Unesco has declared 23 April -William Shakespeare’s birthday -the annual World Day of the Book. The idea has spread rapidly and successfully over much of the world. In Catalonia, Spain, for instance, there is a festival of bookselling, and buyers are given a rose. In Holland a well-known author writes a small book and this […]

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. […]

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 […]

Brenda Atkinson Excuse me, I’m about to gush. The object of this critical affirmation is a 500-page directory that will raise the excluded and chronically confused cultural majority in South Africa to the minority ranks (such as they are) of the cognoscenti. A big welcome to the South African Handbook on Arts and Culture for […]

Lucy Hannan in Garissa It has taken a Cabinet minister’s threat to resign to make the Kenyan government launch an inquiry into allegations ofEpolice torture and sexual humiliation during an operation against bandits in North-Eastern province. Maalim Mohammed, a staunch supporter of President Daniel arap Moi since 1983, produced video evidence of torture in his […]

As the dust of an almost bewildering media storm finally begins to settle around Breyten Breytenbach’s Boklied, Charl Blignaut asks what the reaction to the play means One should have smelled it from a mile off, really, the faint whiff of scandal rising from the Boklied posters mingling with the cloying fragrance of potpourri and […]

Bongani Siqoko The clinic at Elomoya village, north of KwaZulu-Natal, which was built by the community almost three years ago, is still standing in long grass, unstaffed and unequipped. This means that for people to get proper health care, they have to walk 36km to the nearest Ndlangubo clinic or 45km to Gezinsila. After three […]

Don Maclennan’s new poetry volume, Solstice, has won him two awards. He spoke to Denise Rack Louw `I dislike interviews, but I enjoy conversations,” award-winning poet Don Maclennan tells me with a twinkle. I am visiting Maclennan at his Grahamstown home to find out more about the writer and his work – including Solstice (Snailpress), […]