A paediatrician’s love of orchids led to the discovery that big doses of garlic could triumph over infection, writes Michael Nurok The Roman statesman Cicero advised that one should eat to live, not live to eat. Little did he know that more than 2 000 years later, gravely ill patients at Cape Town hospitals might […]

Shot dead at a taxi rank this week, James Zulu is more likely to be remembered as an Inkatha warlord than the great leader he could have been, writes Jesper Strudsholm The South Coast Herald once branded James Zulu “a warlord”. Zulu threatened to take the editor to court for defamation, but the paper was […]

FRIDAY, 4.00PM: FORMER Sarfu vice-president Brian van Rooyen, author of the dossier that spurred a commission of inquiry into the South African Rugby Football Association’s affairs, said he will urge the government to appeal the Pretoria High Court’s decision to set the commission aside. “This decision doesn’t vindicate Sarfu by any means,” he said, and […]

Education’s financial crisis is having a devastating impact on South Africa’s publishers of textbooks, writes Swapna Prabhakaran South African educational publishers face lean times as the Department of Education shifts gears, changing its approach to implementation of the new outcomes-based Curriculum 2005. While the new curriculum does require new textbooks, the department has sidestepped its […]

In 1971 Germaine Greer caused a storm with her book The Female Eunuch. Now she has decided to write a sequel. Katherine Viner asks why It has taken 27 years, but it looks like we’ve got it: the sequel to The Female Eunuch. It was announced recently that Germaine Greer has received an $800 000 […]

Tangeni Amupadhi South Africa’s police watchdog is probing the handling of the slaying of six-month old Angelina Zwane on a Benoni plot this week. Advocate Neville Melville, the executive director of the Independent Complaints Directorate, has dispatched a team of two to investigate why the farmer involved in the shooting was not arrested immediately after […]

Gareth Patterson: A SECOND LOOK The hunting fraternity initially blamed the animal rights lobby for the expos of “canned” lion hunting last year. They said it was a means of tarring South Africa’s conservation image just prior to the June meeting of the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species and of dampening the Southern […]

Keith Henderson Fire, fire and more fire would be an easy way to describe this year’s Rustlers Easter Festival. It became quite clear by the end of the four-day festival that tricks involving paraffin, chains, sticks and clubs with burning ends are in vogue, so to speak, as well as a healthy dose of juggling. […]

Alex Duval Smith Evidence of PW Botha’s personal role in ordering bomb attacks and killings to thwart anti- apartheid activity was revealed at this week’s trial of the former state president. The sensational minutes of top- secret meetings in the 1980s, obtained from the national archives by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, confirm claims that […]

Despite facing stringent budget cuts, the military has paid out hefty merit bonuses – mainly to white officers, writes Mungo Soggot The Ministry of Defence is probing the armed forces’ decision to pay officers R77-million in performance bonuses, nearly all of which went to white officers of the former South African Defence Force (SADF). Amid […]