TUESDAY, 1.30PM: A REMARKABLE number of staff of the Safety and Security Ministry — including Minister Sydney Mufamadi, his driver, his private secretary, and the private secretary of his deputy minister — have all been involved in accidents while driving state-owned cars, the ministry revealed on Monday. “Good grief,” was the response of usually outspoken […]

Has the time come for Namibia to honour the heroes of its past? James Ambrose Brown looks back at the bloody conquest of legendary Bondelswart rebel leader Abraham Morris whose lust for liberty took him to his grave Abraham Morris was the last of the fiercely independent Bondelswart fighting generals. With his handful of ragged, […]

An overlap between Robert McBride’s outlandish charge sheet and the discredited Meiring report suggests an intelligence set-up, write Mungo Soggot and Stefaans Brmmer Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Robert McBride conspired with Cuban and American diplomats to overthrow the ANC government: that is among the bizarre claims which have kept McBride in a Mozambique prison cell for […]

Douglas Rushkoff : ONLINE How could the breakfast readers of Melbourne possibly benefit from the musings of a cyber-writer from the other side of the world? Why should the innocent trees of South Africa be sacrificed to provide printing space for the rantings of a New York-based media theorist? Because, like it or not, thanks […]

Andy Duffy The head of state education in the Northern Cape faces a disciplinary hearing next week on charges of misconduct. Zodwa Dlamini is alleged to have defied MEC for Education, Arts and Culture Tina Joemat and provincial Director General Martin van Zyl in their attempts to manage the embattled provincial education department. The province […]

Nelson Mandela is promoting peace and development in Luanda … but neither are foregone conclusions Chris Gordon President Nelson Mandela’s visit to Angola this week takes place against a background of rumours of war and the poor health of President Jos Eduardo dos Santos. Mandela is scheduled to meet Dos Santos to discuss the two […]

Barbara Ludman REIGN IN HELL by William Diehl (Heinemann, R99,95) LUCKY YOU by Carl Hiaasen (Macmillan, R84) Thrillers reflect Americans’ concerns more accurately than CNN – and when one has books by two bestselling writers focusing on right-wing militias, it’s a fair bet that that phenomenon figures in American nightmares. Militias rose to general consciousness […]

Stephen Gray : Unspoilt places ‘Prickly pear”, I suppose I knew, was the homely way to refer to that flat, jointed, paddle-leaved plant which holds its barrel- shaped fruit aloft like sore thumbs. If pushed, I could have volunteered its botanical label: Opuntia – a suitably blunt name for the gawky, invasive alien that should […]

Shaun de Waal : CD of the week The Rough Guide books have been helping people (usually young, hip people)find their way around the world for years. Recently a set of superb music guides was added to the list -World Music, Jazz, Rock – and now, in a logical extension of the concept, here comes […]

Andrew Worsdale : Movie of the week Love and Death on Long Island, a wryly observed romantic comedy, stars John Hurt as fuddy-duddy writer Giles De’ath. He works with a fountain pen; eats his meals at the same time every day; doesn’t have a television; hasn’t seen a movie in 20 years (he calls them […]