People used to go to there just to collect the postmark, but now art dealers go to plunder the region’s priceless heritage, reports Alex Duval Smith ‘The trouble with Timbuktu,” says Mohamed Galla Dicko, “is that most people think it does not really exist. The world behaves as though it were just a mythical place.” […]

Andrew Muchineripi : Soccer National soccer coach Philippe Troussier spent this month shifting through the local and foreign-based talent available to him and now has a list of 30 World Cup hopefuls. One of the most eagerly awaited national squads since the birth of Bafana Bafana is scheduled to be named late next week for […]

John Pilger : CROSSFIRE In his fine book, The Mind of South Africa, Allister Sparks wrote: “South Africa has the widest gap between rich and poor of any country in the world for which data are available. Eighty-seven per cent of its land and 95% of its industrial holdings are in white hands. That degree […]

Alexandra residents take the World Bank to task over plans to expand the Lesotho Highlands Water Project We are a group of low-income residents of Alexandra township, near Sandton. We have filed a formal protest at the World Bank Inspection Panel – the equivalent of its auditor general – against the expansion of the Lesotho […]

Durban will once again host a number of international and South Africa poets, when the second Poetry Africa festival takes place at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre, from May 4 to 9. Some 20 poets will present and read from their work and engage in discussion. Jamaican-born musician/poet Linton Kwesi Johnson is the opening-night headliner. Well […]

Andy Capostagno : Cricket First of all, the apologies. Last week I suggested that the national selectors were myopic baboons who could not differentiate a class off-spinner from a kicked in car door. I also managed to retire Brian McMillan somewhat prematurely. My only excuse is that newspaper deadlines coincide with important announcements about as […]

John Pilger cannot be accused of understating his case, either in his film or this article. Which is fine, but then he musn’t expect others to endorse his polemical views and interpretations. Hence the disclaimer. He says the old SABC sometimes ran critical documentaries by foreign TV journalists and accompanied them with disclaimers like the […]

Michael Brooks looks at the latest cool solution The refrigerator of the future may be cooled by a semiconductor device no bigger than a credit card. There will be no buzz, no moving parts and, most important of all, it will do away with the need for the environment-destroying Freon gases used in conventional refrigerators. […]

Shopping and Fucking is one of the most controversial scripts to be staged in South Africa. Charl Blignaut sits in on a rehearsal The moment I walk in I can feel the energy in the rehearsal room change, becoming slightly flustered. Five faces turn and look up at me from the floor where they are […]

Mark Gevisser COUNTRY OF MY SKULL by Antjie Krog (Random House, R90) ‘We boers,” wrote Rian Malan in Business Day recently, “are terminally fed up” with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which has become “increasingly irksome to those of us who thought we attained a certain nobility in 1994 by surrendering power to a mistrusted […]