FRIDAY: 4.00PM PRESIDENT Nelson Mandela will only consider intervening in the violence-torn taxi industry if Transport Minister Mac Maharaj requests his assistance, presidential aide Parks Mankahlana said on Friday. Even then, Mankahlana said, National Taxi Drivers’ Organisation’s demands that Mandela declare a state of emergency in the industry are impractical, as the industry does not […]

Tracy Murinik On show in Cape Town “Everything is art,” I am informed as I sit down for the interview. Well, that should leave impotent and irrelevant those irksome and defensive little retorts of “but is it art?” that often riddle commentary around work that cannot be mounted flush against a wall. “Even when you […]

Melvyn Minnaar Potable pleasures Drinking and flying is not on. Even if you’re not piloting the long-haul Boeing, alcohol indulgence is bad for your body. The hours spent physically static and confined to a seat in a pressurised cabin, exposed to the ensuing dehydration, is not the recommended condition for a cocktail party, never mind […]

Larry Elliott It is just before dawn in Kinshasa on October 30 1974. In a boxing ring in the middle of a football stadium lies George Foreman, knocked out by Muhammad Ali in one of the biggest sporting upsets of the century. As lightning crackles overhead, 60 000 Zaireans cheer Ali, world champion again after […]

Stephen Gray Unspoilt places The clanking centre of the Moffat mission near Kuruman is a real old museum piece – a manual printing press. A cast-iron precision machine, it kept running through most of the 19th century. Then abandoned and shipped to Kimberley, it was exhibited there as a pretty historic item – the contraption […]

Fiona Macleod Douw Kruger has this theory that buck can’t tell the difference between blue and green, because they have a blue receptor in their eyes. To the human eye, however, his bright blue camouflage uniform is an alarm signal. This means he can stalk really close to his quarry when he’s out hunting, but […]

Robert Kirby: Loose Cannon Like “rainbow nation” we are now stuck with “African renaissance”, both of them admittedly catchy phrases, but that’s about as far as they go. The former is, thank heavens, starting to evaporate now that everyone’s realised that access to the promised pot of gold has turned out to be on a […]

Vuyo Mhlati In response to the article “Tempers Flare on the Wild Coast” (Monitor, May 8 to 14), I’d like to make it clear that the call from communities on the Wild Coast is not for more consultation, but for economic development and jobs. At the launch of investment projects on the Wild Coast, the […]

Anthony Egan CHRISTIANITY IN SOUTH AFRICA: A POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY edited by Richard Elphick and Rodney Davenport (James Currey/David Philip, R120) Christianity as a historical subject in South Africa has been largely under- researched and rarely studied. Given that almost three- quarters of South Africans regard themselves as Christians, this is surprising. Given […]

Jeremy Cronin: CROSSFIRE Jonathan Steinberg’s ”The ‘mysterious’ decline of the left” (May 8 to 14) is a useful antidote to some of the recent excesses of John Pilger. What Steinberg dwells upon, what Pilger neglected, is that the South African transition is occurring in a world very different from the first two-and-half decades after World […]