Jane Rosenthal WAY UP WAY OUT by Harold Strachan (David Philip, R42,99) It’s a strange practice this, of putting out a brand new novel, first print run of the first edition, with snippets of review-type comment already adorning the cover. Way Up Way Out has been done in this way. And it’s not just any […]

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. […]

Andy Duffy The group behind the controversial Aids drug, Virodene PO58, has so far spent around R1- million on the drug, including paying its manager roughly R150 000 for three months’ part- time work. Cryopreservation Technologies (CPT) refuses to divulge its funding sources, beyond its 10 feuding shareholders. But the extent of the expenditure, which […]

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 […]

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 […]

Robert Kirby: LOOSE CANNON At our peril we are all ignoring another fine example Dr Nkosazana Zuma has given us of audacious democratic management skills. Especially when it comes to applying discipline to insolent apartheid-residual control bodies, Nkosazana leads the way. As they say in the good book: if thine hand offends thee, cut it […]

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 […]

Anna Borzello in Kampala A coalition force of Ugandan rebels, Sudanese government troops and former fighters of ousted Zairean president Mobutu Sese Seko is operating from bases in Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA). Garamba, in the north-east of Congo, borders Sudan to the […]

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 […]

Jeremy Cronin: CROSSFIRE General Georg Meiring’s blunder in passing on to President Nelson Mandela a cock-and-bull story about a “left-wing” plot has got me thinking about Reserve Bank governor Chris Stals. What is the connection, you wonder? There have been persistent rumours about Stals’s role in the apartheid-era State Security Council. Little light has been […]