phillip Kakaza Jazz A brand-new Cosac Jazz Inn, in the heart of Yeoville, Johannesburg, promises to bring back some vibrancy to Rockey Street, an area doomed as a hideout for the “lost generation”. It’s a controversial street that, through the years, saw many such clubs fading away, leaving jazz enthusiasts floating around in search of […]
Tim Radford A heredity that helps some mountaineers breathe easily at Everest heights and keeps young soldiers at peak fitness could soon answer questions about heart disease and stroke. A team of British scientists revealed last week that in life’s genetic poker game, they may have identified the Ace hand for athletes. Ace stands for […]
Mukoni T Ratshitanga The African National Congress in the Northern Province this week met one of its allies, the Congress of South African Students (Cosas), in a bid to iron out differences between Cosas and MEC of Education Joe Phaahla. Relations between Phaahla and Cosas hit an all-time low last week when the provincial chair […]
Krisjan Lemmer With less than a year to go before the centenary of the Anglo-Boer War, there has been muttering in the Dorsbult Bar about the belated discovery by the Brits that Lord Herbert Kitchener, the war hero, was a bit of a cad. The BBC’s Reputations series appears to have stumbled upon the fact […]
Poverty, abuse, addiction and fear drive many women to sex work, writes Swapna Prabhakaran Durban in autumn is viciously deceptive. The sun still shines as if it were summer, but the wind comes in off the ocean, picks up grit and sand, and stings like ice-cold splinters wherever it touches flesh. On Durban’s beachfront there […]
Andy Capostagno Rugby When Geoff Cooke was England’s coach in the glory days of the late 1980s and early 1990s, he had a phrase that used to come out whenever journalists believed that a player had been unfairly discarded. “The graveyards are full of indispensable men,” he would say. It is interesting to speculate whether […]
unrest Mail & Guardian reporters The army weapon and ammunition heists in Bloemfontein may have been intended to fuel instability in Lesotho. This scenario was flighted by security experts this week as police made their first arrests. Lesotho has been racked by protests since claims by opposition parties that the ruling Lesotho Congress for Democracy […]