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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

South African judges blew millions on Mercedes, BMWs and Volvos, writes Andy Duffy South African judges spent more than R5-million of taxpayers’ money on luxury new cars last year. Most of the money came from the Department of Justice, months before the cash- crunch that forced it to halt overtime pay to its advocates and […]

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 […]

An offensive by southern Sudan’s secessionists will fuel famine, writes Peter Beaumont from Wun Rog The wind was blowing dust devils in Bahr el Ghazal, southern Sudan’s arid plain of thorns. It promised to bring rain but in some areas few farmers will be ready if it comes. There is little sign of any attempt […]

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 […]

Tangeni Amuphadi A police bodyguard assigned to Minister of Transport Mac Maharaj found himself on the wrong side of the law when he tried to arrest a man who called him a ”kaffir”. Inspector Edmund Sekatane says he called fellow officers to assist when the man resisted arrest, but his white colleagues treated him like […]

Richard Williams Not quite movie of the week In Ulysses Jackson, a taciturn grandfather who keeps bees in the swamps of the Florida panhandle, the writer and director Victor Nunez has created one of the richest movie roles of the decade. And in Peter Fonda he has found the ideal actor. Ulee’s Gold is a […]