Madeleine Roux : Moveable feast It’s hard to make a really bad potato salad. The two most likely ways are to undercook the potatoes and add salad cream and raw onion rings. Alas, this awful concoction is a regular at otherwise delightful school bazaars and old-fashioned braais on the platteland. Most potato salads are sublime. […]

The word scandal is so easily bandied about these days that it has lost some of its meaning. Perhaps, when contemplating the activities of Don Mkhwanazi, head of the Central Energy Fund, it is worth reminding ourselves of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the word: something which occasions “general feeling of outrage and indignation”. […]

Police and women in Alexandra are working together to combat rape in the township, writes Lizeka Mda Put yourself in Josina Matangala’s shoes and you’ll want to scream. One Saturday night two months ago, a man she had seen around Alexandra township burst into her shack where she was sleeping with her two- year-old daughter […]

THURSDAY, 5.30PM: THE Johannesburg Stock Exchange today made up Wednesday’s losses, with the all share index rising 31 points to 6423, the industrial index climbing 35 points to 7950 and the financial index 90 points stronger at 9917. The all gold index shed 6 points to 785. The all gold index shed 6 points to […]

Angella Johnson It was a sunny spring day in September when Andr Swart and his wife Lenie drove through the manicured grounds of their sprawling commercial farm. They had been to church, a high point of the weekly social calendar for their tight-knit Afrikaner farming community. As their car pulled into the garage four men […]

Sechaba ka’Nkosi Fears are mounting that a network of senior police officers in the KwaZulu-Natal’s Midlands wants to sabotage the trial of alleged warlord Sifiso Nkabinde as they could also face charges if implicated when the trial begins in February next year. The network is suspected to be involved in killings, intimidation of witnesses and […]

Barney Spender : Rugby As in all sports and, indeed , in life itself, a hearty welcome is often accompanied by a fond farewell. So it is on Saturday when the Springboks will attempt, for the second successive year, to win a Test series in France by a 2-0 margin. Something which will prove a […]

Design of the week : Maria McCloy We’re so used to the cheap, garish, characterless and boring mass-produced album covers of most South African artists (a perfect example is the new Brenda Fassie cover), it’s refreshing to see the cover art created by graphic designer Nicholas Hauser and Coil Productions photographer Lianne Cox. Most of […]

A Second Look : Timothy Trengove-Jones aIt is a truism that the love which once dared not speak its name is now unstoppably voluble. On stage, on screen, in the media, yes, even on the streets, homosexuals are articulating their presence with increasing confidence. And, on November 25 1997, almost 100 years after the (in)famous […]

Lesley Cowling Mojalefa Murphy, one of the country’s rare black nuclear physicists who has been suspended by the Atomic Energy Corporation, hit back in the Pretoria High Court this week with a bitter attack on the AEC’s chief executive, Waldo Stumpf. Murphy, who was meant to be the new face of the AEC, has been […]